feeling shady...

shady lane that is. a cute electro-pop four piece from my backyard in sydney, and they've been tugging at my heartstrings all day with their brand new debut album, here we go down the black hole.

as the title would suggest, the lyrics to these 12 songs do not tread a light path - they question life, religion, science, and are all wrapped up in a pre-occupation with death, dying, futility and existentialism.

but rather than being preachy or depressing, the warm electro fuzz and melody contained within each song allows for a kind of hopeful contemplation. i haven't seen these guys live but apparently shady lane perform on stage, not with a whiz-bang mac book, but rather an old school clumsy looking desktop. i like this. apparently you can buy them for $15 from some magical computer emporium. my flatmate and his girlfriend want to start making fishtanks out of them. i'm suitably nonplussed.

the music of shady lane is shoe-gazy enough to make me lie on my bed with my feet up the wall, electro enough to make me start tapping them about, and poppy enough to make me commando roll myself onto my feet and turn the volume up a little louder. definitely check out galileo and this is death. sweet in one ear and subdued out the other. x

if you like pina coladas...

my multi-blog owning best friend told me that the most awesome blogs are those that are updated daily. shit. it's been a busy week, i'm tired, blah, blah, shut up. who wants to hear whingey, whiney excuses? and as if everyone isn't busy - like this little lass for example.

soph is a super talented photographer and swimming cossie designer and her label sol bellow is like a handful of sparkling jewels that manage to convince us the days are getting longer and that summer will be here before we know it. the new collection is online now, so if you haven't clicked on the links, stop jiggling your wobbly bits and do it immediately!

and while you're browsing, why not get your tropical on with my fruity delight mixtape of the best bikini songs around. x

blondie - the tide is high

imagine looking as bitchin' as deb harry, but in a tropical bikini. awesome.

mates of state - now

there's nothing about this song that screams tropical, but it makes me happy. get here now summer!

islands - rough rem

island + hammock + cocktails + shirtless cocktail waiters = fruity summer love.

foreign born - early warnings

are those marraccas i hear? i'm on fire.

the lovin' spoonful - summer in the city

this is a good one for when you remember you don't live near the beach anymore and will have to make do with a spray from the hose in your teeny, tiny inner city back "yard".

belinda carlisle - summer rain

i've been wanting an excuse to blog about B.C or roxette for AGES. this was all just a ruse to allow me to do so.

joni mitchell - big yellow taxi

find your best bandana, leather plaiting and paisley print bikini for this one.

el guincho - palmitos park

this guy is super cute. i like his crooked smile.

beach house - master of none

this one is for night time beach activities, if you get my drift. watch out for the sand.

hatrick

i'm not the sportiest ball in the net, and this blog does not have anything to do with cricket. but the ashes did start last night and it would appear that i am getting really good at terrible wordplay in my blog titles.

so, my hatrick has nothing to do with the australian cricket team, but 3 super talented artists who will knock you out for 6 once you give them a listen. i wanted all of them to be australian to really make my pun pack a punch, but grouper is from oregon. oh well. my top picks from each artist are, surprise surprise, quite introspective, but perfect for today's rainy skies. x

kinematic - pinpoints

kinematic is a band from melbourne, and by the looks of both their myspace and official websites, they have been pretty busy kids over the past few years. i have used my magical powers for good to give you an amazing track from their forthcoming album - which on the down-low, i believe will be called kites. hence the cute cartoon above. like pinpoints, this song will prick you and then stay under your skin from the first tinkle, i'm looking forward to more from these guys this year - shows in melbourne in august, get down there 4 seasoners!

grouper - heavy water/i'd rather be sleeping

liz harris has a dreamy, breathy voice and as the guitar strums open up this song, it feels ethereal. which is good, because sometimes i get stuck on the point that grouper's are big, ugly fish. for just one little lady, grouper has a big sound, but there's nothing ugly about it - this is from the album dragging a dead deer up a hill, and you can listen to all of it to your heart's content right here.

kid sam - the sunday bus

melbourne keeps coming up with the goods, these guys are from there also. 2 cousins, kieran and kishore are the most excellent boys who make up kid sam. they released their self-titled debut a couple of months ago and it's really lovely to listen to when it's rainy. lucky for these boys, it's been wet wet wet lately. although, i would actually listen to kid sam in any climate - i couldn't even pick just one track - here's another one for you. sneaky. kid sam are also doing shows in various places around australia right now - go and see them.

rouge...

i really love music. and i really love things that are red. so when i spied this delicious cherry crosley in a record store in surry hills i got red hot excited, red hot fast. i want one real bad, and i bet you do too - no worries as long as you've got a spare four hundred bad boys hanging out of your back pocket.

anyway, putting my coveting tendencies aside for a few minutes, i've compiled a little mix for you that is about all things red. also i am a really good busker, so if you see someone hula hooping for loose change, help a girl out? x

the rolling stones - ruby tuesday

have you seen that semi cool/crap brit drama series that is set in manchester and all about hairdressers called cutting it? yeah, me neither. if i had, they may have used this song in an episode that saw ally's adopted upon birth but recently reunited daughter ruby, marrying her ex-husband gavin, even though ally and gav were still one hundred percent in love. or something.

ub40 - red red wine

this song reminds me of epic parties at bob and alice's castle in annandale. also my friend alice is one of my most favourite redheads ever.

clare bowditch - hair that red

i love dj bodes, she is one feisty and talented flame haired lass. also, i had a friend called nic, he didn't have red hair but he was certainly made up of coloured bits.

the shins - red rabbits

dark ladders, red rabbits, sunburned eyes, lots of little sprites - shins i love you for making drug free hallucination both fun and possible.

spoon - you got yr. cherry bomb

drums and tambourines and cherries and bombs. best sundae ever.

the police - roxanne

songs about red lights = songs about traffic rules and regulations if you're peter coombe. you know in random questionnaire's people are always asked who they'd invite to their ultimate dinner party? well i would totally invite roxanne.

nena - 99 red balloons

pluck those bass lines. key those synth chords. get your sweet red eighties on.

sarah blasko - flame trees

a beautiful cover, this song is heartbreaking. if you haven't seen little fish please go and watch it now. you will never believe cate b has been anything but a drug addict.

joan as policewoman - eternal flame

speaking of flames, i could easily have gone with the twin named bangles ballad

here - you're way lucky you're getting J.A.P instead.

here comes the bride

my step sister is getting married today, so i find myself not at work, which is excellent. instead, i'm sitting on the balcony and drinking coffee in the sunshine at my ma's house on the northern beaches. tough life.

once again i find myself writing in the daylight, and since today is going to be all about the lover dovers, and i'm feeling all sunshiny and warm, and my radio dial accidentally got stuck on mix 106.5's love song dedications last night, today's blog is going to be a little mixtape of love songs. but as i have said before, sad songs make me happy, so my version of a love song might be a little different from richard mercer's.

the cinematic orchestra - to build a home

if someone built me a home i would love them a lot. especially if there was more than one bathroom.

the bowerbirds - crooked lust

the bowerbirds new album upper air is just about to be released. i like words, so song titles are important to me. i like it even more when the promise of a song title is fulfilled, this song is gently awesome.

sia - breathe me

it's not lost on me that my mix already has a decidedly dark tone. i did warn you. and the make up is in the break up.

the beatles - two of us

i love that this song could easily be about two lovers or two besties, or both. also really cute vid clip.

fredrik - alina's place

i don't know if this song is necessarily about love, but i think it's super beautiful and the instruments certainly sound in love with each other, so it stays.

belle & sebastian - if she wants me

get your scot on. i dig scottish accents so much, that they could be singing about garbage disposal units and i'd probably still categorise it as a love song.

the cranberries - dreaming my dreams

i saw this performed at a wedding years and years ago, with a beautiful vocalist and a big fat cello. amazing.

the decemberists - the crane wife 3

it's the drums in this song that i find the most lovely, which is strange, i'm not normally one for noticing drums before other elements of a song.

chairlift - bruises

i seem to get into endless scrapes and tumbles, so i think it would be very romantic if my boyfriend iced my bruising knees with frozen strawberries. cute-city.

feist - brandy alexander

seductive from the first click. and i've totally been digging cognac lately.

this isn't a top ten or anything stressful like that. just a mix. now get back to work! i gotta get me to a wedding x

the eyes have it...

blogging in daylight hours, this is a new and different experience for katie dazzle! this is going to be a quickie - i just wanted to tell you about this lovely new self-titled debut album from christina courtin. the colour of it makes me wish i was on a beach in mexico. i'm not.

speaking of foreign countries though, i'm cheap segue-ing you into visiting here. c.c is a cute little new yorker girl and she sings even cuter songs with a couple of crackingly raw and electric turns in some of the later songs on the album. check out 'laconia' for example, she's positively growling at the end of the song, i've never heard someone sound so desperate yet tuneful at the same time.

so a la my crap wordplay attempt above, 'foreign country' is my fave pick on the album, and i think you should listen to it immediately. with adorably twee lyrics like "if i was a foreign country would you vacation up in my big city?" and swinging guitars backing c.c up, it's a lovely love song for lovers.

and this girl can perform! i did some world wide web stalking and found the following live version of 'foreign country' - nuts! in the best sense of the word. over and out party people x

soothe my soul k.c.

i saw the most distressing thing this afternoon. it was such a beautiful day - cold and clear, but the sun was out to warm us like an outdoor travelling heater. me and a gang of friends decided we would make some delicious snacks and spend the afternoon playing tennis at some cute nearby grass courts at sydney uni.

i was actually super excited, because i have a lot of tennis playing friends, but i'm usually relegated to the sidelines to cheer and drink beer - which isn't entirely bad when you think about it...i make an excellent, if tipsy, mascot.

anyway, today i was welcomed with open arms and i think in the end i wasn't a complete disaster. i don't know how well my sparkly converse sneakers went down as exercise appropriate. and i'm not sure how i feel about being told how funny it was to see me run. i am sure that it was totally awesome that there were twin gingas playing on the court next to us. and i bet you want to know if i'm ever going to get to my musical point.

so game, set and match, various people hopped in cars/on their bikes to part ways when all of a sudden their was this awful crunching sound of one car hitting another and we turned to see that a car indeed had mounted a curb and backed right into another parked car. then without warning, it flew into drive and in a matter of probably only 2, 3 seconds max, it had totally smashed into a lampost that consequently snapped and broke clean in two. if that lampost hadn't been there though, i am 99% sure this car would have gone flying onto paramatta rd.

it was just awful, the driver was in intense shock, his skin was grey, there was blood coming out of his nose and in his mouth. he kept saying he was ok when he was so far from it. no more details, i'm only writing about it in a cathartic effort to stop myself thinking about the whole thing, because it actually made me go into semi-shock and feel sick to my stomach. good in a crisis i am not.

anyway, so we get home and decide we need either a strong drink, or a pot of tea, and given that the sun had gone, the sky had darkened and it was about to pour buckets, we went with the latter. then i decided we needed some nice, comforting music to go with it.

enter k.c. mckanzie. this girl rocks. well not in the musical genre sense - but check out her myspace to listen to a beautiful selection of songs from her 3rd album hammer & nails. k.c. is german and her folk ditties are effortlessly engaging. she had our breathing back to normal and smiles back on our faces in no time. her lyrics have a definite wryness to them, simple and sweet with a sprinkling of dark humour every now and then. her voice is lovely - especially in the ever-so-strained falsetto moments, which somehow work everytime, even though it sounds as if she's not quite nailing them.

k.c. has a new album coming out later in the year, and if you haven't already clicked the vid link at the top of this post, do so now for a katie dazzle super exclusive, and my favourite track off the new album, which will be called dryland. the song is called 'lonely fighter'. and it's for everyone out there who is awesome in a crisis x

do magpies swoop?

i'm not sure. you know who does swoop? swoop swoop. you may know him as streaky jake, but swoop swoop is what this perth artist is now going by, since the release of his album somewhere in the shadows a month or so ago.

i'm going to keep this short and sweet. my favourite track for sure is the opener 'i know what to do with myself'. this song makes me think of what maybe one fleet fox would sound like if he was stranded by all by his lonesome. and on a beach.

it also sounds like a song that could be playing in one of those hospital drama series we all love to hate, but secretly actually love, if only for the person whose job it is to pick the songs that play as the camera scans around the waiting/on call/operating rooms and make the doctor people in their scrubs seem full of wretched depth and emotional intensity. oopsi, tangent.

the rest of the album, while lovely, doesn't grab me as much as track one, and is a little disappointing after such a good opener. but it's still a beautiful collection of songs that sound like they were written by a guy living on the coast who should go and get lost in the mountains. and perhaps bump into the fleet foxes.

guitar that twangs ever so slightly in certain points of 'sean gormans dream 123' make you wish they twanged some more. swoop swoop has a breathy vocal delivery and the songs with the least arrangment and production are definitely the winners here. basically i just want you to go and listen to 'i know what to do with myself' right now. so now you know. go x

hot, hottie, hot.

the countdown to get your vote in for 'the triple j hottest one hundred of all time' is on kids, i believe voting closes this sunday, june 28th. everyman and his abc youth network loving dog has his or her chance to name their ultimate top ten mixtape, a task that many music lovers would find difficult. no exception here folks, this is a daunting list to even begin to imagine to compile. so don't imagine, just do and you'll find it comes a lot easier.

if you're on struggle street with making your list, you might also find the following helpful:

1) do not read anyone else's list* to try and get ideas for your own. try! well for one you should not have to try, the hardest part should be culling the damn thing! and the reason for including a song in the list has to be genuine, not just cos some dude, in some band, who you think might be quite cool at the moment, thinks it's cool. or something.

2) the beauty of lists and mixtapes is that there are always going to be more to be made. if you're lucky, the opportunity to produce lists and mixtapes will never run dry (if they do you may need to make some new friends). in fact, probably in a few days time i'll be compiling a mixtape titled 'the 10 songs i actually wish i'd voted for in the triple j hottest one hundred of all-time'.

anyway, without any further fanfare and in an order ascertained by me drawing crumpled pieces of paper out of a hat, here is mine - with linkable bits so your ears can understand exactly what i'm going on about.

*disclaimer - it is totally ok to read kit/katie dazzle's list as you are probably awesome and have already placed your vote, and would never steal another's personal musical memories anyway. x

lou reed - walk on the wildside

i liked transformers as a kid and not knowing anything of lou reed or the velvet underground, believed that was reason enough to get this album. lucky i was such a dork when i was little, the standout track for me on an entirely stellar album.

feist - i feel it all

feist is a female force to me, and she always makes me feel strong and independent. this song in particular taught me how a house can really be a home. and that you can never be too big for fireworks.

portishead - glory box

mysterious, haunting and lingering. and although it's wrapped up in a fuzz of desperate electric guitar, hearing this for the first time made me realise that sad songs make me happy.

the shins - new slang

i saw this song live and actually think i had an out of body experience - no drugs necessary. for some reason now when i listen to the album i always wish i was walking through snow... power of the tambourine perhaps?

tom petty & the heartbreakers - learning to fly

most mornings, there is an amazing homeless aboriginal man who sits at either central or redfern train station with a battered guitar, singing for money. his voice is completely mesmerising - so strong yet so raw. when he sings tom petty it's so hopeful, it puts a skip in my heart and no matter what has happened the day or night before, i know it's going to be a good day. and it always is. tom petty goes alright too.

the cure - friday i'm in love

such a hopeful song to me. maybe you're only in love one day of the week, but friday is only ever another seven days away. i was hooked from the opening notes.

azure ray - rise

the way this song builds is amazing, i love the way my heart actually swells and contracts when i listen to it. i'm so glad i don't associate it with any personal heartbreak (yet) because i never want to stop being able to listen to this song. so painful yet so, so beautiful.

the beatles - blackbird

cute and lovely. evokes memories of that nursery rhyme where some blackbirds are baked in a pie. i think they got trapped. in this song they would be set free again, lilting and uplifting from an iconic group of musicians.

the stranglers - golden brown

this was my song when i was growing up, given to me by the parentals due to the colour of my hair. now a redhead, the wispy golden tendrils are gone, but the awesomeness of the song remains - who doesn't dig a harpsichord?

the panics - don't fight it

when i first heard this song i was on my lunchbreak in the postage stamp sized backroom of a retail tenure i'd rather forget. i think i may have decided then and there to quit, and properly find my way into the music industry. so guess i owe the panics some thanks - this song might be enough though. jae's voice cuts like wire, the piano makes my heart pound, the panics make me happy to be part of the australian music scene.

cover me with....

i'm an out-of-the closet covers lover. i used to do a rad radio show where i found and played an excellent cover track each and every week. i don't think all cover songs are excellent by the way, in fact i think they get a bad wrap because a lot of them do suck the big one.

for me, it's all down to the covering artist taking someone else's song, and completely making it their own, so when you listen to it, it's kind of like an old, old friend coming to visit. sure, they've changed a bit on the outside, but give them a few minutes of your time and (hopefully) you're reminded of all the reasons you liked them in the first place. and maybe even the aesthetic differences go down ok in the end too.

for this reason, i usually go searching for an artist i like, rather than a song i think would make a good cover. because when a favourite song is done badly, it runs the risk of being spoiled for as long as your short-term memory lasts these days.

on the upside of this though, the most surprising cover delights can come from songs you'd never dig in their original incarnations, my case in point here is the bee gees being delivered by the similarly named the bird and the bee.

while momentarily on hiatus from my said rad radio show, my discovery of an awesome cover track hasn't been quite as fruitful as normal, but that just goes to make the gems that much more sparkly.

the apra 2009 awards shebang is happening tomorrow, june 23rd. when the nominees were announced at the end of may, kate miller-heidke and her husband slash band guitarist keir nuttall did a super beautiful version of empire of the sun's 'walking on a dream'. it's stripped and it's bare but rather than being a skeletal frame of one of the electro/pop hits of the summer, it gives kate's voice and keir's timing the chance to shine so brightly they burn, in an achingly good way. with only a few tambourine taps along the way, there's no powerbook in sight. check it. x