The National - Bluesfest 2016

FOR what they’re about to unleash on us, they offer no warning.

Not a word, not even a note, no fingers tripping over the strings of a guitar to smooth our transition from this feverish anticipation for the band from Brooklyn to take the stage into the full 90 minute emotional assault they are about to rain down.

They’ve barely walked on stage before they tear straight into “Sea of Love”, from their sixth studio album “Trouble Will Find Me” which was nominated for a Grammy in 2014.

From the explosive launch into their set, The National offers no respite, sweeping the audience away in wave after soaring wave of the exhilarating, majestic sound they have perfected in their 15 years as recording artists.

Frontman Matt Berninger paces the stage like a man trying to remember, trying to find the words with which to explain himself, before clutching the microphone like it’s his last lifeline and pouring his tender, sombre vocals out against clenched fists.

There are a couple of songs I don’t recognise and I realise that these are among the new music they’re debuting live this year.  Word is the band took the decision to play their new material in live settings first before recording their next album.

From what I heard and what I felt, this album is definitely going to be worth the wait. Their 90 minute set was immaculate. Berninger’s lyrics, so laced with agony, humiliation and lament find their perfect catharsis in the dark, opulent soundscape woven exquisitely together by these musical masters.

The National is entirely in a masterclass all of their own.  Their performance at Bluesfest was nothing short of a revelation. One that as sharp as Bryan Devendorf’s drumming, signalled that this well is deep. I want to swim.

On discovering Kaleo at Bluesfest 2016

I’VE just touched down at Byron Bay Bluesfest, set up camp, and am sprinting toward the festival convinced I’m about to miss Lord Huron’s set – one of the band’s on Thursday’s line-up that I definitely  do not want to miss.

I’ve just realised that my Casio is grievously mistaken and it is not, in fact 17:15, but a full hour later here in New South Wales.

I tear into the Delta tent, and come to a gasping halt. Who is that?

The woman standing in front of me, turns around and says “I know, right?”

One thing is certain. I have missed Lord Huron’s set, but my, oh my, who is this? And where did they come from? Iceland. Fucking Iceland.

Yes, these four young dudes who look like they’ve been plucked straight out of 1992, and who have succeeded in striking everyone, including me, glued to the spot and entirely in rapture are from Iceland. As for me, I have died and gone to heaven.

This is what this music festival is all about and as lead singer JJ Júlíusson belts out what he’s been waiting for, I’m nodding my head, knowing that this is exactly what I’ve been waiting for.

They’re just four guys on stage - no horns, no keys, no synths or computerised loops and licks, just good old fashioned, sweet, sweet rock and roll.

Stripped down in the most introspective way, their sound is immaculate. As John Lee Hooker said of Gomez’s debut album, I can find no fault. They do not miss a beat. At once sweaty and growling, the next folded in lament, these guys are completely in sync, completely spell-binding in the blistering blues rock they are laying down on us.

As I’m standing here having the hair follicles on my head rearranged, I offer a silent salute to Led Zepplin and Black Keys, who have no doubt contributed to the banquet I’m feasting on right now. Rubin Pollock’s guitar wails and snarls as the lanky youth bends over it, completely absorbed in the conversation they’re having.

Stumbling across a band this authentic, this raw and this well, damn good is irresistible. I can’t decide which one is more staggering, that they’ve barely been playing together for four years or that they have completely flown under my radar.

The story goes that JJ Juliusson, drummer David Antonsson Crivello and bassist Danny Jones started playing together as teenagers, having been best mates since elementary school. Rubin Pollock joined the band in 2012 and they recorded their album in six short weeks. They moved to Austin, Texas last year after being signed by Atlantic Records.

All I know is that they’re playing another three shows at the fest and I will not be missing a single one.

(Photos are not mine - they were poached off Kaleo's Facebook page)

On moving to Australia and blogangst

Dear Inroad,

Well it has been exactly 1 year, 1 month and 2 weeks since departing the beloved homeland for Australia. It has also been exactly 1 year, 2 months and 2 weeks since my last blog.

Our first year down under has been colourful to say the least. We made the acquaintance of our baby boy Eli on 19 February 2014. Unlike Ceylon who was born in our home on the Barberton Road in South Africa, Eli made his grand debut in a hospital. This was a profoundly different birth experience to say the least. But more on this topic another time.

After nine months spent living in terrifically close quarters - Ceylon, Eli, Papa bear and I, along with all the worldly possessions we had been able to amass onto our flight, crammed into two medium to small bedrooms in my father’s house, which is also home to my father, step-mother, younger sister and two stoepkakkertjies called Logan and Toto – we moved into our first Australian home.  Not only did we survive these initial months in Australia, I can safely say that no animals, in-laws, relatives or relationships were harmed, at least not irrevocably, during this tenure.

In the last year we have befriended a magpie, let our hair grow long, bought a van, become weekend beach bums, quit smoking, gone through more sunscreen than I believe I have used in my entire life, had moments of feeling deeply isolated - from each other, our culture, and our new countrymen – interchanged with moments of childlike wonder and excitement at new discoveries, new experiences and the new people and cultures that inhabit and infuse the lucky country.

The journey of becoming migrants fresh off the boat to residents comfortable in their new surrounds, community and life has been daunting, exciting, challenging and rewarding. It is a long and winding road with many miles still to walk, and, as Jimmy Cliff (who I’ll be seeing live in April at Bluesfest! Yeya!) croons “many rivers to cross”. May we find our way over, and may we never forget that it's all about the journey.

Have I become like "them"?

Australia. It had never called to me, never inspired my wanderlust or found it's way onto my top five voyages to make. Yet here I was. It was 2007 and I, a recent university graduate with the world open to me like a flower to the sun, permanent residency permit in hand (courtesy of my father who had immigrated two years before), had packed my belongings and bright future dreams into an oversized bag and headed to that red continent.

 (Taken en route to the airport as I got dressed into as many items of clothing as humanly possible, to lighten the weight of my bag)

I cannot say I was blown away. Not in the way the Sinai desert, a landscape devastating in its fragility and harshness had taken my breath away, or even the majesty of the Sabie valley in Mpumalanga where I had grown up never ceased to do. Truth be told, I felt like an alien. The way everything just "works" over there unnerved me. The way people on the street look each other in the eye and smile. The cleanliness and order. The whiteness. The absence of shouting and raised voices in a cacophony of African languages. Singing petrol attendants and people trying to sell you cellphone car chargers, coat hangers or wash your windscreen at robots (in Australia known as traffic lights). The way you could walk the city streets at night, talking on your cellphone, alone! And the way motorists obeyed the rules of the road and never exceeded the speed limit. All this just served to make the land down under appear a very bleak and desolate landscape to a girl accustomed to the chaotic and colourful African way of life.

Nine months later I moved back to South Africa. I was in two car accidents (commonplace really, due to corrupt law enforcement and inefficient judicial services that fail to discourage motorists against drunk driving or speeding), my home was burgled, and my car was almost stolen (thieves couldn't get it started, but succeeded in ripping out the inner panels, smashing the windows and eventually making off with the radio and car battery).

Did any of this inspire me to pack up and head back to ordered, safe Australia? No it did not. These are the realities of life in Africa you come to accept as normal. (Was I guilty of better the devil you know?) But 20 months later, Australia called me back. And off I trotted again to that bleak country. To be fair, I was excited about the beaches! I haven't been to all the beaches that adorn this fecund planet but Australian beaches have got to be right up there among the most beautiful.

                                                                                             Fraser Isalnd, Queensland Australia

                                                                                     Point Danger, New South Wales Australia

                                                                                  Dreamtime Beach, New South Wales Australia

This time I stayed for 18 months before heading back to my beloved Mama Africa. I have always been amongst that category of South Africans who abhor disgruntled ex-pats with nothing good to say about their homeland. Who fail to see South Africa's boundless potential, the miracle of our reconciliation and the beauty of our rainbow nation-ness. I had gotten into many a heated debate with such ex-pats over in Australia and sabotaged many a promising friendship with a vehement defence of my country's short-comings. I never ever wanted to be like "them". I couldn't picture a life of purpose away from my country, I couldn't picture a life filled with such passion, excitement and drama anywhere else.

Yet now, 17 months since I once again uprooted myself and moved back home, I am planning a move BACK to Australia, for the third time in six years. And this time, my excitement at building a life in the red continent knows no bounds. It surprises even me. What is different this time? Why do I not feel that familiar lurch in my soul at the thought of being thousands of kilometres from African soil? Why does Australia not seem so bleak after all? Have I become like them? My hope for a better future in South Africa all but snuffed out by the instability that swells year after year in this country of my birth?

It's in the noose of poverty around the necks of millions of my countrymen. The weight of unemployment which rises every year, inefficient healthcare services and understaffed hospitals where patients enter with a headache one day and leave in a coffin the next, spiralling crime statistics and no justice for the victims. Nepotism, corruption and exploitation the plagues that eat away at the fabric of this society, enriching the political elite while the worker trudges home to his tin shack that has never had electricity or running water.

It is the sight of children growing up in Mitchells Plain, one of the biggest townships in the Western Cape; An ocean of corrugated shacks, not a single tree in sight nor patch of grass anywhere, yet the powers that be have erected power lines throughout it. That to me is one of the most sickening sights. What is it if not an approval or acceptance of human beings living out their lives in inhumane conditions. "It's ok that you live like that, we will give you electricity to make you comfortable". No wonder drug abuse has become an epidemic there.

Is it safe to assume that I have become like "them". I don't know.

I still see the beauty in the smiles of children. Yet my heart cannot help but break at their wide-eyed wonder, oblivious to a future wherein they may be denied the right to an education. My optimism is granted wings when I see the progress we have made as a nation to heal the wounds of a turbulent past, but in a heartbeat it is laid to waste when another elderly couple has been murdered in a brutal and senseless attack. And as conditions for the workers and the poor continue to worsen, I cannot help but feel like an accomplice, in my wooden, furnished house, my education and well-paying job, medical aid which will grant me the privilege of medical care in a private hospital, as opposed to the derelict, understaffed and under-resourced government hospitals.


I will never stop believing in the spirit of my countrymen and the potential for greatness, equality and human dignity of this country at the foot of Africa. But the burden bore by the majority of my people threatens to break my heart completely, so to the land of equal opportunity and human dignity I will go, to restore my faith in mankind. And may I never truly become like "them".

Help! Technology is stealing my magic

There is a hot wind blowing, the kind that brings fires, and scatters leaves, Autumn-daubed across the yard.

This has always been what I love most about living up here in this ethereal valley along the Drakensburg escarpment. The way nature forces you to stop and notice her grandoise transition through the seasons. Something that is very often lost in the city; having swallowed up the trees and fields wherein nature conducts her great revolving symphony.

It is with no small helping of bewilderment that I see and hear daily of the great advances being made in technology. And perhaps my better half is correct when he tells me that resistance is futile, that I need to get with it and embrace this evolution that no doubt, will not pause along its monumentous path of progress, to patiently wait for sentimental little me to catch up. But still, I cannot help but feel that this technological age we live in, while opening up the world to us in ways never before imagined, is, in many ways robbing us of the magic, beautiful mysteries and buried treasures.

Take the latest cellphone, for example, the Samsung S4. It has a feature (I am told) that allows you to take a series of photos of a group of people, and then automatically select the best image of each individual and construct a final image. What the?

What happened to the medium of photography being celebrated for its ability to capture moments in time? The word photography itself is derived from the Greek words photos (light) and graphos (draw), and is thus the art and science of drawing a picture through the capturing of light. Is it only me who finds digitally manipulated photographs wholly unexciting and banal? But show me a raw photograph and I can lose myself in the colour of the sky captured, the nuances written in its chiaroscuro and that feeling of a moment suspended forever...

Ok, maybe it's only fair at this point, dear readers, to confess that I own (and love) a 1963 white beetle, a 1964 radiogram (which I found in working order in a second hand store in Australia, fell in love, couldn't say no, bought it for $120 and then shipped it off to South Africa for a whole lot more than it may be worth), I buy lps instead of cds and collect old books.

But for me the saddest act of larceny perpetrated by technology is the modern music recording. How much more soul-smouldering does the Stones' Exile on Main Street become when you learn it was recorded in Keith Richards' basement at Nellcôte, France. Because it was the perfection and exhiliration of acoustics captured, not the trimming, tuning, tweaking, plucking, pruning and final reassembly of each individual instrument to produce a polished product.

Having said/ vented/ lamented all this, I am overwhelmingly grateful that the live band and music festival has not come under technology's axe, and that we can still tap into the magic and beautiful mystery of moments in time, unfettered, unfiltered and free.

 

No One's Arc live at STRAB 2011