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2018 Best New Talent - Short and Sweet Festival Sydney
2014 Pushcart Prize nominee. (more)

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Top Ten songs of 2013


There were many good songs this year. I had over a hundred in a shortlist, but few great ones. There was some quality ballads however, and as you will see, I'm still in touch with my inner teenager.




No. 10
The Kite String Tangle - Given the Chance

I chose this one as they came out of nowhere (Brisbane), unsigned, with a crisply produced track like this. Great work. You can download it for free here.








No. 9
Deepfieldview - She's adorable

An instrumental produced by the late Danny Lackey. I only learnt of his passing after I tried to contact him to say that I wanted to make a video out of his song, which you can see below. More of the story here.








No. 8
Total Slacker - Sometimes you gotta die

Has a very familiar nineties feel yet can't quite place it's origins. Love the tongue in cheek video too.







No. 7
Solkryi - Home

Sydney's post rock instrumentalists team up for the first time with a vocalist and produce one of the best tracks of the year. Not a single unfortunately but I would expect it soon. Debut album was released this year. http://solkyri.com/







No. 6
Deer Tick - The Dream's in the Ditch

Taken from the alt-country rockers fifth album, this sounds embedded in the seventies, yet somehow smelling of roses. Guess it's timeless.







No. 5
Low - Just Make it Stop

Another ballad from the husband and wife team. They've been around for twenty years and yet appear at the top of their game.







No. 4

Teenage Sweater - Young Glitter

Another instrumental. This one with an eighties pop feel. Unfortunately it received little attention. I think it's a cracker. http://www.tricycle-records.com/artist/teenage-sweater/







No. 3
Vance Joy - Play with Fire

I've heard this countless times and it never wearies. Should become a classic, at least in Australia, up there with Hunters and Collectors 'Throw your arms.'. Great lyrics from the singer/songwriter who has just signed a five album deal with Atlantic Records. A major coup. 'You say your heart is on your sleeve. Well, that ain't showing through to me.' And 'I see that I could no wrong, in my old man's eyes.' Play now. Repeat. Buy. http://vancejoy.com/








No. 2
The Great American Canyon Band - Lost at Sea 

Another great ballad with emotional lyrics. 'Lost at sea and I'm never coming home.' Many music videos detract from the song in some way, but this one complements it beautifully. http://thegacb.bandcamp.com/










No. 1
ChVrches - The Mother we Share

Danceable yet imbued with emotion. Beautiful in every regard. Very eighties yet doesn't aim to appeal to radio stations by dropping the F bomb. It wears its heart on its sleeve, speaking of family in a way that seems very personal yet clearly universal. At just over three minutes it's easily the best song of the year for me. http://www.chvrch.es/






Three of the artists are Australian, one Scottish and the rest, American. Sorry Brits. You didn't do it for me this year.


Other notables:

Sigur Rós - Ísjaki
Wooden Shjips - Everybody Knows
The Polyphonic Spree - Popular By Design
Pond - Giant Tortoise
Youngblood Hawke - Say Say
Royal Concept - Cabin Down Below
Roddy Woomble - Listen To Keep
The National - I Should Live In Salt
Satellite Stories - Lights Go Low
The Drones - Why write a letter...
New Politics - Harlem
Dead Owls - Only Child
Junip - Line Of Fire
City Calm Down - Pleasure & Consequence
Washed Out - It All Feels Right
Minks - Ark of Life
Telekinesis - Ghosts And Creatures
Worlds end press - Cry
Stars - Hold on when you get love and let go when you give it


I'd love to hear your picks.

One good thing


Just quickly, I have three poems up at Dead Snakes - Two are true stories, the first about someone I know and the third a personal experience. The second is my frustration with the rigidity of university, not simply my experiences (I did two years but did not complete) but stories I've heard from others. 



Yawn


The whole tortured artist thing is worn unfortunately, clichéd and even taken on by some as they try to create  an image that they think will sell or that is cool. There's really nothing cool about it. For those genuinely afflicted, its very unpleasant. So instead of trying to deny that or dispute it, (as I've never really mentioned it as such) instead I'll say I'm a creative person who happens to carry around fluctuating strengths of 'baggage' - without wanting to throw in overused (and under appreciated) words like anxiety, depression, alcohol, medication... Sometimes in gets in the way of creating, and a lot in the way of life. And sometimes it helps with creating. 

Occasionally I do something good. Yet once, I did something amazing. Here's a poem I wrote about it. 




Minutes old


I did good

(4.2.13)

(For Tilly)



I dream in shoegaze colours
Of frustration and exposure
And failed ventures
Betraying
(How I assume)
I really feel about myself.

There are issues
(so psycho-babble theories dictate)
Rather than suggesting
That this is simply the design of the machine.

Mistakes like seams,
Flaws like daybreak
Light slicing into the tranquil
And while I do attempt to rectify them
I only move on to make new ones.

Lord, forgive me for what I have done
Though I don’t believe
We must believe in something
And it allows me someone to confide in.

Damage as steam
Searing with residue
Until somehow
There was her
Without plans
And cautious manoeuvres
As though carved up
Out of failures
In metaphysical defiance
Made form.

She is better than I ever was or will be
(albeit one divided from two)
And that beaming face looking up
Brings salvation.

I did good.




More Poetry



I'm Going Crazy Like Jack Torrance


The creative work further down is based on personal experience. Sometimes, I ask myself, 
Am I going Crazy Like Jack Torrance?







I have a new poem up at Linden Avenue. You can read it here in the December 2013 issue. (Link broken).



And five poems at a Romanian site called Egophobia. The usual protocol is to submit up to five, yet they decided to put all of them up. The first one is very short. The second, something I wrote to target the traditional academia based poetry journals to see if I could play their silly dull game, and the other three more my usual style. 


Here's something I wrote earlier in the year when I swore I saw something move across the floor. 



One step from voices


When ants are streaming up my leg
And the religious obsessives are
Pounding the door
The tension knots my neck
And I haven’t eaten for some time
I may be drinking water
But I still have a headache
I’m popping codeine
Like sherbet wiz fizz
Which makes home seem a little more homely
Except for the planes
Whose shadows
Momentarily
Shift me into darkness.


I see something dash across the floor
And sense eyes through the window
Yet after a search
Discover nothing
I am forced to contemplate the onslaught of craziness
Starting languidly
Like a blood transfusion
Necessary, they say
Swapping your veins
With the liquid content of another
A hungry night crawler
Eager to sell you a lie
If it means a swift conversion.

So I head for the fridge
Eager for alcohol
Seeking an excuse
To explain it all away
(Bury it for another day)
Pissed, drunk, hung-over
It’s temporary
Yes
Yet valid
If anything, it buys me a little time
To avoid contemplating
The lack of a solution.





Nominated for the Pushcart Prize






The Pushcart Prize



I'm thrilled to announce that I've been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. If you've never heard of it, it's basically the best of the small press publications. It is published through Pushcart Press and was created in 1976 by Anais Nin and quite a few others to celebrate the little guy, outside of the mainstream academic literati. It's a wonderful tradition and hard to believe that I am now part of it.








Many of the small press publications from around America and indeed the world submit their best stories, essays and poems (only two of each). The judges select a final list to be included in an annual publication. It's not really a prize per se, but more of a celebration of struggling writers and poets. Many famous writers obtained their early break with the Pushcart, including Raymond Carver and Joyce Carol Oates.






I'm simply happy to be nominated. If I don't make the final list, that's fine by me.

The acknowledgment is for my story, City of Great Large which featured in Wilderness House Literary Review in the Twenty Eighth issue (Volume 7, no.4). The W.H.L.R. are based in Boston. The story was published back in January '13 and is available here as a pdf. They chose my story and one other as the best fiction they have published in 2013. (Link still works-2021)

City of Great Large was written in the courtyard of a temple in China, not unlike this one below. I sat on the edge of a concrete step and scribbled out much of the first draft on the spot in fairly humid conditions. I continued working on it and finished it while still in China and re-drafted it when I returned home. It wasn't until after ten rejections that it was finally picked up on the eleventh attempt.








The story itself is simple and somewhat traditional. A young man must go off to the city to find work, quite a necessity in China and obviously common in most parts of the world, yet I used a type of broken English I picked up from the streets while there. The writing became almost a type of poetry. English is not widespread, certainly not like some other Asian countries and communication was mostly difficult, especially outside of Beijing and Shanghai. It was fun to write. It allowed me a lot of scope, yet it's emotional and as truthful as I could make it.


This is the greatest recognition I've received thus far and though you still hope for the future, I would be content if this is as good as it gets. One shouldn't get greedy. Along with the publication of my first poetry collection, Caged Without Walls a poem of mine was also included in the Vine Leaves Literary Journal's Best of 2013. I've had many other poems published this year, including my first in another language. It tops off a bloody good year.

(insert smiley face and a hand raising a beer).

If I make the final list however, (for the 2015 edition published mid next year), you'll be the first to know.

(2021 update. One of my best moments in literature. Didnt get any better really. Still very happy with the story and it's acknowledgment. Available to read for free on my website).