i love the stones…angus and julia
They’re certainly not Americana nor alt-whatever, although one of their albums was nominated for best roots and blues recording a couple years ago by the Australian “Grammy equivalent” ARIA, but it lost. This past year they took five awards…one for each of the categories they nominated in, including best album of the year. I own everything they’ve recorded so far and it might be considered my guilty pleasure but it’s hard to feel guilty when they’re so damn good.
Chances are you either love them or hate them.
Angus is 24 and sister Julia is 26. They come from Newport on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and started making music together in 2005. They each write their own songs and then work together on the harmonies and arrangements. They’ve played there, here and in the UK opening for artists such as Kasey Chambers, Martha Wainwright and Brett Dennen.
Chances are you either love them or hate them.
Possibly because they’re young and tend to sing about things that young people think about the most, many people look down their noses at them as “background music” and call their style of playing lightweight “acoustic surf-folk”. Here’s a quote I found this morning that seems to sum up the knock against them: “There is nothing worse than music that is inoffensive like this. A complete f-cking pile of beige.”
Chances are you either love them or hate them.
They’re unusual in the sense that while they are a DIY-like entity…recording in an apartment or mom’s house, producing themselves, directing their own videos, designing their own website…they are also signed to EMI and represented by the William Morris Agency. Unlike those that toil for years playing gigs and trying to make ends meet, they’ve had success right out of the box. Popular with both young folks and not-quite-middle-aged moms, their music often is placed in shows like 90210 and Grey’s Anatomy and they had a huge hit single with “Big Jet Plane”…which leads me to this reviewer’s take on their last album:
“Down The Way is the epitome of background music. It’s the kind of record devoured by upper middle-class households and paraded out at dinner parties as its soundtrack, so the hosts can boast that they’re au fait with modern pop music. If anything, this second offering from the coastal siblings is even more MOR than its predecessor, 2007’s A Book Like This. At least that album had some grit and drive behind its acoustic surf-folk, even if it was riding the wave of Jack Johnson’s bastardised amalgam of Ben Harper and Bob Dylan.”
Despite it all…I dig them. I love that they are pleasant to listen to; pleasant to look at (she more than he for me…in a non-lechorous way of course. Yes…of course). And I look forward to hearing more from them and seeing how they develop. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, and I know that they’d never make it into No Depression the magazine…but so what? I grow weary sometimes of the need for authenticity, the need for meaning in music, the need for everything to have a lineage to either the Carters or Woody or Gram. Like I said…chances are you’ll either love them or hate them.