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interviews
*NEW! Beat Interview 2/4/08
reviews
*NEW! dB Magazine (A Head Full Of Rain And A Heart Full Of Puddles) June '08
*NEW! Clinkerfield score Beat CD of the week! (A Head Full Of Rain And A Heart Full Of Puddles) 2/4/08
www.dbmagazine.com.au (Take In The View)
www.pbsfm.org.au (Treason Season)
REVIEW FOR: The Silly, Serpentine Wind EP
Beat Magazine, Wednesday 18th May, 2005
In an 'underground', or 'scene', or whatever the hell you wanna call it, which seems in significant pockets to have embraced the vice of individualistic, me first, fuck you if you don't look or sound or behave or pose like me nature, bands like Clinkerfield should be placed on a fucking pedestal and lauded as ambassadors for dignity and integrity.
The Silly, Serpentine Wind, a gentler release than last year's debut Treason Season, is, throughout, heartbreakingly honest. They are a band who are defined as much by the roughness around the edges as for their seamless, organic, and wholly unpretentious take on songwriting.
A crying, fuzzy electric floats behind opener A House Is Not A Home, giving an added sense of melancholy to this talk of times past. Jimmy's wavering, cigarette stained vocals come across as genuine and impassioned, which will indeed remain a recurring theme throughout the EP. The gentle, arpeggiated acoustic ramble of People Walking Quickly conveys a sense of detachment from the modern condition, whilst the slide-based blues of Resigned acts as a poetic counterpoint to the badgeclad fashionistas. Ash On The Bed, Ash On The Floor, with just a plucked acoustic and a forced mumble, representsthe kind of soul-baring rarely found on the larger stages in this city. An unobtrusive banjo/piano combo propels Gravel Road along its own country-blues path, leading the moving conclusion Begging For Time Like Loose Change, which treads the line between musical theatre reprise and slumped-over-the-piano-in-a-bar-at-3-in-the-morning aesthetic.
The thing I fear is that this is the sort of release that will slip under the radar. Then again, this is the sort of band that deserve far more than the smug approval of some black jacket clad wanker.
- Daniel Zugna
LIVE REVIEW FOR: Clinkerfield, Khancoban & The Longrass, The Doot, Saturday 14th May
Inpress Magazine, Wednesday 25th May, 2005
Flemington is home to so many icons of cultural significance. The Quiet Man Irish Pub, Racecourse Fish and Chips… a really great train station. It is also now home to The Doot, formerly the Geebung, which has shaken off its previous dirty-old-man bar shackles to provide the gateway to the great West with some much needed live music.
Through a combination of post Melbourne v Hawthorn excitement (yawn) and the copious amounts of booze needed to quell the excitement (again, insert sarcasm), I arrived midway through rawk 'n' soul Clinkerfield's mini EP launch to catch support act Khancoban. It was a real Shins meets Augie March affair with clever little clamourings of dainty guitar and piano and a lead vocalist who treads a nice line between over-emotive and could-care-less. By the time Clinkerfield were on the room was filled to the brim with cowgirls and other assorted hoe-downers, why, I do not know. No one was stopping them though as they bumped and boot scooted solo to the first few rockers belted out. The band, although leaning on meat and three veg, Aussie pub-rock, possess a violently deranged tangent that is hidden for the most part, taking the form of more of a vibe or essence. Every so often it's summoned from the deep moan of a heavily fed-back guitar, and awkward jaunt of a guitar solo, or the animalistic grunt and squeal of front man Jimmy Stewart's vocal chords. There's a smoother side as well, which only adds to the confusion in style (a welcome confusion, I must add). A solid back-line that dots the I's and crosses the T's of Stewart's cartoon-esque approach and the oh-so-snazzy peppering of lead guitarist Ash Christensen gives each song a somewhat effortless chic.
By the time I stumbled drunkenly out into the wintry cultural affluence of Racecourse Road, Clinkerfield were beginning their second set of the night at 2 am. Jimmy Stewart's manic screams rang out through the cold night, echoed by the delighted squeals of cowgirls.
- Danny Miscellaneous
bio
Allow somebody else to introduce you to Clinkerfield…
“Clinkerfield… a sound too good to refute. So good I (had to tell you) why.... Imagine Tom Waits ravaging a maniacal gypsy during a thunderstorm, under a full moon. Now imagine that due to this wholly unholy union, a demented love child was born. That kid would be… Clinkerfield. Haven't been this excited about a new band since... the last time I was excited about a new band!” – Miranda Jetlagg, Publicist (Miranda says she worked with Tom Waits in the 80’s)
Etched firmly in the hearts of Melbourne’s live music loving community, Clinkerfield have been forging their own indescribable path for the past five years, content to allow incessant live showings (are they Melbourne’s hardest working band?) do the bulk of the talking.
The band…? Well, there’s miserable little bastard/footloose frontman, Jimmy Stewart, who seemingly plays shows more often than he blinks his big eyes. Jimmy recently wrapped up his already legendary year-long Tuesday night residency at the world-famous Rainbow Hotel on the night the full moon turned blood red during a total lunar eclipse, then promptly absconded to Spain for two months… and certainly came back with a bump or two. Around that, and in between blinks, the band played on, here, there and everywhere… There’s drummer/banjo-player/nuclear-physicist (true) Andrew Alves (also with Light Says Solo), there’s bass man/monsieur le harmonié/industrial electronics engineer (true) Matt Quinn (who moonlights as fifth wheel in Subaudible Hum), and there’s guitar-sound-down (true) axeman Warwick Dunn (ex-The Woulds), plus a revolving cast of guest musicians whenever the time is right.
They’ve clocked up around 300 shows, each one unique to the other, in the past two-and-a-half years, and many more than that in the years previous since late 2002 when the band initially formed around a bunch of beers and disgruntled ex-pat country pumpkin muso’s. These shows have occurred mostly in Melbourne, but increasingly taking in many other haunts across the country. And whilst gaining a rabid following among those that “know”, they happily still exist in a kind of wonkavating underground limbo-land, where magic happens only if yer lucky enough to be around to allow it to happen. And happen at it’s own pace.
Way back in 2005, Daniel Z, a Beat Magazine columnist said: “In an ‘underground’, or ‘scene’, or whatever the hell you wanna call it, which seems in significant pockets to have embraced the vice of individualistic, me first, fuck you if you don’t look or sound or behave or pose like me nature, bands like Clinkerfield should be placed on a fucking pedestal and lauded as ambassadors for dignity and integrity.”
And laudably, they’ve upheld this early acclamation.
Through their 2006 EP “Take In The View” they found consistent airplay on community radio across the country, and many fans interested in their, at the time, not quite alt-country, not quite rock’nr’roll, not quite indie-folk, not quite anything, sound.
But now they’ve recorded their “first” album, and it is quite something else indeed.
In February 2007 they packed up a bunch of vintage recording gear and disappeared to an isolated, falling-down, possibly haunted farmhouse called “Carrigmore” in central Victoria, and with Aaron Cupples (who has worked with Paul Kelly and produced J-award nominated albums for The Drones, SubAudible Hum, and Dan Kelly & The Alpha Males, plus notable work with James McCann & Silver City Highway) at the helm, here they worked for a week. “A Head Full Of Rain & A Heart Full Of Puddles” is the incredible result.
For an album steeped in watery, turbulent imagery, the recording sessions were fortuitously imbued with an element of enchantment when, amidst Australia’s worst drought in a long, long time, the sky opened up and rain and electrical storms provided their own back-up instrumentation – for example, recording the song “Rain On The Vein” live on the porch whilst rain fell on the tin roof above, and singer Jimmy Stewart running around shirtless in another storm to gather some ‘mojo’ before completing the vocal take used on “Stormy Heather”.
Sneaky copies of the new album have already been blowing minds and breaking hearts. It’s been described as “dangerous… beautiful but so powerful and in places it’s the purest black… like one of those ink sketches of Dante’s inferno…”
Recently they embarked on a short but successful national tour through Oct/Nov/Dec to preview the album, packing out venues in Melbourne, Bendigo and, interestingly, Western Australia, and gaining airplay with sampler tracks from the album on community radio and Triple J. They then settled into a busy summer of shows in Melbourne, packing them in and playing some sweaty, dynamic shows at the Marquis of Lorne in December and the Old Bar for their fourth annual January residency, playing to more than one full house. Recent shows have taken on some sort of a demented-drunken-gypsy-pirate-convict roarus (that’s a roaring chorus, guys) bent – and it is very, very bent. They now take a break to sharpen their cutlasses and plan their pillaging during the lead up to the release of “A Head Full Of Rain & A Heart Full Of Puddles”, out on 15 March through Green Media/MGM Distribution via their own label Waste Management. Preview songs from it at the website. National tour dates through March/April in support of the album will be announced soon.
To hell with yer genres and boxes… Clinkerfield are Clinkerfield.
Arrh.
Clinkerfield are:
Andrew Alves - drums, percussion, banjo, glockenspiel, assorted farm junk, backing vocals
Warwick Dunn - guitar, harmonica, washing machine, backing vocals
Matt Quinn - bass, vocals, piano, guitar, the mop, backing vocals
Jimmy Stewart - vocals, guitar, piano, the fireplace, thousand-yard stare
And sometimes, when they feel like it:
Ash Christensen - guitar, percussion, saxophone
Justin Rudge - guitar, drums
Caz Gannell - cello, melodica
Jim Patterson - rhodes piano
Lucas Barbuto - weird stuff, ask him
Dan Brownrigg - weird stuff, ask him
John Fredericks - sometimes drums
Dan Tout - sometimes drums
