Hobart
Track: EWAH and the Vision of Paradise – Vultures
EWAH and the Vision of Paradise have the dubious honour of being the last band to be reviewed live on Backseat Mafia before the global lockdown, so it’s nice to return to the band when things are slowly – ever so slowly – returning to normal. ‘Vultures’ is their new single and it is a …
Live: Dark Mofo Festival – Sharon Van Etten
In the creaky, weary, glorious old Odeon Theatre in Hobart, Tasmania, Sharon van Etten made an explosive, incandescent start to the one of the most brilliant festivals in the world today. Her voice, incredible on record, is extraordinary live: ranging from operatic, soaring highs in ‘No-one’s Easy to Love’ to growling exhortations in ‘Seventeen’ where …
Album Review: Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You really Feel
Courtney Barnett is swiftly developing global adulation for her low-fi, heartfelt vignettes of life which capture with great honesty her trials and tribulations and insecurities. Like Jonathan Richman, there is a brutal honesty in her lyrics that reveal a bruised innocence, backed with an increasingly muscular instrumentation that creeps up and surprises. Themes reflect her …
Live: Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds – Brisbane Hotel, Hobart 13/05/2018
The carpets at the iconic Brisbane Hotel in, confusingly, Hobart, Australia are so sticky that if you stand still on the one spot for too long, you might get never get out alive. Luckily, when a band like Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds play, there is no risk of that. Opening with their …
News: Dark Mofo Festival 2018, Hobart – lineup announced
Dark Mofo, the world’s most extraordinary festival, returns to Hobart – the city on the edge of the world – in the middle of the deepest darkest winter from 7 through to 24 June. The Festival is a series of events, concerts, light shows and installations that deliberately encompasses the weird, the controversial, the obscure …
Live Review: The All Seeing Hand at Schmørgåsbaag, Hobart, Sunday, 23 April 2017
In the early evening on a Sunday at the very edge of the world, a fitting place to witness an extraordinary performance from New Zealand band The All Seeing Hand. I had already recently noted the remarkable level of talent coming out of New Zealand in my recent review of Fazerdaze, and The All Seeing …
News: Dark Mofo Festival
Over the past few years, the city of Hobart in the Australian state of Tasmania has been transformed by the building of a privately-funded art museum called the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) on the banks of the Derwent River. The museum has achieved international recognition for its innovative and eclectic collection and …