Big Day Out 2009: The Line Up [citation found]

So the Big Day Out lineup is out of the bag, and it'll come as little surprise to anyone who has been following the speculation and rumours over the past few months (including our own detective work, which has been found to be pretty accurate). So here's the first announcement, with a few thoughts.

Neil Young: Undoubtedly a musical legend, and has been hugely popular and influential over the last 40 odd years. But as a Big Day Out headliner, he's an enormous departure from this year's headliner, Rage Against The Machine, and it'll be intresting to see how well he goes down with 'the kids'. Surely only a full-on greatest hits set will please the crowd.

Arctic Monkeys: At the moment, it's looking like BDO will be the band's first dates in a while (since Alex Turner's Last Shadow Puppets project) so the BDO crowd will see a reinvigorated band, and be amongst the first in the world to hear material from the 3rd Monkeys LP. Should go down a storm.

The Living End: Well loved, and their comeback album was well received, so they're a very logical choice for the Australian headliner slot.

The Prodigy: Produced some of the best dance music of the 90's, and their shows back then were legendary. This decade, however, both their shows and their music has been 'patchy' to say the least. Still, the boiler room is likely to go mental when they're on, if that's where they're playing.

Sneaky Sound System Another Aussie no-brainer on the lineup. They'll be a big crowd pleaser.

My Morning Jacket: One of the most thrilling live acts I've seen and they make a big noise which sounds great outdoors.

Pendulum: They will be well used to playing in the open air now after their stint doing the European festivals.

Bullet For My Valentine: Because it's important to have something to keep the emos miserable.

TV On The Radio: Performing on the back of their hugely acclaimed (not least by us) new LP, but not yet widely known in Australia, TVOTR are sure to pick up a lot of new fans at BDO.

Simian Mobile Disco: They've remixed or produced pretty much everybody, and they're pretty entertaining on their own, too.

The Ting Tings: Likely to split the BDO crowd between the lovers and the haters, much like Operator Please did this year.

And the rest: Tiki Taane, Cut Copy, Cog, Youth Group, The Grates, Birds Of Tokyo, Eddy Current Supression Ring all play the Aus shows, and a bunch of other bands play in New Zealand.

So beyond the risky headliner choice, it's all pretty safe and uninspiring, lots of crowd pleasers, something for just about everyone, but little in the way of 'absolute must see'. I guess that's what BDO's all about really. Bring on the ATP announcement (due midnight tonight), I say.

Update

Something else has just occured to me about the lineup: one of the great things about festivals is getting the chance to see new bands who haven't neccessarily got enough material yet to justify going to see a full headline set. But there's an almost total absence of new bands on this lineup. It's only really the Ting Tings that have emerged in the last twelve months.

Also, by my reckoning, there's not a single band on the lineup who have never played Australia before. BDO ought to be a great excuse to coax over some bands who are a bit shy of the Southern Hemisphere, like they did with the likes of Arcade Fire last year. Not so this year.

And No Radiohead. No alarms and no surprises there.

Thoughts? post them below...

Take a Moment Behind the Scenes with NIN

Moment Factory, the company who provided much of the light show used on the Nine Inch Nails Lights In The Sky tour (as seen here and here) have released a video detailing some of the effects and how they work - click here to watch it on YouTube.

Dear Science, Is it too early to declare my Album of the Year?

It has taken a full week of listening before I could even start writing this review of Dear Science: what is there to say about something that is so damn good?

Dear Science is TV on The Radio’s fourth album and it sees the band continue to hide their nihilistic message in falsetto vocals and diverse uplifting music that is polished beyond perfection.

Opener Halfway Home is a not a big jump from TVOTR’s earlier work; b-b-b-bar-bar, b-b-b-bar-bar lyrics, hand claps, awkward percussion, fuzzy synths and buzzing guitars.

Dear Science highlight Dancing Choose has vocalist Tunde Adebimpe spitting lyrics about the newspaper man, his squashed toes and a cramped dance floor while the band lays out some skronking horns and high-hat. The result: electro-funk on speed.

On the bands 2006 release Return to Cookie Mountain, guitarist/producer David Sitek looked to fill every space of every song with layer upon layer of sound. On Dear Science, he strips back these layers giving lo-fi delights like Stork & Owl and Love Dog the room to swirl around inside your head, while Family Tree - a string filled (forbidden) love ballad - provides the perfect comedown from Golden Age’s funk laden optimism.

TVOTR sign the album out with DMZ - a hate anthem for the apocalypse, and the euphoric Kip Malone-lead Lover’s Day, a track that is so sexy it should come with it’s own morning after pill.

Dear Science is more accessible and more consistent than anything TVOTR have done before; this doesn’t mean they have gone plain, boring or commercial - far from it. (Album of the Year)

Radiohead Re / Mix It Again

In Rainbows highlight Reckoner has been covered by Gnarls Barkley, slated for a position on the Choke soundtrack and now it is available for fan driven remixing.

Following up on the success of the Nude Remix project Radiohead have today released the stems to Reckoner for download from iTunes, unlike the Nude project you only have to pay for one download and you get access to all 6 pieces of the track.

Creative folks have already started posting their remixes on http://radioheadremix.com/.

Come back soon for Bawley’s take on Reckoner.

Just for old times’ sake you can go here for the best of our Nude remixes.

Soundwave: The little festival that could

Since going national in the summer of 2007, the Soundwave festival has grown from strength to strength and 2009 looks like it will be the biggest year yet. The focus is still very much on rock, with the 2009 festival featuring bands playing punk, hardcore, metal, metal core, screamo, 90’s grunge, industrial, comedy and pretty much any other hard rock sub-genre you can think of.

At the top of the list sits two very big names, the reformed Alice In Chains and the never better Nine Inch Nails. At Bawley we are hoping Nine Inch Nails will bring along their amazing Lights In the Sky visuals (here and here) minus the technical problems that have hit the some of the South American dates.

Joining AIC and NIN are goth punks Alkaline Trio, System of a Down spin-off Scars on Broadway, guitar pop kids The Subways, the heavy as s**t Lamb of God, Welsh post-hardcore specialists Funeral For A Friend, and some toilet humour comedians well past their use by date (The Bloodhound Gang).

The festival will stop in Brisbane (21/02), Sydney (22/02), Melbourne (27/02), and Adelaide (28/02) before finishing up in Perth on Monday the 2nd of March.

Hit http://www.soundwavefestival.com/ for the full line up and venue details.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Why spend the day Arggh-in’ and Ahoy-in’ t’ all ye pirate mates when you can celebrate Talk Like A Pirate Day in alt-country style by downloading the new Lambchop track National Talk Like a Pirate Day, taken from their album OH (Ohio) which is due for a October 7th release.

Unfortunately it is not a swash buckling novelty song, but more of a roots based rock song that tells the story of a ditsy house wife, her pyjamas and her troubles - that exist today (on National Pirate Day) just as they do every other day.

Li’ly libbered land lubbers can download the mp3 via stereogum.

More Lambchop loving here and here.

Nine Inch Nails: Lights out

Spectacular though Nine Inch Nails' Lights In The Sky looks, unfortunately, it seems it's all a bit too clever.

The band have just cancelled some dates in South America due to "unforseen technical issues" which surely has something to do with the light show.  Plenty of other dates are unaffected at present, so it seems the problem isn't too drastic.