The Brag

After taking a break in 2010, the (usually) annual Homebake festival returned to Sydney’s Domain for its 14th iteration. Featuring some of Australian music’s most respected names, amongst the next crop of rising local artists, it promised to be a day of cross-generational musical highlights – but proved to be somewhat hit and miss. The [...]

Posted: December 19th, 2011 under Brag 442 (December 12), Live Reviews, Music.
Tags: Architecture In Helsinki, CW Stoneking, Grinderman, Homebake Festival, Icehouse, Max Easton, Oh Mercy, The Brag, The Jezabels, The Vines, Triffids

GRINDERMAN From demented storyteller to esteemed crooner, Nick Cave has never been reticent about evolving into something unrecognisable. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, he’s rarely strolled outside of unwavering critical appraisal, regardless of who he plied his twisted trade with. In his latest guise as Grinderman (alongside The Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis and latter-day [...]

Posted: February 14th, 2011 under Brag 398 (February 7), Live Reviews, Music.
Tags: Grinderman, Max Easton, The Brag

Grinderman The Empire Strikes Back By Mikey Carr In the music world, the ‘difficult second album’ is very much like the troublesome sequel in a movie franchise. Often overambitious and under-realised, both movie sequels and sophomore albums run the risk of on the one hand trying to offer too much by spoiling the formula fans [...]

Posted: September 27th, 2010 under Brag 380 (September 20), Music, Music - Interview.
Tags: Grinderman, Mikey Carr, The Brag

Grinderman Grinderman 2 EMI *** The second round of Grinderman mayhem opens with Nick Cave in midlife crisis mode, announcing to the universe, ‘I woke up this morning and I thought “what am I doing?”’ With the first Grinderman album (Cave’s sideproject with a few fellow Badseeds, principally Warren Ellis), many were left asking exactly [...]

Posted: September 6th, 2010 under Album Reviews, Brag 377 (August 30), Music.
Tags: Grinderman, Oliver Downes, The Brag