The Fresh 50: 20-11

Have you ever stopped to think just how awesomely exciting the Australian music scene is? No? Well we here at Rip It Up Digital certainly have, so much so that we just couldn’t keep it to ourselves. So we decided to make a list celebrating the very best in Australia’s emerging musical talent. We call it The Fresh 50.

The cultural cringe is a thing of the past as Aussie musos have proven time and again we’re a force to be reckoned with on the world stage. Whereas we were were once considered a gimmicky stereotype thanks to Men At Work or Olivia Newton John, now we’re producing some of the freshest music on the planet.

So what do we mean by fresh? Well fresh can mean a lot of things in music. It can refer to new and forward-thinking ideas, a cutting edge take on something old and stale, or simply being fresh meat on the market. We took all this into consideration when selecting our Fresh 50 talent, picking out the acts that we think are gonna be big wigs in the future. But we also thought we needed a couple of rules, so to be eligible for The Fresh 50, artists:

   - Had to be active in the past 12 months (1 July 2009 – 1 July 2010)
   - Had to still be active as at 1 July 2010
   - Could not have more than one full-length album to their name (EPs not included)

So with all this in mind, here are the next 10 lucky participants in Rip It Up Digital’s Fresh 50.

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#20   Howl

There’s just something about the unlimited potential of youth that’s so magnetically appealing. This is especially so in the world of music. Things can get so stale in this business, ideas can get repeated, rehashed and done to death. The whole cycle of events can become hackneyed and repetitive; each routinely participated Saturday night at your favourite venue becoming a gnawingly predictable affair. Then a band like Howl comes along and turns everything on its head.

That six kids from Ballarat who are barely of drinking age could be the twentieth most up-and-coming band in Australia might come as a shock to some, but we bet those people haven’t seen them live. This would be no fault of their own – Howl have only played in Adelaide three times in their brief existence – but it’s nonetheless a crucial component to understanding this highly-promising sextet. After all, it’s in the live arena where most music that doesn’t come from a laptop comes to life and it’s also where Howl rise up like the second coming of a rock & roll Jesus. They smash about on stage like they smash up their musical influences: grunge, garage, freakbeat, hair metal, hardcore all get belted around in a nihilistic rampage against the system. They reference their pop music antipodes, covering Gorillaz, Justin Timberlake and Pharoahe Monche. They poke fun at the last ‘next big things’ Art Vs Science, they give the middle finger to the headline act, they strip down and rock out in their undies. To put it bluntly, Howl are the most exciting bunch of 18(ish) year olds in Australia.

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#19   Yves Klein Blue

What makes Yves Klein Blue any different from all the countless other guitar bands out there, all the other smartly-dressed indie clods bashing about in their parents’ double garage with their shiny new instruments and Protools-ready laptop? The answer is simple: while the rest are mere pretenders, Yves Klein Blue are bona fide artists.

All throughout their debut album Ragged & Ecstatic, Yves Klein Blue set themselves apart with streaks of artistic glory and flourishes of colourful splendour. You can hear it in their lyrics: “If you wanna lose your frown/or your name or even your face/ lick up a dream that seemingly sings with whistling neon breath”, taken from Polka. You can hear it in their melodic pop-rock sound, synthesised from the absorption of countless bits and pieces from past generations of musical icons. You can see it their name: Yves Klein Blue. You can hear it in Michael Tomlinson’s snarling vocal that fails to replicate some forgotten hero but at the same time creates a brand new one.

“As a person I need to either write out things or draw or play music,” says Tomlinson. “It’s a kind of outlet that I need otherwise I kind of feel very frustrated and kind of unwell. I feel like I’m unfulfilled.”

That’s not a lust for fame and fortune running through his veins; it’s pure, unrefined art.

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#18   Parades

What Parades lack in actual experience, they more than make up for in raw potential. In fact it’s this potential that makes them the far-too-easy-to-fall-in-love-with band that they are. And like any prospective lover, there’s a side of them you’re just not sure about. There’s the pretty, idealised version our superficial selves picture in our minds, but beyond that there’s something disturbingly alien about this band. There’s something we never thought we could ever fall in love with.

Because Parades are a band like no other, at least at the moment. They’re a musical chameleon, or blank canvas, depending on how you want to look at it. They are resemblant of a thousand things you’ve seen or heard before without really sounding like any one of them. Foreign Tapes, their brilliant first album, jumps from airy art rock to digitalised, ambient dalliance in the blink of an eye. They are the mysterious man in black who always sits curiously at the back of the bus, they are the girl in your philosophy class who gazes listlessly out the window. They are tomorrow much more than they are today. Theirs is a future with many glowing reviews, shiny award statues and uninvented hyperbolae just waiting for them. If you haven’t caught on yet, you will soon enough.

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#17   Little Red

Two months ago the prospect of Little Red featuring this highly on this list would have been greeted with a hearty chuckle and dismissive hand gesture. But then a little something happened that seems to have flipped the course of Australian music in 2010 upside down. That little thing, by Little Red, is the song they call Rock It.

That a band who were so far from our memories back in May can swoop in at the right time and capture our hearts with three and a half minutes of sublime, down-tempo pop is a rather remarkable feat. In the short time Rock It has been public knowledge, Little Red have conquered a whole new legion of adoring fans. And if the blanket airplay it’s currently receiving on our national youth broadcaster isn’t enough to convince you, to put it in a tech-savvy context for you: Rock It, a song that has been out for a few measly weeks, has already received more MySpace plays than any other track from Little Red’s Listen To Little Red album of 2008. Certainly this is a band on the rise. The Melbournites, whose trademark ‘50s-esque rock & roll twang is being updated to a modern, synthesised sound, have world domination in their sights. When their yet-to-be titled second album drops later this year, audiences both home and abroad will have plenty of reason to hide in fear from this pop rock juggernaut.

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#16   The Swiss

There’ll be more than a few out there who put this band’s entry in The Fresh Fifty down to good ol’ Adelaide favouritism. And while it’s hard to ignore the fact that yes, we here in Adelaide are completely and madly in love with The Swiss, we are not the only ones. Take for example Erol Alkan, who, among other things, has remixed everyone that’s worth a damn, produced an album for Mystery Jets and been a key figure in English clubland with his weekly club night Trash for the past decade. He’s a fan. Take Annie Mac, the voice of dance music in the UK as host of the club show on BBC Radio 1. She’s a fan. Take Sinden, another world-renowned DJ whose tech-house productions have made him one of the leading exponents in the field. He’s a fan. Take Aeroplane, who...well you get the idea. The Swiss have a lot of fans. They just don’t necessarily exist in a world we’re familiar with here at Rip It Up.

But this shouldn’t, and won’t, take away from the likelihood that The Swiss just might become one of the biggest things in electronic music over the next few years. And they do it all live! Their rise has been nothing short of meteoric: just a year ago we might have seen them playing to an empty Crown & Sceptre band room yet now they’re hob-nobbing with European dance floor royalty and kicking it with their hipper-than-hip Modular label mates. Chances are the Australian mainstream will take a while to catch on to The Swiss’s irresistible grooves, but when they do, expect a whitewash of disco destruction conquering the airwaves.

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#15   Kid Sam

Nowadays, it’s all about image, image, image. Music isn’t about art anymore, it’s about marketing. It’s a product to sell to the consumer. And the price of the product isn’t always in correlation with its quality. What you’re buying (or in most cases downloading for free) is the image of the band and all that’s associated with it. Nowadays, with all the pre-packaged pop princesses and blinged-up rap stars, you’re just not getting value for money.

Which is what makes Kid Sam such an anomaly in the system. The cousins Kieran and Kishore Ryan are so withdrawn into themselves they’re almost reclusive. Their image consists of their two lowly and fantastically tall figures moping about onstage, crooning an audience of gob-smacked onlookers. They’re one of the least marketable bands in Australian music but they’re simultaneously one of the most beloved, earning both J Award and AMP nominations for their self-titled debut album of last year. They exist solely for their art and are loved for the same reason. Kieran’s bemoaning lyricism and tortured guitar play entwines with Kishore’s Kills-esque broken rhythms to create something that is both abrasive and beautiful. Though they may not sell a million albums, feature on the next episode of VH1 Storytellers or become front-page news for their substance-abusing, supermodel shagging antics, Kid Sam will continue to astonish the discerning music consumer with their powerful, rock charged poetics. And surely that’s worth something.

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#14   Dead Letter Circus

Over the past few years Australian music has been underscored by a brigade of heavy rocking racketeers trailblazing a unique style of music somewhere in the realm of melodic metal and prog-core. You know exactly who I'm talking about – your Cogs, your Butterfly Effects, your Karnivools. They’ve lived lives in the pockets of each other, relying on a cult following of forward-thinking fans who could recognise a revolution on the horizon. These bands have loosened the hinges on a door that’s just waiting to be knocked down.

Dead Letter Circus may just well be the band to bust down the last resistance being offered by said door. While the others have been on the frontlines of this musical uprising, Dead Letter Circus have been waiting in the wings, biding their time for the perfect moment to strike. That moment has come. This Is The Warning, the recently-released debut album from the Brisbane four-piece, builds on what has been fought so hardly for them by their pioneering forebears. It’s heavy, alternative rock to be sure, but Dead Letter Circus augment it with their own special formula. The percussion rides high, the guitars carry it forward, Kim Benzie belts out the vocals on a par that could rival Ian Kenny. And yet there’s something lurking beneath that suggests this lot have still got a lot more up their sleeves. One-off wonders? No way, Dead Letter Circus are far too calculating for such a fate. While the others might be content to sit on their short-lived glory, Dead Letter Circus will fly high, blasting power rock shrapnel below. You’ve been warned.

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#13   Daniel Merriweather

Mark Ronson: a failsafe go-to guy for hipsterdom and chart domination. Don’t believe me? Just ask Amy Winehouse, a drugged-up street wench with too many tattoos before she collaborated with Ronson. Now look at her, she’s...ok bad example, but Back To Black killed in the charts. Ask the Kaiser Chiefs then, who went to the New York-based super producer for help with their Off With Their Heads record. The album went to number 2 in the UK charts and featured the top 10 hit Never Miss A Beat. Finally you could ask Daniel Merriweather, a Melbournian scrapper who’s biggest claim to fame before teaming up with Ronson was a guest vocal appearance on forgettable dance duo Disco Montego’s track All I Want. Fast-forward a number of years and a Mark Ronson-produced debut album has made Daniel a bourgeoning superstar.

Love & War was an internationally acclaimed record, achieving platinum status in the UK and featuring hit singles like Change and Red. Although much of the kudos for its success has been granted to Mr Ronson, it was Merriweather who carried the album. With his roots firmly entrenched in the worlds of soul and R&B, the one-time Melbournian astounded many with his soothing vocals. He was a white guy who sounded like a black guy, and this point of difference played a rather large role in his instantaneous appeal. Nevertheless, Daniel Merriweather is a shining example of an Australian artist who can kick it with the best of ‘em overseas...as long as you know the right people.

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#12   Cloud Control

Cloud Control’s rise from starry-eyed dreamers to up-and-coming captains of industry has been so gradual barely anyone has realised they’ve gotten this far. Why, it was barely eight months they were playing to a sparsely-filled Jive Bar in support of Leader Cheetah. Now look at them, touring with Vampire Weekend, filling out the aforementioned Jive on their recent headline tour, releasing a jaw-droppingly brilliant album in Bliss Release, and commanding a legion of fans who call themselves the Cloud Cadets. Not bad for a bunch of Neil Young-adoring mountain folk from rural New South Wales.

So now we have a band with the world at their feet, and they’re gonna give it a big booting. International markets are just about to find out what we here in Australia already know: Cloud Control are an adorable band who get under your skin and lay eggs of infectious melody that keep hatching long into the night. They’ve just been signed to Infectious Music in the UK, the label responsible for taking free-wheeling popsters The Temper Trap from intrepid expatriates to world-renowned megastars. So does the same fate lie ahead of Cloud Control? With songs as feverishly catchy as Gold Canary, Death Cloud and This Is What I Said, it’d be hard to doubt their world-beating potential. They’ve already captured the hearts of us carefree Australians, so there’s no reason they can’t do the same somewhere else. Just wait and see, Cloud Control will be gracing the cover of NME and rocking out at the Ed Sullivan Theatre before anyone realises they’ve gone.

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#11   Washington

Megan Washington is possibly the unlikeliest emerging pop star in Australian music. Originally from Brisbane, the geek-chic pianist moved down to Melbourne after high school to undertake a degree in jazz. The next few years were spent establishing herself on the Melbourne jazz circuit but, frustrated with the lack of in-roads she was making, Ms Washington turned to poppier pastures. Her first break came in the form of a spot in Old Man River’s touring band, a job she still remembers fondly.

“I really enjoyed my time in Old Man River because I saw first-hand how to run a band and be in a band,” says the self-described ‘daggy nerd’. “I’m a piano player, I’m not a keys player, so learning how to play an organ line rather than a crazy Bach part was really educational for me and I was really comfortable there. I got to play with Ben Lee’s band through that and it was a very different skill-set to have to come to terms with.”

The past couple of years have seen Megan setting up her own musical empire and changing her tune somewhat. A succession of hits in the form of Clementine, Cement, How To Tame Lions and, most recently, Rich Kids have taken Washington out of underground obscurity and well and truly on the main stage. It seems to have all come about so suddenly – one minute she’s this introverted chanteuse opening for Sia at The Gov, the next she’s on the cover of Rip It Up denouncing Cat Power and surprising many with her inclusion on the Parklife bill.  

Part of Washington’s appeal has been her fiery attitude coupled with an underlying intelligence. On her debut album I Believe You, Liar, Megan performs a thorough self-examination and discovers that she’s not that different from everyone else in the world.

“The title of the album kind of comes from coming to terms with a time of great personal growth and interrogating one’s own ID. All these songs were written between the age of 20 and 24 and I certainly have come to a lot of realisations about myself in the last two or three years. It’s contradictory and I wanted that to come through. I wanted to explore the dichotomy that is inherent in all things, including myself.”

And though many admire Washington for her perceptive intellect, she feels it’s reflected in Australian audiences: “The Australian audience are brighter than they’re given credit for and they do really respond to musicians rather than ‘acts’.”

Musician, intellectual, icon – soon enough these will all be words synonymous with the name Megan Washington. With a big ‘fuck you’ sent straight back to her detractors back in Brisbane, Megan has blossomed into one of the country’s brightest prospects.

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