My weblog stats show that I get regular hits from Google searches on the support band for the Interpol gig in Sydney. Strangely my site is among the top four Google search results for this query. I therefore almost feel urged to post some info on this matter; so if you came to my weblog in search of this, here’s the info:

While there were initial rumors that Blonde Redhead or the Editors might be supporting Interpol, it now turned out that they will be supported by Youth Group. I don’t know them, but the local last.fm community seems to be pretty disappointed from these news. It’s not officially announced yet, but the info shows on Youth Group’s MySpace page.

The fast selling out of shows became an inherent and frustrating phenomenon in Austria during the last couple of years, but it seems to be even worse in Sydney. Shows are either sold out quickly (The Rapture) or too expensive (LCD Soundsystem) or both (The Arcade Fire).

For that reason I also didn’t manage to get a ticket for the St Jerome’s Laneway festival (Feist, Stars, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Broken Social Scene, Okkervil River, …), but the good thing is that most of the bands have announced side shows. Thanks to this I’ll get to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on Feb 27th (already got the ticket!) and the Stars on Feb 26th (ticket sale starts tomorrow 9am and I guess I’ll have to be quick, since the venue only takes about 300 people).

As I promised a while ago, here are some more words about music that I’ve recently been listening to. Some of it is actually not really new, but I only recently found the time to go through my bands/albums wishlist. (One good thing about going abroad: you find time to process things that had been lying on the shelf for years…)

Here we go: originally from Italy, one-girl band Tying Tiffany has been around for a while and released her first full-length album in 2007. You can stream the album from her website. She’ll be on tour and supporting Alec Empire at some of his European shows. Obviously, she’s also acting as a model for suicidegirls.com, which somehow explains the cover artwork.

Dragonette is a Toronto/London-based electro band. I discovered them during my short research trip to Toronto last May. I had already purchased a ticket for their show at the Mod Club in Toronto, but found out the day before that Blonde Redhead had a show scheduled for the same day. So I gave up my ticket for the Dragonette show and went to see Blonde Redhead instead in the end.

And to finally make a connection to Australia (!), I have to mention Kylie Minogue’s new album “X”. You might have already seen her intriguingly hot new video “2 hearts”, but my favourites from the album are actually “Speakerphone” and “Heart Beat Rock”, though the latter sounds a bit like she (or rather her producers) had been stealing from Uffie.

Happy listening!

In case, you haven’t already seen it: Radiohead’s next strike and their New Year’s present to their fans is a live set of their new album ‘In Rainbows’ that they recorded in studio. The recording can be streamed from Radiohead’s YouTube page.

The connection to Sydney? There isn’t any, not really. Radiohead hasn’t even scheduled tour dates for Australia (neither for Austria btw).

I realized that this weblog also provides me with a platform, where I can finally talk about music! Not that this should become a weblog about music purely, but there are still some things I’d like to share with the rest of the world. For those of you, who are only interested in things on, about and around Sydney, feel free to skip this post!

First, and foremost, you should check out the Kings Die Kings, a new band from Edinburgh, who play brilliant post-punk in a perfect Joy Division style, which might actually earn them the “top of the division” title. For those of you, who love Interpol and adore The Editors, go to the Kings Die Kings’ MySpace page quickly and download the demo songs from their profile, as long as they’re available! Unfortunately one of the four downloads doesn’t work. I really hope, they’ll release an album soon!

This one is for those of you, who like melancholic waves with a touch of leather goth: I couldn’t quite make up my mind about Lapko yet, but I think it’s still worth mentioning them here. They’re from Finland and have been around for many years, but released a new album in 2007. They play melancholic and energetic rock, that might be more on the goth side than on the indie side. Actually, it was a friend who listens to goth music, who first mentioned them to me. Check out their song “Killer Whales”, which is my favourite.

Part 2 of my excursus into music will feature happy electro sounds and sunny fun-pop! So stay tuned!

As a side note: Among all the things I wanted to do or become during different parts of my life, I never felt the urge of becoming a music critic, so don’t be disappointed, in case you might have expected in-depth reviews at this place. I just wanted to share some bands/albums with you and you can judge about them yourself. I have friends, who are excellent in writing music reviews, so there is no need for me to learn how to do this :)

I went to see the Pipettes at the Factory Theatre last night. I already saw them during the XBox days at the MAK in Vienna last year, but the tickets for their show in Sydney were sold at a reasonable price and I was also a bit disappointed from their show at the MAK, so I decided to give it another try. I was also curious to see the Australian crowd, after I’d seen them going crazy in clubs during the weekends. However, the larger part of the crowd was rather reserved; might have been a different target audience, might have been due to less alcohol consumption, I don’t know, but I’ll continue with my field studies and keep you posted on that matter :)

The Pipettes where supported by two local bands, which was another reason, why I thought it was worth going to the show. The evening was opened by Tokyo Blonde, who play “tragic accident pop”. I liked their songs on MySpace, but the live performance was somewhat weak. You could tell that the stage was a new terrain for them. In contrast, I thought that the MySpace songs by the other support band the Holidays were very similar to much I heard before and therefore not very exciting. But I really enjoyed their show. To me they sounded (live) a bit like an Australian version of the Thrills. I would acutally describe their sound as surfing shoegaze… or shoegazing surf music… (?) There’s probably a big deal of a difference between the two and I’d guess they’re more towards the first, but feel free to correct me!

Check out my flickr site for more pictures from the gig.

Update: see this blog by Wendy Skeleton for an in-depth review of the show!

Did you ever wonder why there are so few gigs in Europe during winter? Well, here at the other end of the world I found the answer to this question: while we’re freezing and praying for sun, summer and our favourite band to play a gig in Vienna during their next tour, all the great bands are already enjoying summer by touring Australia!

Upcoming shows in Sydney include The Pipettes, The Arcade Fire, Spoon, The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, to name just a few. I already got tickets for the Interpol show (of course!), but I didn’t manage to get tickets for The Arcade Fire (seems to be sold out, though they have two gigs scheduled in Sydney…). Unfortunately, tickets are also generally a bit more expensive than in Austria. (Compareable to the Gasometer BA-CA hall though…)

There are also quite a few festivals around Sydney. The one to mention is the St Jerome’s Laneway festival, which is a one-day-festival with quite a good line-up. (The main acts are Feist, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Stars, Okkervil River, The Presets, The Brunettes …)

See: puzzle solved. And it makes perfectly sense! :)

A friend recently told me about the local alternative radio station, triple j.

I didn’t listen to that station long enough yet, to judge about its value (I think one of the main points of listening to radio should be the chance to discover new bands, which obviously hardly ever happens when listening to mainstream stations), but I guess I fell in love with triple j, when they broadcasted a live recording of a concert by the Cold War Kids at christmas eve.

triple j is also available via live stream.