These are exciting times in the Civil Civic camp. After years away from Australia, they are finally returning to the bosom of their beloved country to play some shows and drink beer and shit. Plus Remote Control Records are releasing their debut album ‘Rules’ on 01 February…

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Fortitude Valley, Black Bear Lodge, 07 February  |  Tickets
Sydney, Brighton Up Bar  |  Tickets
Altona, ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror, 16 February  |  Info
Melbourne, The Tote, 19 February  |  Tickets

We saw the talented Sophia Brous supporting Jens Lekman at London’s Hackney Empire last week, with a certain Mr. Aaron Cupples of Civil Civic on – unlikely as this seems – acoustic guitar.

She and Jens became pals when he was living in Melbourne, and she duets with him on the track ‘Erica America‘ on his new album. Pitchfork liked it.

Touted as a “human powerhouse” and “prodigious chanteuse” (thanks, Rolling Stone), Melbourne’s Brous possesses an uncompromising vision for pop. Equal parts pop auteur and exotic diva, she weaves together a mesmerising palette of ’60s soundtrack fetishism, shimmering psychedelia and industrial lounge, with nods to pop traditions stretching from Japan to Brazil to Eastern Europe, showcasing stunning melodies, crowned by an extraordinarily powerful voice.

Since releasing her debut EP through Onelouder/Universal at the close of 2011, with intoxicating lead single ‘Streamers’ (video below), she received widespread critical praise, national airplay and award nominations across Australia. She’s sung on Bollywood soundtracks and Hollywood film scores, curated festivals, and kept up a constant schedule of new projects and collaborations with artists including Michael Rother (Neu!), the aforementioned Jens Lekman, Francois Tetaz (Gotye, Kimbra), Brian Chase (YYYs, USA) and Mick Harvey (Bad Seeds, Birthday Party), who makes up part of her live band when she plays as a full-five piece.

She’s unusual.

We like her a lot.

Click: homepage, Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook

As Civil Civic announced on their website yesterday, they have “a track recoded in the spirituous sessions for the ‘RULES’ LP. We couldn’t find a way for it to fit into the LP so we dropped it. We still think it’s a slamming fun ditty so we are throwing it up here for y’all. Cut a rug…”

To a killer soundtrack, naturally.

Stage invasions are all kinds of fun.

Next chance to see them in London is 12 June at The Macbeth.

Doors 7.30
Tickets £6 here and here
Facebook event here

The Macbeth
70 Hoxton Street
London N1 6LP
Map here

Video edited by Joseph Jensen

“This duo’s brainiac mix of math rock, pro, post-punk and no wave textures in a digital mix and electronica is never less than clever, intricate and complex. Intelligent, exciting stuff.” – The Guardian

Civil Civic – everyone’s favourite Melbourne-raised, London/Barcelona-dwelling Noise-pop instrumentalist duo – headline London’s Macbeth on 12 June – with support from Umez – ahead of a mainland European tour through July and August.

In March 2010, CC self-released their debut EP ‘1’, on cassette and download, followed by the double-A side 7” ‘Run Overdrive/Fuck Youth‘ in June, and a third single – ‘Lights on a Leash’ – which was picked up by Too Pure’s Singles Club in December of that year. In November of 2011 their debut album ‘Rules’ appeared on their own Gross Domestic Product label, and just like the singles that went before it, the press were particularly complimentary…

“5 stars” – Artrocker Single of The Month
“Impossible to ignore or deny.” – Dummy
“Once it kicks in you’re hooked.” – Quite All Right
“They put the “brawl” into cerebral.” – The Guardian
“A ball-busting distorted musical leviathan.” -The Fly
“Trust us when we say you really need to hear this lot.” – NME
“The lovechild of Lightning Bolt and Sonic Youth – Webcuts Music
“Rocking out in the manner of Holy Fuck covering Hüsker Dü.” – Uncut
“If you’ve a rock bone in your body you’ll froth.” – Welcome to Groove City
“The duo craftexquisite melodies that are completely without peer.” – The Pigeon Post
“Like 50,000 volt jump-cables attached to your nipples whilst sat in a torrential downpour.” – Don’t Panic

Supporting are Umez, a brand-new London-based Japanese duo. Their music seeks to blow your mind artificially and naturally, simultaneously, with two opposing sound, noise and pop.  There’s plenty music on their Soundcloud page, and our favourite track is below.

Doors 7.30
£7 door

The Macbeth
70 Hoxton Street
London N1 6LP
Map here

Rouen has a one-way system the likes of which causes grown men to weep and after driving down many dead-end streets we arrive at Le Shari Vari, and wait for the promoter, because the venue manager doesn’t seem overly interested in letting us in the venue, or even talking to us. Perhaps he is related to Joan of Arc and is still irritated by that burning-at-the-stake thing 500 years ago. Large parts of the city still look like they’re 500 years old, and some of the timber buildings lean so much we commence to feel very sorry indeed for the painters and decorators here.

Wallpapering must be a fucking nightmare.

Marie the promoter arrives with friends and they are a very friendly bunch indeed, and excited to see us, and Marie takes me to the hotel and carpark after we have loaded our gear in, then she and I walk back to the venue where cold beers are waiting, although after just one day on tour I have decided to stop drinking, since the band and Amande Diantre do enough drinking to keep everyone happy, and I hear that driving whilst drunk is not deemed to be appropriate behaviour around these parts.

The venue is a dark, dank cave of a room, with very few lights, and the basement (which serves as our backstage area) is even darker, with even fewer lights and I cannot see how we get out of here with all of our limbs intact tonight. But with a capacity of around 140, standing shoulder to shoulder, and with a PA that almost reaches the ceiling, and with a ceiling that’s barely higher than the floor, the scene is set for a very intimate show. We are also impressed with the light-show, which seems to have been culled from an illegal rave venue in Central Scotland, sometime around 1992.

We are to be fed at a friend of Marie’s and so we walk there, past a colossal cathedral so spectacularly menacing and Gothically foreboding we half-expect to see Batman.

Or Robert Smith.

We dine on raclette cheese, and many vegetables, and some jambon for those so inclined.

The wine flows and Ben and Aaron are in good spirits, posing idiotically for the camera.

Sated, we return from whence we came and prepare for the show. The venue is packed and I get down the front with the camera and to see the laser light-show, ducking out after the fourth track (‘Lights on a Leash’) so that those who have paid to see the show can see it without my mug in the way.

^’Lights on a Leash’

Those who have paid to see the show appear very happy with it (particularly the lads at the front who seem more interested with how the band are making the sounds they’re making than what the sounds they’re making sound like) and the merch stall does a brisk trade.

The venue manager does not seem overly interested in people hanging around his venue once the show is over and we are encouraged to leave, tout de suite, which is fine with us, because we are tired, and after loading out we drive back to the hotel to sleep. Except Ben. Ben does not do this. Ben decides that nothing will do but he must party with Marie the promoter and her friends, and does so, until the early hours of the morning, when he returns and tells his roommate (Aaron) all about the debauchery that has taken place, and which I feel duty-bound to keep from you, in order to protect your delicate sensibilities.

Ah, fuck it:

Back to blogs

Our booking agents – the indomitable Amande Diantre of Julie Tippex and Pierre Templé of La Route du Rock– are hard taskmasters, and have had Civil Civc on the road for what feels (to the band) like decades, but has in fact only been since 6th October in Dublin. I joined them for a short time in Scandinavia just the other week, then got the hell out when things turned violent / depraved in a no-star hotel room in Gothenberg. There’s only so much fisting a man can bear witness to before his stomach begins to churn. And as the band moved south into the mainland, and with Aaron crying on the phone every night, begging me to take over some of the mammoth drives, I relented, taking the TGV from Brussels to Paris.

Ah Paris.

A city that I have no love for, whatsoever.

I arrive into Gare du Nord and walk to the apartment of the good Clémence Godard of Bird on The Wire, who is kindly putting us up for the evening while she heads off to visit family in the countryside. We say our saluts then our À bientôts and I take the Metro to tonight’s venue, La Flèche d’Or, and am greeted by the smiling face of Amande Diantre, and another couple of smiling faces from the venue staff.

Parisians are smiling at me. Something is wrong here.

Ben is asleep on a sofa, Aaron is looking tired.

“We are tired” he says. “Touring is a young man’s game, and a summer pursuit.”

We soundcheck, we go backstage, the drinking begins in earnest. Alcohol is free on tour it seems churlish to resist. I eat a banana, a clementine, and drink a can of beer. It is cold and tastes good. La Flèche d’Or is one of Paris’ most acclaimed venues and we are pleased to be here. The show is being promoted by Mowno, one of the most respected music magazines in France, who like Civil Civic very much.

We have a couple of guests arriving tonight: our friend Flavie, whom we met at the last Paris show in the summer, and the loveable headcase Julien Dodinet, our promoter in Limoges, who has travelled four hours to be here tonight, drink more than everyone else in the room, go more nuts than everyone else in the room, and kiss whoever he can get his hands on, male or female. Dude loves Civil Civic so much it’s almost illegal.

As ever (outside of the UK) the food is hot, hearty and plentiful and we eat well in the staff kitchen – beef stew for the carnivores, vegetable casserole for the non-carnivores – and there is plenty time to walk it off in the streets of the 20th arrondissement.

The room fills up. A lot. And as our stagetime approaches it’s packed. Backstage, Ben and Aaron are weighed down with food, and the toils of the road, of being away from home and its comforts for many weeks, of night after night of unfamiliar hotel beds or promoters’ floors. I don’t know that I have seen them this tired. I go out front, stand by the mixing desk, so I can advise the engineer of any sonic adjustments that he needs to make as the set unfolds, wait, and hope.

They open with ‘It’s Krill’. It’s subtle. The engineer mixes it like he’s in a studio and this, coupled with France’s 105db limit for venues, has me listening to the song in a whole new way. The crowd like it. By the time ‘Streetrap’ arrives, third song, the first two rows are jumping around, led by Julien no doubt.

^’Street Trap’

The crowd  – all the way to the back of the room – bobs their heads appreciatively and after each track a loud cheer goes up. By the end of the set we actually have much of the audience in La Flèche d’Or going wild. I can’t quite believe it. France is our strongest market, sure, but Paris? Going nuts?

Holy shit.

Backstage, the band can’t believe it either.

Beers in hand we repair to the merch stall which Amande Diantre has been (wo)manning all night and find a line of fans waiting to get their shit signed. Ben and Aaron duly sign their shit. Everyone is real nice to us. The next couple of hours are spent hanging around with new friends and old, avoiding Julien’s lecherous groping, packing up, avoiding death on the road outside as we move our gear into the car and finally driving to secure parking, before walking back to our accommodation.

It’s 03.00, we just had Paris going nuts, and everyone was friendly and courteous.

I might need to reconsider my opinion of La Ville-Lumière.

Back to blogs

So aye, like the title says, ‘Rules‘ is released today, on download, vinyl and CD…

“A big old rousing noise” – Q 4/5
“Eagerly awaited debut LP of 10 exhilarating sonic fuzz infused showstoppers that take your breath away. Like being caught in the eye of an adrenalin storm.” – Mixmag Zzub Chart #3“
Phenomenal. One of the most assured, creative and intelligent records this year.”– The Digital Fix  8/10
“Instrumental indie joy” – Guitarist 4.5/5
“Civil Civic really take the wall of sound aesthetic to the next level” – The Needle Drop

Get it here.

It’s quite a landmark for us. Self/fan-funded, self-released (on the band’s Gross Domestic Product label), with a small, dedicated team around us. Hannah Gould taking care of print and online press, Prudence and her team at Rocket PR on radion plugging, Amande Diantre at Julie Tippex putting the tours together…

And me.

Though no-one’s really sure what’s I’m meant to be doing.

Have a listen to ‘Streetrap’ while you ponder that: