An Anthology of Australian Albums: Critical Engagements

(Paperback)

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An Anthology of Australian Albums offers an overview of Australian popular music through the lens of significant, yet sometimes overlooked, Australian albums. Chapters explore the unique qualities of each album within a broader history of Australian popular music. Artists covered range from the older and non-mainstream yet influential, such as the Missing Links, Wendy Saddington and the Coloured Balls, to those who have achieved very recent success (Courtney Barnett, Dami Im and Flume) and whose work contributes to international pop music (Sia), to the more exploratory or experimental (Curse ov Dialect and A.B. Original). Collectively the albums and artists covered contribute to a view of Australian popular music through the non-canonical, emphasizing albums by women, non-white artists and Indigenous artists, and expanding the focus to include genres outside of rock including hip hop, black metal and country.

Reviews

[It] provides a timely collection of rural, urban and even national shifts that perversely reveals parallel changes in what constitutes the mainstream. * Popular Music History *
An Anthology of Australian Albums: Critical Engagements is a welcome addition to the growing body of work that examines Australian popular music from a critical and scholarly perspective ... a valuable contribution to the literature on Australian popular music. It illustrates a remarkable variety of Australian popular music across its history, particularly in the past decade, and is useful for providing general scholarly insight to a multidisciplinary audience of popular music scholars. Given that it does not feature detailed music analysis and is written in a straightforward academic tone, it would also be useful in promoting discussion of any of the albums featured, as well as the general development and current landscape of Australian popular music, in both scholarly and classroom contexts. * Context *
Girl meets boy; girl meets girl, girls beat boys; hippies to hip-hop, brothers to others... The close readings of Australian albums since 1965 here show how work in these force fields plays out. Enjoy these symptoms, this creativity and attitude! * Peter Beilharz, Professor of Critical Theory, Sichuan University, China, and Professor of Culture and Society, Curtin University, Australia *
One of those publications that, when it appears, causes the reaction, 'Fantastic! - about time there was a book on this!' And what a welcome publication it is: stellar authors celebrating, with scholarly rigour, the diversity and dynamism of Australia's landmark rock/post-punk/metal rock/electronica/Indigenous hip-hop (and beyond) albums over the last half-century, with particular focus on developments in the new millennium. * Linda Kouvaras, Associate Professor of Music, University of Melbourne, Australia *
Here is a collection of essays that opens readers' ears to the history of popular music in Australia. It's not the reinforcement of a canon (there's no AC/DC here), but rather an eclectic playlist aimed at broadening our understanding of the Australian music industry, its musicians and its audiences, from 1965 to the present day. * Sarah Hill, Senior Lecturer in Music, Cardiff University, UK *

Author Bio

Jon Dale is a writer and researcher based in Melbourne, Australia. He teaches across a number of fields (popular music, experimental writing, media studies, criminology, sociology, screen studies) at a number of institutions. He also writes for the English music magazine Uncut, and contributes liner notes and essays to a number of record labels and other publications. He is currently working on several books about DIY and post-punk music, and texts on experimental film and diary film making. He also runs the record labels Tristes Tropiques and Rose Hobart. Jon Stratton is Adjunct Professor in the School of Creative Industries at the University of South Australia. His most recent publications include Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 (edited with Nabeel Zuberi, 2014) and When Music Migrates: Crossing British and European Racial Faultlines 1945-2010 (2014). Tony Mitchell is an honorary research associate at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania (1994), editor of Global Noise: Rap and Hip hop outside the USA (2001), co-editor of North Meets South: Popular Music in Aotearoa New Zealand (2004), Sounds of Then, Sounds of Now: Popular Music in Australia (2007), Home, Land and Sea: Situating Music in Aotearoa New Zealand (2011) and Sounds Icelandic (2017).