Rolling Stone Australia — July 2017

July, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 85

Pixx
The Age of Anxiety 4AD ★★½
Electro-pop debut off ers plenty
of style but little substance

UK singer/guitarist Pixx (born
Hannah Rodgers) has given
her debut LP a title that hints
at an examination of our frac-
tured modern era, but the con-
tent within tells a different
story: there are songs about wa-
terslides (“Waterslides”), not
wanting toes to be stepped on
(“Toes”), and having a desire to
dance like the rest of the girls
(“The Girls”). Pixx may not dive
deep, but she has art-school style
to burn and a reasonable feel for
Grimes-esque warped electro-
pop. The problem is that Pixx
isn’t idiosyncratic enough to in-
trigue (her polite, over-enun-
ciating voice is fi ne but undis-
tinguished, like a Gen Y Dido)
or able to create pop earwormy
enough to endure. JAMES JENNINGS

Color Film

Living Arrangements Epitaph

★★½

Head Automatica duo summon

the spirit of the Eighties

Glassjaw/Head Automati-

ca frontman Daryl Palumbo

has never shied away from his

Eighties infl uences, but never

has he worn them so brazenly

on h i s sle e ve a s he do e s i n C olor

Film, his collaboration with fel-

low Head Automatica member

Richard Penzone. Their debut

album isn’t so much a tribute

to the decade as it is a time ma-

chine, placing the listener fi rm-

ly in the John Hughes era of

electronic drums and new ro-

mantic songwriting. The spec-

tre of the Cure, the Smiths and

Talking Heads looms large, so

much so that it’s hard to dis-

cern the point, beyond a couple

of musos simply indulging their

love of all things Eighties. R.Y.

Sufjan Stevens, Bryce

Dessner, Nico Muhly,

James McAlister

Planetarium 4AD ★★½

Four-way concept album about

the solar system is a strange trip

A concept album based around

the solar system, with a track for

each planet along with shout-

outs to the moon, black holes

and Halley’s Comet? It sounds

like something Muse would

come up with after a few too

many edibles. Stevens pushes

his vocals through vocoders and

autotune to sound like a lone-

some robot, while Muhly’s or-

chestrations, McAlister’s beats

and Dessner’s guitar washes

combine to suggest Philip Glass,

Vangelis and Giorgio Morod-

er are on board the spacecraft

with them. The proggy electron-

ic/symphonic trip is atmospher-

ic but meandering, with the odd

shooting star. B.D.

Todd Rundgren

White Knight

Cleopatra ★★★

The contrarian pop veteran’s

predictably odd all-star album

Forty-seven years after his

debut album, Runt, Todd

Rundgren’s latest fuses his

pop-wizard side and his stu-

dio-contrarian side more than

usual, pulling an impressively

odd array of stars into his vor-

tex – from Trent Reznor (the an-

droid-apocalypse “Deaf Ears”)

to soulstress Betty Lavette (the

bleary electro-hustle “Naked &

Afraid”) to Robyn (the Eight-

ies tearjerker “That Could’ve

Been Me”). Inconsistency is like

a muse here, but he seems to

work best with Seventies peers

like Joe Walsh, Daryl Hall and

Donald Fagen, whose smooth

Donald Trump parody “Tin Foil

Hat” is a timely highlight.

JON DOLAN

You a l re a dy k now what t h i s w i l l

sound like, right? Swampy blues-

rock rhythms, fat and fuzzy riff s

and howling vocals, all covered

in a slick of garage rock grease.

I mean, it’s the singer-guitarist from the Black

Keys, after all.

Well, you’re wrong. Auerbach has done what

few guys in well-known bands do – he’s made a

solo album that isn’t just a pale facsimile of his

regular gig. He does it in a couple of ways. First-

ly, he collaborates and plays with some names

that help him change his game – 70-year-old

country songwriting royalty John Prine puts

his smart storytelling stamp on seven co-writ-

ten songs; Duane Eddy (yes, Duane freaking

Eddy!) twangs away on two tracks; two mem-

bers of the Memphis Boys, the house band on

hits by everyone from Elvis to Neil Diamond,

are behind him.

And secondly, he makes Waiting On a Song

unfold like a Seventies AM radio station play-

list, when country, soul, blues and pop mixed

things up w ith warm and spark ling results. The

title track, with its Motown bass line and chim-

ing glockenspiels, is a song about trying to write

a song; “Malibu Man” is tricked out with coun-

trypolitan strings and horns; and “Shine On

Me” chugs and hums along like a Jeff Lynne-

produced slice of Wilbury-like pop. And that

Mark Knopfl er-esque guitar? Well, that would

be Mark Knopfl er. Yes, Mark freaking Knop-

fl er! BARRY DIVOLA

Bare Bones
Bad HabitsResist★★★½
Impressively heavy debut from
Sydney punks

Justincaseyouhadanydoubts
whereBareBonestaketheir
cuesfrom,theirbiocitesLA
punks the Bronx and Every
Time I Die as inf luences.
Which is fi ne, but on fi rst listen
to opener “Thick As Thieves”
it would be hard to guess this
wasn’t a Bronx record. By the
second track though, these Syd-
ney brutalists establish their
own take on death rock. Songs
like “Deathbed Visions” are
punchy and memorable, the
playing is tight and muscular,
and Bare Bones shift gears reg-
ularly enough that Bad Habits
sticks after a fi rst listen, rath-
er than being merely a moshpit
soundtrack. This could be a hit
record of the genre. M.C.

Dan Auerbach

Waiting On a Song

Easy Eye Sound/Nonesuch ★★★★

Auerbach’s AM

Radio Surprise

Black Keys man leaves the garage

for some country-pop sunshine