2011: Best of songs

As I finish my last few album reviews for my best of 2011 album list and let the craziness of Soundwave and miss photography slowly dissipate, I think it's time to tell you what my favourite songs of 2011 were. In no particular order at all, except for when I wrote them down in my dodgy ass Windows Notepad file. I may write something about it, I may not. Just know that i love these songs.

Touche Amore - Home Away From Here

It's short, fast, hard and emotionally brutal, which at the time I got into this song was everything I felt. "It's just I have this problem that I want to be everywhere I'm not..."

Defeater - Empty Glass

Boris - Les Paul Custom '86

Multiple versions of this song came out this year, but there's something about the metal band doing stripped-back J-pop/electronica in this that just astounds me and makes me sing along, with words I don't understand.

The DC3 - I was the Guy in TISM

The Australian satire and wit! AHH!

Monument – Dot Dash/Bikeage/What a Wonderful Puddle

The album wasn't considered for my end of list because it was 50% covers. But what covers! Get it for free on their bandcamp.

My Morning Jacket - Holdin' On To Black Metal

 

 

The song's subject matter v. delivery. 

Yuck - Georgia

 

 

Rekindled my love affair with Brit-rock, even with a bit of a Cure riff rip-off.

Andrew Jackson Jihad - The Michael Jordan of Drunk Driving

 

 

Short. Quirky. Original.

Wilco - One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)

 

 

It may be a tad bit long for some people, but it is the perfect song to listen to while lying in bed on a Sunday morning. And that riff! My god, it's repetitive, but it's catchy.

The Smith St Band - I Ain't Safe

 

Thrice - Listen Through Me

 

The Hotel Year - Weathered

 

 

La Dispute - King Park

 

 

The subject matter alone. Christ. Try listening to this without getting goosebumps or crying.

The Wonder Years - Came Out Swinging

 

 

A great start to my favourite pop-punk album of the last 5 years. And it's not about lost love, but something I understand. Missing the youth of growing up in the burbs of Chicago (or near enough in the case of me up the road).

Joyce Manner - Constant Headache

 

 

This album was good, but not great. Yet I kept looking to it. And this song would always be the first one I listened to.

The Dear Hunter - We've Got a Score to Settle

 

Mastodon - Curl of the Burl

It was nigh on impossible to pick just one song from this album to be in this list, but this one had an "official" music video.

2011: Best of Photos

2011 was a big year for me in photography. I got my first SLR at the end of 2010 and up to July 2011 I only was able to take band photos in little venues after sweet talking the bouncers. By the end of 2011 I had photographed two massive festivals of international bands, broken 1 lens mid-Future of the Left gig, broken 1 camera mid-Soundwave Counter-Revolution festival, had photos printed in a magazine (in Canberra of all places) and been able to get up close with so many bands I loved.

It's been fun. I would like to thank Alternative Music Hub and Tone Deaf for allowing me to occasionally photograph for them. 2012 will see me dragging my camera wherever possible and hopefully being able to take some more larger bands/festival photos. If you're reading this and you want me to take photos for your publication/band/etc, please hit me up on photo@moshpitson.com.

Now that's all done, here's my favourite live music photos I took last year. This list has been impossible to make as I keep changing my mind and I tried to only limit it to 1 photo per show.

20. The Chariot, Sun Distortion Studios, April 20

This gig was absolutely insane. Despite being a small room with one small bulb from the roof making for horrible lighting, the band was so crazy that most photos turned out. Even this one of the bass player being carried out the door while still playing.

19. The Damned Things, Soundwave Counter-Revolution, Riverstage, September 24

Although not an action shot, I just really enjoy this picture of Damned Things/Every Time I Die lead singer Keith Buckley walking off stage. (See the full gallery here)

18. The Walkmen, Harvest Festival, Riverstage, November 19

I had been waiting the better part of a decade to see the Walkmen. This picture of the lead singer looking suave and slightly 1950s is everything I had ever imagined about this band. (See the full gallery here)

17. The Grates, Tivoli, October 28

Patience, the energetic lead singer, is generally the focus of attention in the Grates live show. However, in this picture, John shows he can still get his boogie on. (See the full gallery here)

16. Alesana, Soundwave Counter-Revolution, Riverstage, September 24

I may not be the biggest fan of their music, but their live show was sure fun to watch. Even though my camera was minutes away from breaking, this shot of the guitarist mid-dance at the back of the stage managed to capture some of the action. (See the full gallery here)

15. Army of Champions, the Jubilee, November 17

It was the first time I had seen, let alone heard of, this band and I fell in love. This picture captures all of them singing/shouting at once, in the Against Me! punk vibe they put out.

14. Man Overboard, The Globe, September 3

Whenever I watch a punk show, it's always my goal to get a picture of a guitar jump. It's bloody hard and very rarely works out. This shot was taken just as I put the flash on my camera and before I even had it set up properly and it needed a lot of post-editing to not be dark. The post-editing gave it a very old-school film feel I think. (See the full gallery here)

13. Raein, Sun Distortion Studios, December 31

This was one of the last photos I took in 2011, of the Italian screamo band playing the last Sun Distortion Studios show. The whole energy of the set was intense, with almost everyone in the band screaming into any microphone that was near them and just jumping around like madmen. Was a great way to see out 2011.

12. Periphery, the Zoo, July 29

The first gig I shot for any reason apart from for fun. Although I had to jostle with the crowd a lot to get shots, they were just fun to photograph. Every shot I took had them in different poses and it was really hard to pick a single photo for the best of list! (See the full gallery here)

11. Nuclear Summer, Sun Distortion Studios, December 31

Nuclear Summer will go down as one of my favourite local bands in 2011. This shot shows basically everyone you see regularly at gigs in Brisbane just getting into the song as well.

10. The National, Harvest Festival, Riverstage, November 19

The lighting, the mist, the composition... I think it really just goes hand in hand with the style of music that is the National. (See the full gallery here)

9. La Dispute, the Zoo, January 25

Adam Vass screaming into the mike. This was my favourite photo for the first half of the year.

8. Architecture in Helsinki, the Tivoli, September 25

I couldn't take my eyes or lens off the front man of Architecture in Helsinki. I think of this picture as the hipster music version of Egon from Ghostbusters. (See the full gallery here)

7. Every Time I Die, HiFi, September 23

The second Keith Buckley picture of the top 10. He's just such an an enigmatic front man, you can't help to take a lot of photos of him. This photo was part of a set of photos I took of him just tossing the microphone around in between singing. (See the full gallery here)

6. Trash Talk, Step Inn, February 25

This was taken the night before Soundwave festival, in a special flood benefit fundraiser in the small band room of the Step Inn. Trash Talk, as always, were absolutely nuts on stage and barely kept still. This photo made the countdown purely for the expression of the guy on the side of stage. That's what everyone feels like after watching the insanity and non-stop movement of the Trash Talk live show.

5. Jim Ward, Alhambra, August 13

If I was to give an award for the worst lighting in a venue to take photos in, it would be Alhambra. One spot light and a mirror behind the performer. But I managed to get this shot with the lights above the bar reflected beautifully in the mirror. Artistic almost. (See the full gallery here)

4. AC4, The Zoo, April 7

I was lucky enough to see Dennis Lyxzen (lead singer of Refused/International Noise Conspiracy) twice this year in different forms. Dennis is renowned for his stage performane, and at the Zoo in his hardcore band AC4 he showed us all why. Despite only landing in Australia a few hours earlier, he danced like a mad man and finished writhing on the floor while still singing.

3. Touche Amore, Old Museum, September 8

I got to take most of my pictures on stage, which is rare for me in such a large venue. I was singing along the whole time and this whole band photo, with Jeremy screaming, was turned into a poster for my friend Jess who's hand is sticking out in the crowd. (See the full gallery here)

2. Flaming Lips, Harvest Festival, Riverstage, November 19

Anyone who has seen a Flaming Lips show will know about how insane it is. The photo pit was packed and I took about 400 photos just of the first 3 songs of these guys. So much was going on it was so hard to keep up with the action. This is a shot of Wayne just as he unleashed streamers from his blow gun, with more streamers in the background and all of the photographers trying to get a good angle. (See the full gallery here)

1. Fucked Up, Alhambra, December 9

What you can't see is the fact that I'm singing like a manic into the microphone while taking this photo.

Review: Title Fight/Touche Amore/Break Even/Headaches, Old Museum, September 8 2011

The Old Museum. Is there a stranger place for a hardcore show? For what could possibly be the best hardcore/punk show of the year? There probably is, but I can't think of any more odd than a 120 year old heritage building that used to hold a museum and is used mainly for orchestral stuff now.

That being said, it was a bloody nice and big venue inside. A huge stage, great lighting a more than adequate PA and lots of space in front of the stage. The problem was, being the kind of building it is, they took the "no moshing" rule to an extreme. Throughout the course of the night we were repeatedly warned that if one person stage dived or got out of control, the show would be over immediately.

Locals Headaches were up first and played to a fairly big crowd (of people wearing mainly La Dispute shirts). They were solid as always, but played only about a 20 minute set.

Break Even are the Australian band doing the whole tour with the Americans. They put on a solid set with the crowd really getting worked up and into it.

The crowd participation was closely scrutinised by the security on the stage. If it looked like one person was even close to getting out of control, they bore down on them like a hawk. At one point, someone jumped up to sing along and grabbed the lead singer's shirt. He was ejected quickly.

The guitarist from Fires of Waco was standing in front of me in the crowd and Break Even passed the microphone down to him to sing a song. The security didn't like that either. They kept trying to grab it back out of hands, despite the band reassuring him it was okay.

Touche Amore was the band I was really excited for. Their unique style of hardcore lends so well to a live setting and they just blew everyone away.

The set was quite heavy with songs from their latest album Parting the Sea Between the Brightness and Me, which I managed to pick up a special Australian tour 12" press of at the show for $20. In fact, all their merch was $20. Good on them!

The crowd was very well behaved following the repeated warnings by people before and during the set. But then again, they didn't need to get on stage to get involved, because the lead singer kept coming down to the crowd for sing alongs.

It was great to watch from the side of the stage. If you turned away from watching the band at any point and saw me, you would've seen a guy holding a camera and screaming along to the lyrics while pumping his hands in the air and occasionally taking a photo. To say I enjoyed it was an understatement.

Everyone cleared out after Touche Amore. I honestly thought they wouldn't come back for Title Fight, but as the guitar started swelling up, you could see everyone running back in. I don't know much about this band having only listened to their album Shed once or twice, but they were goddamn enjoyable live. Their punk/hardcore/orgcore style was great fun and led to a lot of guitar jumps. A lot.

I was standing next to another photographer on the side of the stage and we kept having competitions to see who could get the better guitar jump on film. It was a tough contest, but I like to think we both won, by just watching this band.

By the time they announced their last song, you could tell that things were about to get hectic. The crowd had been fairly well behaved but they were itching to really get into the music. Apparently Title Fight are always about stage dives.

When they started playing YoureYeah everyone started bumrushing the stage. People started jumping into the crowd and moshing like crazy. Security tried to stop them and it got quite physical. One of the "volunteers" (not one of the security guards) picked up a kid and tried to throw him off the stage to get him out of the way. The band manager did not take kind to this and tackled this volunteer. Right in front of me. The volunteer looked so scared and took off running.

Needless to say, halfway through the song the power was cut and all you could hear was the drums. The bass player threw down his guitar in disgust and the show was over.

I tried to get some photos of it at this point, but my flash ran out of batteries and it was dark. Of course it would happen at this point.

I have no anger towards the security at this gig. They did their job well. Moshing and stage dives were banned and they enforced it well. The crowd went along with it fine too. It was actually a job well done by all to keep a hardcore show in quite good check. My beef goes to the organiser. Why choose this venue? You know that the crowd was going to behave exactly like it did. And you know the venue bans it. So why have the show there? We were actually just lucky that everyone was so well behaved and the gig went as long as it did.

Still, a great night all around. So happy to photograph it. You can view the full gallery over at AltMusicHub.

Blog Update

Apologies readers. I've been a bit slack lately with blog updates. As I'm sure you're aware, I've started taking concert photos more often for more than just shits and giggles. The result of this taking up a whole bunch of my free time, coupled with work, travelling for work, girlfriend and napping has seen me not update as often as I would like.

It's not that I don't want to. I have a "To Blog" list in my email drafts box that's huge. It'll get done soon. I promise. I'll still bring you all the concert announcements. They won't be within 2 minutes of the announcement, like other music blogs, but I'll put them up in plenty of time. I'll still post all the rants, mix CDs, photos, reviews and other goodies whenever I get a chance too. Especially Free Music Friday. I love that.

So no, I haven't forgotten about you. It's just I get to go places now and take photos of people playing instruments. And jumping. While playing instruments.

Stay tuned this week. I'll be pumping through my "To Blog" list. Which will hopefully also include some web page improvements all around.

Meanwhile, enjoy my recent galleries for AltMusicHub.

Title Fight/Touche Amore/Break Even/Headaches, Old Museum, September 8 2011
Man Overboard/I Am Villain, The Globe, September 3 2011
Jim Ward/Jud Campbell, Alhambra, August 13 2011
The Get Up Kids/City Riots/We Set Sail, August 5 2011
Periphery/Tesseract/Iron Hide, July 29 2011

One sentence album reviews (#15)

Yoyoyo, so if you don't know by now, well... I do one sentence album reviews on my Twitter when I feel up to it. I normally build up a review list over the week and post them during the work days to keep me somewhat sane. When I build up a few, I post them all here for historical reasons.

Today saw me hit a new point, I've run out of reviews. I've been so busy lately that I've got a giant stack of CD's next to my comptuer, a stack of vinyl on my bookshelf and about 130 hours of new music queued up on my computer. So, as a consequence, it might slow up for a while. But here's the last bunch:

Lonely Island - Turtleneck & Chain (2011): A few funny songs, but mainly sounding like the Beastie Boys did 20 years ago, with bad humour 2.4/5

Saul Williams - Volcanic Sunlight (2011): 1st listen: like 2 minutes only of spoken word. Disappointed. 5th listen: a clever rap album 4/5

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light (2011): They have gone slightly back in time and got their heavy back. I scarily like it 4/5

Death Grips - Ex-Military (2011): Excellent grimey rap with lots of classical rock samples that make my inner music nerd jump for joy 4.5/5

Fucked Up - David Comes To Life (2011): A departure from their hardcore to make a brilliant rock opera. May alienate old fans. 5/5

Touche Amore - Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me (2011): Hardcore that sounds like La Dispute had a musical baby with Defeater. 4.5/5

Face to Face - Laugh Now, Laugh Later (2011): This is how pop-punk should be. A lesson from the masters 4.5/5

Boy Hits Car - Stealing Fire (2011): A very American rock sound, kind of like nu metal crossed with classic Iron Maiden style vocals 3/5

Braveyoung-We Are Lonely Animals (2010): Instrumental post-rock eh? So you build up each song slowly into a drawn out crescendo? #cliche 1.5/5

Bullets in Madison - We Became Your Family When You Died (2010): starts as boring post-rock and then slowly merges into a Thom Yorke sound. 2/5

Cloud Nothings - Cloud Nothings (2011): Jangly lo-fi guitar pop. Sounds like a lot of other bands, but with more personality due to raw and rough edges 4/5 The song Heartbeat is a contender for song of the year

Crocodiles - Sleep Forever (2010): This album is from the wrong decade, it needs to be in the mid 90's new wave-era. Oh the memories 4/5

The Black Powder - The Black Powder (2008): Unclassifiable noisy-post-punk-hardcore (that's a classification I guess). The kind of band I want to be in 4/5

Ampere - Like Shadows (2011): 11 Songs, 15 Minutes of good hardcore. They exemplify short and sweet 4/5

The Antlers - Burst Apart (2011): It took me 5 listens to take it all in, as it's so quiet and unassuming. Modern elevator music maybe? 2/5

Kindest Lines - Covered In Dust (2011): A band that grew up listening to way too much of the Cure and wants to keep their spirit alive 4/5

Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See (2011): Less garage rock and more indie, there's 2 songs that channel Interpol deeply 3/5

City & Colour - Little Hell (2011): I like Alexisonfire, but I don't like Dallas' solo stuff, way too mopey. #emo 2/5

The Paper Scissors - In Loving Memory (2011): Australian band making brooding moody indie. Channeling their inner dance-goth I think 3/5

Touche Amore/Title Fight

The first quarter of this year has been amazing for me and concerts. It's pretty much been better than the last 10+ years combined. I'm a bit bummed now that there's not much going on, and where I was going to see gigs two or three times a week, I'm now down to barely one a month. I figured the rest of the year would be pretty meh.

But then, I heard about this tour.

Both bands, Touche Amore and Title Fight, have put out great albums in the last few weeks. Especially Touche Amore. I actually only listened to it for the first time today, but following their La Dispute split last year, I knew to expect some awesomeness. And they deliver. Both of them deliver.

In celebration on both great albums, they're touring together out to Australia later this year. September 8, at the HiFi. It's a scarily large venue for them.

EDIT: So I jumped the gun before the "official" announcement. Turns out it's an all-ages gig at the Old Museum now. The crowd size which fits them much better.

Both bands lean on the harder edge of punk, Touche Amore more so.

Check out both bands, and prepare for some musical awesomeness:
http://toucheamore.com/
http://www.myspace.com/titlefight