Global Financial Crisis?

The Australian Dollar is now below parity with the US.

The front page of the Sydney Morning Herald reads : GFC II on its way

The Economist has published an article looking at the world in 2012 which basically says, "Don't expect much."

Two articles in today's Le Monde are titled: "Laughing in the face of unemployment" and "Sharehousing: A way of life".

Going down.

Husky

How do you find new music that you love?

For me, I feel like you can't really choose to find music that you love. It doesn't work like that. Sure, you can go off the recommendations of your friends, or trawl through your favourite record shop. But really beautiful music, music that marks you, music that curls up, inextricably, inside your happiest memories; there's a sense in which you don't find that type of music. It finds you. It comes to you, I believe, as a gift. [And it need not be music! The same can be said for the experience of finding love, or more accurately, being found by love. How many times do we dress up and put on our best smiles in the hope of finding the one, only to be found when we least expect it?]

I'll never forget sitting in the living room of my apartment in Paris when Stephane plugged his iPod into our system. "You 'ave to listen to zees guys", he said. I was instantly blown away. Two weeks later, I bought tickets to see "zees guys" play at La Cigale in Montmartre. They were supported by the then-unknown-to-me St Vincent. During their set, they casually brought out Feist to help sing that song that Stephane had played me two weeks earlier. It was a concert by which all other concerts that I attend are now measured. "zees guys" were, of course, Grizzly Bear. Their music touched me then, and I cannot listen it now without thinking of the very first time I heard them in that Paris living room all those years ago.

Well... I first heard of Melbourne band Husky through Triple J. So accustomed to filtering out the bad teenie-rock, heavily-synthed-pop and over-friendly dj banter that plague that radio station, Husky's music cut through. It was transporting. I had to know more about them.

It turns out Husky have just released their first album. The below clip is a video posted on their website which documents the making of the album in their make-shift home studio. The video is set to the final track on that album, a song called "Farewell (In 3 parts)". I have listened to it pretty much non-stop for the last week. It is achingly beautiful.

The nervous admission of, "There's a lot we didn't say, wasn't there, Josephine?"

And the devastating truth of the final line: "If you sleep to long the world might wake up without you."

Can't wait to hear more from these guys.

Enjoy.
 

Shut down. Fit in.

Hey cuz. Hey bro.

New Zealand's anti drink driving advertisements have come a long way over the years.

Not sure if any of you remember the "Drunk Uncle" ad, but it certainly seemed to break through just about every shock barrier in an attempt to get people's attention. It certainly begged the question, if they have to show a small child being thrown against a wall and then slumping lifeless to the floor in order to get people's attention, how bad is New Zealand's drinking problem?

Well, if this latest anti drinking advertisement is anything to go by, it appears things have improved a little in the land of the long white cloud. It's practically a short film festival entry.

Check it out.

Ps. Is it just me, or does it sound like they are taking the piss with their accents? Deadset, he sounds like Rangi from Footrot Flats.
Pps. I resisted the temptation to write "taking the puss" above... which is commendable.
Ppps. But then I gave in.