STACK #151 May 2017

MUSIC NEWS

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at our jobs, and we were obviously all forced into this one place together, only on weekends.” Shark’s new EP Night Thinker features Adore , Weekends , and a few other tracks that are yet to be released. “I write a lot at night – I’m a bit nocturnal,” explains Shark of the EP’s title. “That’s when I’m usually at my peak and when I have the most time to myself. It’s been like that since I was quite young. I would always have a pen and paper next to my bed, and I would just come up with these single words – the worst part was it would always be just before I was about to fall asleep. In the end, the name just made sense.”

percussion, and I just went ‘This is working’,” she smiles. “We did it again with another song which had a lot more electronic drops in it, and I just ended up feeling really good about it. I thought I had a really cool sound. I’m glad we eventually got there.” Many were introduced to Shark just prior to this year’s Triple J Hottest 100, in which she was the surprise #2 entry with her beloved hit Adore . Understandably, the next couple of days were busy waters. “[There] was a lot of talking about [the single],” Shark says. “It was hard because I think, even for me, it hadn’t quite registered. Did that actually even happen?” And she’s still reeling, it seems. “The Hottest 100 is another thing that I’ve grown up listening to; it’s always been a day when you sit around with your mates and put it on. It was never even an idea that I floated that I might feature on it one day. Everything sort of escalated very quickly after that.” Shark’s latest single, Weekends , boasts a

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AMY SHARK Words Alesha Kolbe TOURING 02/05 - 20/05 We caught up with Amy at Sony’s HQ in Melbourne, and chatted with the humble Queenslander about finding her sound, the Hottest 100, and the contemplative clip for Weekends .

INTERVIEW

clip evoking the adolescence of many of us: stuck behind the counter of a retail job, waiting for payday. According to the singer, she wanted to take the clip in a completely different direction to people’s expectations. “I’m sure people thought it was going to be champagne

W hether you’ve been aware of her circling or not, Amy Shark has been kickin’ it in the music scene for a couple of years now – but it’s only recently that she’s released a little more music. If you ask her, she blames herself for being lazy, and not having properly developed her sound. “I probably didn’t put the effort into the production – it’s such a big thing, and I know that now,” reflects the blossoming artist. “For so long I

Night Thinker EP by Amy Shark is out now via Sony.

popping, but I really didn’t want that,” she says. “The whole thing

about Weekends is that it’s reminiscing on times when you did have that part-time job where you’re just stuck

just thought I would write acoustic songs and I [didn’t] necessarily need to pour that much money into [the production]. I wanted to find something that would complement my voice and my writing – putting acoustically-written songs with these big hip hop beats behind them just doesn’t work, or even make sense. No one’s gonna buy into that. With one of my first songs, I got to work with a guy who was really great with

in, almost detention, with all these people you just don’t want to be around, daydreaming about where you’d rather be and who you’d rather be with. I watched things like The Breakfast Club and Empire Records and I just really wanted to include people you could relate to. We were all absolutely useless

(Sandy) ALEX G T he visceral offspring of Elliott Smith, Ariel Pink and Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo has returned with an album even more diabolically alluring than his last (2015’s Beach Music ). Alex G has undergone a slight moniker amendment to include the parenthesed prefix ‘Sandy’, and with it has come some monster ideas on new album Rocket : violins saw, synths thump like a beast at the door, and guitar details peer up through the chaos. The plonking piano in Horse sounds like a truck dumping a mass of lollipops onto your head, and there's a giant python of synth bass curling around Brick , during which Alex repeatedly shouts “I know that you’re lying." But the sun comes out, and when it does its warmth is amazing. This is a fascinating effort from the fearless Philadelphian artist. ZKR

Rocket by

Alex G is out May 19 via Domino.

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MAY 2017

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