Kirin J Callinan: party hard, think harder

New music from Kirin J Callinan, Chain and The Gang and more . . .

SERvin’ Up – w/c June 12, 2017

Kirin J Callinan – Bravado
Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Mulhy, James McAlister – Planetarium
Chastity Belt – I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone
Chain and The Gang – Best of Crime Rock
Omar Souleyman – To Syria, With Love
Perera Elsewhere – All Of This
Bei Bei & Shawn Lee – Year of The Funky
The Babe Rainbow – The Babe Rainbow
Cody ChesnuTT – My Love Divine Degree
Beach Fossils – Somersault
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Hello,

Fuck Art, Let’s Dance! We’ve all heard that one, but why not keep the art part in the mix as well? Kirin J Callinan has traded in on the bruising, thrash and burn electro-industrial sounds of his debut album Embracism to schlock it up with anthemic Euro-house bangers on the follow-up, Bravado. Upfront of the party he sounds like a new generation Norman Gunston on a mix of steroids and ecstasy, both in love with the world and primed to pump and grind up against it. Don’t be fooled by the framework, though – the serious young man of Embracism is no less in touch with his darker side on Bravado. But why not put a glow stick on it? These songs are loaded with a lot more than high energy – it’s the whizz and whir of life Callinan plugs into, and while it’s not easy, Callinan at the very least wants to be easygoing about it. Bravado is all about taking strange comforts.

Washington DC’s Ian Svenonius first came to Australian shores fronting The Make Up, but before then headed up Nation of Ulysees, a group who squeezed soul out of his native city’s defining hardcore scene with equally righteous amounts of spunk and politics. Svenonius has continued to gyrate and pontificate with Chain and the Gang for the past eight years now, and their latest, Best of Crime Rock, revisits early material through re-recordings. The title spawns from their declared lineage to the call and respond style of early prison blues songs – Anna Nasty providing the response to Svenonius’ call – where they don’t so much wrestle with a problem as party with it. The gospel according to Ian Svenonius is take garage rock and old school rhythm n’ blues and stomp out his particular strand of social awareness. This is some soul food for cool thought.

If the dream pop revival is in full effect, another ‘90s music phenomenon is also starting to creep back within easy earshot. Trip hop, the smokier, atmospheric and downtempo take on hip hop spawned in Britain has come back into the broader pervasive influence of psychedelia on contemporary music. Sasha Perera is a Londoner now based in Berlin and happy to brand her work as doom-folk, but her second album as Perera Elsewhere, All Of This, oozes the same kind of dark, urban sensibilities as Portishead, (who were cloaked under the spectre of folk, too) despite the glow of bright and pacy pop melody throughout. Decidedly not ebullient but altogether compelling, All Of This is alluring for what Elsewhere leaves out – nothing is resolved in her world, her reflections offering no easy answers but more a chance to dive deeper into her own mindset.