It bothers me that when I try to capture beauty I usually end up bruising it.
- Odd. But perhaps not that odd. I was talking about you a few days ago with a couple of friends, I’m guessing you know who.
- You are one of the people I miss from Brisbane, although I am also guessing you no longer live there.
- I nearly wrote about your band once before, but didn’t because, I’m guessing you know why.
- I always thought it is better to try and direct the conversation than reveal, but these days there are no sureties.
It bothers me that so few people are bothered.
- This music leaves more questions left unsaid then it does provide answers.
- Shopping malls and aerosols is a great rhyme.
- This music is more reminiscent of the loneliness of overheated suburban Australian playgrounds and half-empty English hair salons than of the rain-splattered American streets reflecting neon.
- The greatest moment in this song occurs at around 1.27, if we follow the A Certain Ratio guide, which we shouldn’t.
It bothers me that I have never attained the level in my writing style where I can be direct without being dull.
- I have no idea what you’re thinking.
- This is way better than you think it is, however good you think it is.
It bothers me that when I try to capture beauty I usually end up bruising it. This one line from the band themselves: No Sister’s upcoming release is an acknowledgement of an elemental, unavoidable creative facet: influence: is brilliant. Hemmed-in, but with the creative freedom such acknowledgment brings.
Building on the shoulders of giants. This is a billowing, bruised beauty – isolation and solace and the echo of late night footsteps receding. So fine. You don’t have to believe me. Just play the song over and over again, thinking of me playing the song over and over again, grappling to articulate emotions the closer I get to the further they slip away.
If you want more detail, the band put it far better than I can. There again, I have nothing riding on this. This, and Tropical Fuck Storm, are the two bands you should be listening to right now.
‘My New Career’ — a song exploring a simultaneously hyperbolic but very real sense of DIY feminism — abounds in influences. The opening lines “I used to do my hair with rollers, but now I use spray cans and pliers” were borrowed from an artwork by Melbourne artist Ruth O’Leary, with the song’s sentiments further propelled by writers such as Sheila Heti and Anne Boyer. Meanwhile the musical and aesthetic influences range from David Sylvian, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Prince and other 80s fascinations — in their new EP No Sister expand their post-punk sound to include influences from both sides of the Atlantic (and Pacific).
Self-released in Australia by No Sister, Influence was recorded by John Lee and Pat Telfer at Phaedra Studios (Beaches, Love of Diagrams, Small World Experience, Lost Animal, Stonefield), mixed by Mino Peric and mastered by David Walker at Stepford Audio.
How NOT to write about music 