EM

Another month that has flown by! Grateful that this is the first June in a while where I haven’t felt too blue in the cold. It’s been a really nice month of Spouse time, friend time and family time – I went to Canberra for two shows, I felt spoilt rotten there for my Birthday. My beautiful friend Lara surprised me at the Spouse show with a cake and party poppers and I felt so lucky and loved. Spouse were in Melbourne the following weekend for a show and some big business, always good to spend time with my bros. My actual real life brother was also in Melbourne a few times this month, as was his wonderful partner Ellen, we got to eat lots of good food, including Jim’s Greek Tavern. This place is nuts, you go in and they seat you (gruffly), next to a deli-style fridge stuffed with the gaping fish caught that day, then they ask if you have any dietries – you say no – and then its a beautiful, simple game of “yes or no”. Want Calamari? Yes. Prawns? Yes. Salad? No. Dip? Absolutely yes etc. No menu They Just Bring You The Food and You Eat it and Say Thank You Very Much It Was Delicious. The three of us were getting whiplash watching secret dishes we hadn’t been offered yet flying past, with lots of “ooh whats that? Looks so good – we’ll get it next time”. I intend on asking for the Octopus next time. The staff are so stressed and angry, but they are decent to you and it seems like a three-generation family business, with the clientele to match. Must go back.

A gig I saw this month:

I saw Lover and Hatchie at Punters Club and had a blast, ended up staying until 4am gabbing away with my nice coworkers who played and attended. 

A movie I watched this month:

In the theatres I saw the Backrooms (3/5) – we went out for ramen before and I had several lemon highballs so I fell asleep in the theatre – woke up to josh standing over me laughing – the rest of the movie that I was awake for was fun and entertaining – Aneesha was using my arms as shields/blinders which made me feel big and brave. 

An album I listened to this month:

I’ve been back on my Elliott Smith shit this month, listened to Figure 8 three times on my solo drives to/from Canberra and loved it. This has always been my favourite album of his. I feel this is the album where he flexed his classical and freak muscles, but continued to remind us that he LOVED the Beatles. Everything Means Nothing To Me has always been my favourite Elliott song – it has such a strange and hypnotising melody, and the anticipation of the repetition is released so incredibly with such interesting drum production. My highschool boyfriend introduced me to Elliott Smith when I was 17, his pitch was cruel, “he’s this really incredible folk songwriter, but he’s not a very good singer and he was super ugly. He killed himself.” He was nice but this is a mean pitch. 

A book I read this month:

I’m nearly finished with Constant Gardner by Jon Lecarre – it’s been good and entertaining! 560 pages have gone by pretty easily. I have since realised that it is not dissimilar to the plot of The Fugitive, a movie Ash showed me a few days ago and i LOVED. YOU SWITCHED THE SAMPLES!

A photo I took this month:

Hiroki and Ellen assess the dip platter at Jims Tavern (it was delicious and incredibly garlicy).

EMMETT

June, u beautiful bastard.

Was a lovely month but also big.

Started the month off putting the stereo from my first car into my new car ( thanks felix for the help ) so now the bus has bluetooth!! Life has been great with bluetooth.

Got to see Royalla perform at Room 04! They killed it obviously, they’re royalla. The room 04 set up is unbelievable, such cool work done by such lovely people. 

I walked LD’s dog ollie aswell with LD and daan, that was fucking awesome. Had two cbr spouse shows which was fun! Really fun playing a bunch of covers for Ems bday. You Oughta know has a very fun bassline lol. Had a very fun melb trip aswell. Got to play a fun show with some awesome bands and do alot of interesting spouse and GWR stuff! 

Spent the last weeks of the month at home working on all kinds of exciting stuff coming out soon 🙂 also got to help daan and ezra move, was fun for me, cant imagine how stressful it would’ve been for them haha.

A movie I watched this month:

Nuremberg movie was good lol, russel crowe is mint
Leviticus was incredibly beautiful 

An album I listened to this month:

Listened to strawberry princes developing narratives album alot, shit is awesome
Lotto by tagabow is mint
Got back on my twine shit too, NOH is awesome

A game I played this month:

Played soooo much resident evil with nell and felix, finished first play through of re2

A photo I took this month:

Photo of daan at the laundromat with me and felix

DAAN

And so another month passes. Time is going fast right now. Earlier this month I went up to Sydney to see Wednesday AGAIN. This time with my friend Max (shoutouts) we went up for the night to see Wednesday at the Metro Theatre. I ran into a billion friends at that show and it was so nice to connect with everyone after the show ❤

Spouse played a couple of shows including a show at Shadows with Anhedonia & Garfism (shoutouts) and then another in Melbourne with Jazz Tiger, Hound, Sover & Wriding (shoutouts). Both shows were awesome & it felt to be great doing shows together as always. So grateful to everyone who comes out, especially in Melbourne where it’s always such a welcome surprise. 

Spouse had a nice little week together in Melbourne doing Spouse things. Will be able to share more about that in the coming months. 

This month I also got to go on Triple J, Home & Hosed, to chat about Gutwrench Records, CBR music & DIY. It was such an honour & a privilege to get to chat to Anika about the things I’m most passionate about. Big shoutout to Anika for making me feel so comfortable and facilitating the conversation. Thanks to all my lovely friends who listened in to support me & thanks to Meg, Lara, Georgia, Tom, Tilly & Katie for doing a little listening party at your house. 

Beyond this I was moving house which has ruined me but I’m thankfully settling into my new place back in 2602. Thanks Emmett, Felix & Taine for all your help with the move ❤

A gig I went to:

I saw a lot of awesome shows this month! Most recently I saw Anhedonia & Body Shirt at Shadows & Squeaky Clean. I love when there’s a few gigs happening in the city you can hop between, those always prove to be the memorable evenings for me. I went to see a little bit of Paloma before going to Squeaky’s to see Body Shirt (shakkas up). Then made it back to Shadows for Anhedonia. They played 27 by Title Fight twice & everyone was singing along the whole time. My heart was full, nothing beats getting to sing in a room full of friends. 

Also saw Stone Bird at the Corduroy Company farewell gig! Both sets were awesome but as a first time viewing of Stone Bird I was blown away. I think it was their first show too. Very excited to see them again soon. 

A movie I watched this month:

Together with Spouse we watched How To Train Your Dragon 1 & 2 which ruled. First one is probs one of my fav movies I think, it’s a classic that I can always revisit. I also watched the horrors of the moment including Backrooms, Obsession & Hokum. Obsession & Hokum were sick, Backrooms I didn’t really care for 😦 

An album I listened to this month:

I’ve been listening to a lot of ‘Patience, Moonbeam’ by Great Grandpa & ‘What People Call Low Self Esteem Is Really Just You Seeing Yourself The Way That Other People See You’ by Awakebutstillinbed this month. I can’t remember how I found them but they’re both awesome. Would recommend for different reasons. 

A book I read this month:

I finished the book I was reading last blog, ‘Death Ray’ by Craig Simpson. It’s the second book in a series I’m revisiting. In my pursuit of reading easy, smooth brain books atm I’ve been recommended Skullduggery Pleasant which I had never read as a kid for some reason. My Mum doesn’t like skeletons so that’s probably why. Thanks Ben for lending me your copy bc it actually rules. Skeleton detective in a world of magic c’mon, it’s so 2000’s skeleton on fire graphic tee coded I love it.

A photo I took this month:

All the homies watching Obession 🙂

EZRA

Ahhhhhhhh. Moving sucks! Ass! 

But we had a lovely spouse month! 

A movie I watched this month:

Jackass Best and Last, you already know it’s good. I did think it was a shame that a lot of it was best of stuff but hey. I haven’t watched a jackass movie without tearing up in years. 

An album I listened to this month:

I’ve been fucking with The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot by Any Young Mechanic. 

Also straight up just a lot of this one best of Misfits cd I have in my car.

A book I read/Game I played this month:

My reading time has been very eaten up by moving stress. I also haven’t had the time to play many games. I did play Reanimal with my partner and that game is awesome, very creepy and cool, takes the little nightmares formula and expands on it well. 

A photo I took this month:

JOSH

Everything kinda happened in June!! I got my ass kicked by a throat infection + winter cold combo at the start of the month. Ash put me on every drug the pharmacy was allowed to give us and lemme tell ya, I was dreaming in AI-upscaled 8k OLED 120hz refresh rate – I dreamt that I was fighting a elden ring style manifestation of my throat infection in an industrial sci-fi factory thing, but halfway into the dream the whole thing turned into some sort of film that I was directing. Apparently I was doing such a terrible job of directing that I got fired and replaced by Kane Parsons (youtuber and director of Backrooms) but then he proceeded to do an even worse job of directing than I was and we both got sued by the studio while the whole thing turned into a courtroom drama. Three genre switches in one dream is a lot more than I’m generally comfortable with but hey that’s showbiz baby.

Anyway as a result I sadly couldn’t play the Spouse show with COLA, but I was able to recover in time for Em’s birthday show in Canberra which was so much fun. I’ve been missing the band like a mf so it was wonderful to spend so much time with everyone. Everyone came down to Melb a week later to work on Spouse Business™, which I’m extremely excited to start showing everyone in the coming months.

A gig I went to:

I saw Danny Brown at Northcote Theatre at the start of the month and I hate to say it but it was the most fun I’ve had at a show in a very long time. Nobody is doing it like he is and my ultimate goal is to get him on a Spouse remix at some point in the near future 😼

We also saw Lover and Hatchie at punters club – Ash and I went to a Hatchie gig on our first date three and a half years ago so it was a nice full circle kinda show :))

A movie I watched this month:

I watched very few movies this month for some reason! I did see Backrooms with the gang – I had a bad headache that day and the prominent shaky-cam in the movie made it a lot worse, so will have to revisit in a better headspace 😖  I also watched Lars and the Real Girl (7/10⭐️), The Secret of NIMH (6/10⭐️) and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (5/10⭐️)

An album I listened to this month:

Chanel Beads album is very good! I did the same thing to them I did with mk.gee where I subconsciously ignore them out of protest because everyone I know insists they’re amazing – I’m always like “it can’t be THAT good” but it always is and I always just end up late to the party. I was smarter this time and tagged along to their live show with Em Charlie and Ella which was very awesome.

I also loved the Olivia Rodrigo album more than I thought I would! i love pop music !!!

A game I played this month:

Still playing Final Fantasy VII – moved on to Rebirth now. I’ve conquered the arbiters of fate and now the future is in my hands etc etc. I had to upgrade my xbox to run it properly, so I sold my old one to a black holden commodore full of eshays on a busy street in collingwood. I gave them an unmarked box, they gave me a handful of $50 notes, we both drove off, and I spent the rest of the day worried about the general optics of the whole transaction. Game runs great now though!

A photo I took this month:

Em and Felix modeling our new Spouse Hoodies™