From the Vaults

An irregularly and arbitrarily rotating selection of stories from the archives. Requests welcomed.


The Bends

Uncut, 2014

WHAT happens when you get what you always wanted, then discover that you don’t want it? “Creep” and “Pablo Honey” had done for Radiohead everything any rock group dreams that their debut single and first album might do for them. Radiohead were on television screens, on the front of magazines, on everybody’s playlist. They were… Read Story

London Calling

Uncut, 2012

IT’S the greatest track one, side one, of all time, ever, no contest. First, the lightning: the flashes and sparks of Mick Jones’ guitar, E minor to F and back again, and again, played yards up the fretboard in tightly clenched staccato barre chords, trebly and bright. Then, the thunder: that ominous, rumbling Ka-BOOM of… Read Story

Eddie Betts

Column for GQ Australia, 2016

IF Eddie Betts’ goal against Greater Western Sydney the other weekend isn’t named Goal of the Year at season’s end, it has to be assumed that anything that does beat it will involve levitation, alchemy, time travel, the summoning of dragons, possibly all four – or be something more improbable still, probably conjured by Betts… Read Story

Microdisney

Daunt Square to Elsewhere sleeve notes, 2007

THE very fact of this compilation’s existence tells you a great deal about the music it contains, and the band it honours. The most recent of these recordings is more than two decades old. Not one of these songs was ever a hit. The career of the group that produced them was, to a large… Read Story

Turn! Turn! Turn!

Uncut, 2016

IF The Byrds’ second album resembled a delayed second half of their first, there were reasons. The Byrds began recording “Turn! Turn! Turn!” the week after “Mr Tambourine Man” reached the shops; the two would be released six months apart. Read Story