Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Governor Hindmarsh

Murray Bramwell

The last time I saw Bonnie “Prince” Billy was at the Tivoli at the beginning of 1998. He was trading under the name of Will Oldham then and, like Will Robinson, another of his aliases, he was a little lost in space. It was a brilliant set, but also exasperating and a little worrying. Oldham huddled at the side of the stage avoiding the spotlight, mumbling to himself, and the band (which included …

Muse
Thebarton Theatre

Murray Bramwell

It is only eight months since we saw UK band Muse at Big Day Out, but now they are back with more fans and a lot more fanfare. Their stocks have risen with the release of their latest album, Absolution, a recent tour with The Cure, and their steady determination to prevail. There have been comparisons – with Radiohead, for instance, and the latter end of Britpop – but increasingly, Muse is taking inspiration from …

The Dissociatives
Thebarton Theatre

Murray Bramwell

Dissociation is an interesting concept. In chemistry it means the separation of constituent elements in a compound. Psychologically, it is when aspects in the personality hive off to form an independent, even multiple personality. For Daniel Johns, rock star since the age of fifteen, to use the term, I take as a signal that he is reclaiming his stable atoms from that very powerful base element, silverchair. And for a young man, who has …

Arlo Guthrie
Norwood Concert Hall

Murray Bramwell

There is something irrepressibly good-natured about Arlo Guthrie and he’s been like that for forty years. Nothing seems to have bothered him – not the overbearing reputation of his father Woody, the celebrated dust bowl populist, not the competition with Bob Dylan, Woody’s acolyte in the folk scene of the early 1960s, not even the threat of inheriting Huntingdon’s Chorea, the degenerative disease which afflicted his father and caused his early death.

Arlo …

Paul Kelly
Her Majesty’s

Murray Bramwell

I like Paul Kelly to stay the same and tend to get tetchy when he changes things around, especially when he tinkers with his band line-up. I couldn’t see why he had to shoot the Messengers or why he would hire hotshot American guitarist Randy Jacobs. Was the Professor Ratbaggy project just a scratch band, and what about that bluegrass Smoke thing ? And, these days, what is he doing with his nephew Dan …

Jackson Browne
Festival Theatre

Murray Bramwell

Fourteen guitars – all in a row. The show is billed as solo acoustic but it looks like the set up for the Eagles. Jackson Browne admits it is “obnoxious” for one person to have quite so many instruments but, he confides, he needs all those special tunings.

He certainly has plenty of special tunes. For more than thirty years and twelve albums, Jackson Browne has had the patent on the California sound which …

Big Day Out
Wayville Showgrounds

Murray Bramwell

This year’s is the twelfth Big Day Out and I think I’ve been to all but four. Nevermind that I wasn’t cool enough to see Kurt Cobain back in 1992, the BDO has been just the thing for a music tourist like me. Every food group in popular music is represented from high protein to extreme carbohydrate and – with seven venues running in parallel universes – for the price of a ticket …

2004

Turin Brakes

Fowlers Live

Murray Bramwell

Just three days into January and we may already be seeing one of the year’s best. UK band, Turin Brakes, on the rebound from the Falls Festival, are playing to a tiny but attentive crowd at Fowlers Live and showing just why they have gathered such a big reputation since their exceptional debut album, The Optimist, first appeared in 2001.

Touted as nu acoustica, along with the likes of I am Kloot, …

Joe Jackson
with Joe Camilleri and Bakelite Radio
Thebarton Theatre

Murray Bramwell

I’ve always thought of Joe Jackson as part of that triumvirate which also included Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. They were the Auden, Spender and MacNeice of the late seventies. Their lyrics mordantly capturing the spirit of the age just as Auden and his fellow poets had in the grim times of the 1930s. Costello wrote the dense punning lyrics, Parker burned with the gem-like flame, and Joe …

Blondie
Thebarton Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Video may have killed some radio stars but it was the absolute making of Blondie. From their first appearance in 1977 at the height of the Punk and New Wave incursions, this New York pop band not only made their mark but set their own agenda for success. Hopping genres from arthouse pop to disco, reggae and even rap, Blondie not only ruled the airwaves but the cathode rays as well

With Countdown …