Ear Candy 2022.06 – Hope Springs Eternal

Fee-fi-fo-fum
I smell the wind of a changing heart

Leila Jeffreys

That old election thing is finally over and suddenly the future seems brighter. Easily the most satisfying and pleasing result I have witnessed in my life. It felt like the power was finally shifting generations. The schadenfreude of watching grubby seat-warmers fall one by one. The fremdschämen of watching legacy media collectively lose their minds, unable to comprehend what was happening (obvious to anyone who had paid attention).

Anyway, here’s the music! A couple of old classics – opening with the rising sun and closing with it fading into winter. Kikagaku Moyo has been such a delightfully bizarre find. Their album Kumoyo Island is well worth a listen. Chem Bath is a bit of Unknown Mortal Orchestra-meets-MGMT, and I love it. Egyptian Cadilliac will stick in your head, as will the relentless drums in Welcome To Hell. Crank it up loud, Australia.

Ear Candy 2022.05 – Waiting with Baseball Bats

Helga Stentzel

But we held on for the dream
Through lonely times indeed
We’re not the only ones
Gazing towards the horizon
The look in your eyes
Says the best is to come

“There’s nothing we could have done to prevent these bad things happening to the economy! Only we can be trusted to prevent bad things like this happening to the economy!”

Australians generally disengage themselves from politics for the most part. Even myself – despite it being something I do pay attention to – I really don’t think it makes for good conversation (even with people who agree with me). So I happen to be fond of the levelling effect of this disengagement, and the default position being to despise all politicians. It can be frustrating at times when people are unaware, but it is far more preferable than the hyper-engagement of the US where society divides itself into teams not too dissimilar to blind religious devoition.

But it’s been very telling how on-the-nose this lot are by the amount of people openly talking about how much they loathe them.

So putting that aside, I’ve never been as keen to see the back of a government as now. Two more weeks and we will finally be rid of that lazy, slimy, smirking, cosplaying, carnival-barking prick.

The Government is in its death spiral now. Prime Minister and sentient turd Scott Morrison is circling the porcelain bowl as Australians prepare to flush his incompetent, corrupt and useless government from office. A cavalcade of incoherent alcoholics, grubby sex pests and religious nutjobs are now on the cusp of irrelevance.

Unfortunately we won’t be rid of the infantile Australian media which seems to be stacked with the same kind of upward-failures as the government – a bunch of children seemingly having won their jobs from a coupon at the bottom of a cereal box, regurgitating government bullshit without scrutiny, and acting like they’re still trying to win the debating competition in the snooty private school at which their lives peaked. I only hope that broader society is seeing through the self-indulgent narcissism of these journos and understands that their true motivations are far from pure. It appears to me that some simply ended up in their current job as a consolation prize for missing out on a spot on Married at First Sight.

Pro tip: If you already know the answer to a question prior to asking, then it’s not a question worth asking.

Anyway, music! There’s some crackers in this month. That new King Gizz album is the soundtrack to my regular lunch bike rides around Centennial Park this month (love that cover artwork too); Concrete Over Water is just incredible; loving that subtle slide guitar in Scared of Heights; I’ve thrown in a couple of classics dedicated to Scotty; and even though I’m largely long over Flume now, I couldn’t pass on the combination with birdsong and Albarn.

Helga Stentzel