Tag: Kirin J Callinan

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: CIVIC Shares Jangling and Nihilistic “The Fool”

Since their formation back in 2017, Melbourne-based punks CIVIC — Jim McCullough (vocals), Roland Hlvaka (bass), Lewis Hodgson (guitar) and their newest member Eli Sthapit (drums) — have developed a reputation for reimagining the reckless intensity of proto-punk for our era of seemingly unending and unceasing uncertainty and strife. 

The acclaimed Aussie outfit’s forthcoming third album, the Kirin J. Callinan-produced Chrome Dipped saw its official release today through ATO Records. Eager to step beyond the raw, unmistakably Australian punk rock sound of their first two albums, Chrome Dipped sees the band pushing into uncharted sonic terrain without scarfing the long-held fierce energy that has defined them. 

Thematically, the album touches upon loss and grief, following the death of Jim McCullough’s mother, as well as broader essentially reflection. In a larger sense, Chrome Dipped is about casting off old shells — both musically and emotionally — and finding meaning in the messiness of human life and evolution.

The band tapped Aussie singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kirin J. Callinan to produce Chrome Dipped. It was his idea to spend a week recording at Hobart, Tasmania‘s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), a far cry from the outback house in which the band laid down 2023’s Taken By Force. “We’ve always done our records DIY,” CIVIC’s Jim McCullough says. “This time we wanted to step up and make it sound as big as we could.”

“We kind of stuck to the rules a little bit earlier on like, do Australian punk rock properly and all that,” CIVIC’s Lewis Hodgson says. “But after touring around the world and seeing what all these other bands are up to it’s like, you can really do whatever the fuck you want. And so it’s fun to just kind of let go.”  He continues, “I hope people feel a little confused at first. Then a bit angry, and then feel good, and then interested, and then they feel like, ‘Oh, this is sick.’ That process exactly. I hope it’s a bit challenging.”

CIVIC also brought on a filmmaker to capture behind-the-scenes and in-studio footage, with plans for a longer documentary in the works. The film explores the physical and emotional place that inspired Chrome Dipped,  following the band through their journey of making the album. 

Last month, I wrote about album single “The Hogg,” a song named for its “disgusting sounding riff.” Fittingly, the song is a bruising ripper, anchored around a grimy, chugging riff and thunderous drumming paired with McCullough’s punchy delivery. While continuing to channel the grime, filth and fury of their previous work, “The Hogg” showcases a band pairing delicate and dreamy lyrical imagery with sinister, deeply unpleasant overtones and a subtle yet slick, studio polish.

As the band explained to Flood Magazine, the song is about “staring into the abyss and seeing nothing but its pure beauty. Surface level pleasure with sinister undertones. A porcelain dancer draped in flesh, pirouetting to the infinite beat. ‘The Hogg’ is my reality. ‘The Hogg’ is my destiny.” 

“The Fool,” Chrome Dipped‘s final pre-release single is a jangling and metallic, cretinous stomp of song that showcases the band’s melodic sensibility while retaining the punchy and feisty punk quality they’ve been known for. The Aussie quartet say “‘The Fool’ is a nihilistic death march about dreamers and idiots. A jangley [sic] punk song meant to provoke the senses. It recalls the story of the fool and what’s behind the 1000-yard stare.

Directed by Conor Mercury, the accompanying video for “The Fool” is a lush yet brooding and cinematically shot visual that’s set in a world that’s both harsh yet surreal, as we see struggling and desperate folks with odd, somewhat unnecessary super powers.

CIVIC is currently in the middle of a North American tour that includes a June 13, 2025 stop at TV Eye before heading to the UK and European Union. Check out the rest of the tour dates below. Tickets are available here. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Genesis Owusu’s Shimmering and Brooding “Gold Chains”

With the release of his debut, 2017’s Cardrive EP, the rapidly rising Ghanian-born, Canberra, Australia-based, 20-something artist Genesis Owusu — born Kofi Owusu-Anash — quickly established himself as a perpetually restless, genre-blurring chameleon with a defiant, difficult to pigeonhole sound an approach and an ability to conjure powerful and deeply personal storytelling in diverse forms. Cardrive eventually garnered an ARIA Award nomination for Best R&B/Soul Release and praise from Sir Elton John (!), NME, i-D, mixmag and others. And adding to a growing profile, Owusu has opened for the likes of Dead Prez, Col3trane, Sampa The Great, Cosmo’s Midnight, Noname, Animé, Ruel and others in Australia.

Last year, the rising Ghanian-born, Aussie-based artist released a handful of highly-celebrated singles including the fiery mosh-pit friendly banger “Whip Cracker” and the ARIA Award-nominated smash hit “Don’t Need You,” which quickly became the #1 most played song on triple J radio — and since then has received airplay in the UK on both BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 and here in the States on KCRW, KUTX, The Current and Alt98.

“Whip Cracker” and “Don’t Need You” will be on Owusu-Anash’s forthcoming 15 song Andrew Klippel-produced full-length debut Smiling With No Teeth. Slated for a March 5, 2021 release through House Anxiety/Ourness, Smiling With No Teeth reportedly sees the rising Ghanian-born, Aussie artist further honing and developing his genre-confounding sound and approach while charting the epic peaks and troughs of mental health struggles and his experience as a black man in a very white world that hates him — often for no particular reason. Much of the album’s material is centered round raw punk rock-like and hip-hop-like energy while routinely veering into industrial, punk, funk, trip hop and pop, sometimes within the same song. And as a result. the album’s brash and defiant material is seemingly dedicated to those who boldly refused to be boxed into stereotypes or cultural norms, and those who fit in everywhere and nowhere.

“Smiling With No Teeth is performing what the world wants to see, even if you don’t have the capacity to do so honestly,” Owusu explains in press notes. “Slathering honey on your demons to make them palatable to people who only want to know if you’re okay if the answer is yes. That’s the idea, turned into beautiful, youthful, ugly, timeless and strange music.” Each of the album’s 15 tracks can trace their origins back to studio jam sessions with a backing band that features Kirin J. Callinan, Touch Sensitive’s Michael DiFrancesco, World Champion‘s Julian Sudek and the album’s producer Andrew Klippel.

Late last year, I wrote about “The Other Black Dog,” a mind-bending production that meshed alternative hip-hop, industrial clang, clatter, rattle and stomp, off-kilter stuttering beats and wobbling synth arpeggios that was roomy enough for Owusu-Anash’s breathless, rapid-fire and dense flow. Managing to balance club friendliness with sweaty, mosh pit energy, the song is a full-throttled nosedive into madness that reminds me of the drug and booze fueled chaos of ODB, and the menace of DMX.

“Gold Chains,” Smiling With No Teeth’s fourth and latest single is a brooding and seamless synthesis of old school soul, strutting and swaggering G Funk and Massive Attack-like trip hop. Centered around shimmering and atmospheric synths, a sinuous bass line, stuttering boom bap beats and squiggling blasts of guitar, “Gold Chains” finds the rising Ghanian-born, Canberra-based artist adopting a sort of Mos Def/Yasiin Bey-like delivery, alternating between spitting dense and dexterous bars and crooning with an achingly tender falsetto. “‘Gold Chains’ got me thinking about the flaws of being in a profession where, more and more, you have to be the product, rather than just the provider of the product, and public misconceptions about how luxurious that is,” Owusu-Anash explains in press notes. “Lyrically, it set the tone for the rest of the album.”

Directed by frequent visual collaborator Riley Blakeway, the recently released video for “Gold Chains” alternates between luxurious and glossy, 70s inspired glam, glitter and commodities and a behind-the-scenes look at desperation and loneliness. The cars, gold, money and fame are empty and phony — and ironically only add to the protagonist’s increasing dissatisfaction with everything, including himself. “The video is about the hollowness of a lot of the things we hold as idols,” the rising Ghanian-born, Canberra-based artist told The Fader. “The shiny things that get made to look like goals from the outside looking in, but in reality won’t be the source of happiness that we’d hoped for. The gold chains become shackles.”