Ned Collette - vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Ben Bourke - electric bass, backing vocals
Joe Talia - drums, backing vocals
Contact: Label/Promo/Press: angela@remotecontrolrecords.com.au
Australian Bookings: adam@mobileindustries.com.au European Bookings: froeken@hotmail.de
Everything Else: mail@nedcollette.com
Ned on Twitter:
The Country With A Smile on ABC television in May 2008, with special guests Shags on synths, Belinda Woods flute, Kynan Robinson trombone and Eamon McNelis trumpet:
and acoustic, shot on the streets of Sydney by our pals Amelia and Jonathan at Shoot The Player...
The Laughter Across The Street recorded on the same day...
MISTLETONIA:
The folks at Mistletone Records did us the honour of asking us to contribute to their Yuletide inspired compilation CD. It's great - find out more by clicking here
Sounds Like
Ned Collette - Future Suture
(Dot Dash)
"Over this last summer I saw Ned Collette open for Wheat at the Empty Bottle here in Chicago. It’s a fun venue but a lousy place to be an opening band, especially if you happen to be an unknown singer-songwriter opening for a marginal pop band on a weeknight. There were two dozen people in the place and most of them didn’t much care about the lanky Australian guy up onstage with the looping pedals. I was half-distracted by the bar chatter but mostly just blown away by Collette. I loved his debut, last year’s Jokes & Trials (still inexplicably unavailable in this country), and was expecting something light, sometimes funny, and vaguely lovesick along those lines. But what he was playing at the show were longer, wordier, and stranger numbers. The darkness and melancholy was palpable and startling.
The show reminded me quite a lot of seeing Joanna Newsom playing solo at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn a few months before Ys (2006) came out. Collette, who has toured with Newsom, has that same emotional intensity and incisive way with words. But where Newsom has the air of some eerie lost folk musician of the early ‘70s, Collette brings to mind nothing so much as the austerity and beauty of early Leonard Cohen. He can do wordy and mysterious (“Forty Children”), but he doesn’t shy away from bluntness when it’s called for (“Ned’s Dream”). He is anachronistic, possibly, but in the best ways.
What comes as a surprise about Future Suture, then, is not the sheer imposing genius of the lyrics and the general gloominess of the album, but how goddamn great this record is to listen to. Like Newsom he has upped the instrumental ante for his sophomore record; unlike her, he’s gone classic rock. Aaron Newell’s right about the Dungen-like air to some of this, even if to me it sounds more like Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) if Cohen had actually liked all the parts that weren’t just vocals and guitar. But what’s most important is that Collette isn’t just layering shit on to expand his sound. The arrangements make internal and conceptual sense so that there’s nothing tacked-on or unnecessary about the horns on “Race,” those big, warm, fuzzy synth lines on the gorgeous “The Country With a Smile,” or the drums anywhere on this album. Every listen seems to bring out something new; every listen and I love this album more." www.cokemachineglow.com
"Diverse and inspired... Future Suture pushes Collette’s writing to unexpected territory,
offering wonderful new vistas with each track" **** Rolling Stone
"A romantic and gothic shift away from pinky-plunky folk, to something with more attitude and a lot more sex appeal" **** Music Australia Guide
"One of the most distinctive voices in Australia" Drum Syd (live review)
“In 10, 15 years time, people will still be talking about the impact ‘Future Suture’ had on their lives, musicians will be rattling off Ned’s name as freely as they do with Dylan, Lennon and Wilson” 9.5/10 Tsunami
"The chances of it being the best Australian album released this year are exceptionally high” Inpress
“Collette’s talent is one to be treasured and this record does it the justice it deserves” Drum Syd
“There is life in this album, a vision that you could call beautiful” Drum Perth
“There’s a laconic simplicity to [Future Suture] that is almost certainly harder to achieve than it sounds.” The Age (Melbourne) Magazine
"Future Suture is a thought provoking addition to a career that appears to have no limitations or forseeable end" Beat
Praise For Jokes & Trials:
"Through this setting Collette's voice sails like a paper airplane -- a throaty, folksy tour guide, pointing out trainstops and heartbreaks and navigating an immense emotional grey area. He populates his songs with strange and sometimes sad characters… and then watches them bump into one another in a consistent, quaint geography. Imagine a wry Robert Altman romance set in a New Zealand fishing village." www.cokemachineglow.com
'Plays like all your favourite acoustic pauses burnt to one disc” Sunday Age
“Listening to Ned Collette is like falling in love” Drum (Perth)
“A voice that can break hearts at a hundred paces” Drum Sydney
“An album that is every bit intriguing as it is plainly beautiful” Big Issue
Ned Collette & Wirewalker generally reside in Melbourne. The band have toured recently in Europe and Ned followed that up with a solo tour in January. He also spent a couple of months in bed in Glasgow, occasionally crawling over to the desk to write and/or smoke.
Work on album number three - the first one all together - continues in earnest at the moment and there will be no shows until that's done. Plans are underway for a return to Europe and Australians can expect some appearances before the year is out. Stay tuned.
Ned's second album Future Suture came out in Australia on the interstellar Dot Dash label in October 2007 and is available in stores via Inertia distribution. In New Zealand it is available on Dot Dash through Rhythmethod. You can also get it from the following overseas retailers:
London, UK: Rough Trade (both stores) and via their mail order. Austin Texas, USA: Waterloo and via their mail order.
Everywhere else you'll have to be a bit resourceful - use the internet - you are using it right now. The surest bet if you are having trouble is to order it direct from Dot Dash in Australia.
You can download the album from iTunes with bonus tracks from the first EP by clicking this button.
The first album, Jokes and Trials, came out in 2006 and is available in Oz/NZ stores, by mail order from Dot Dash or click this button. It is available in the UK and Europe through Forte Music Distribution. There might still be a second hand copy in Other Music in New York.
Ned's version of TV On The Radio's "Hours" was commissioned in 2006 by COKEMACHINEGLOW.COM for their inaugural Fantasy Covers Podcast. You can hear it there or purchase it properly mastered as a single (with exclusive B-side) from iTunes - do a search for that one.
His first EP, "Test Patterns" ('04) has now been repressed and is available to buy only at shows or from HIS WEBSITE.
launching 'The Disambiguation Of Anonymeye', out now on sound&fury records (www.soundandfury.com.au)
MELBOURNE LAUNCHES
Wed 24 June Stutter @ Horse Bazaar (Lt. Lonsdale St, City) with ii, Automating, DJ Christina Tester $7/5, 8pm www.myspace.com/stuttermelb
Sat 27 June Castle Tones @ Edinburgh Castle (Sydney Rd, Brunswick) with Je Suis Animal (Norway), Ned Collette & Wirewalker, Kes Trio, Laura Jean Trio, Lee Memorial, Jessica Says, Dick Diver, The Twerps, Francis Plagne, Minature Submarines, Scott & Charlene's Wedding $16+bf/$18 door, 3pm-midnight www.mistletone.net
Everyone at indiecater records would like to wish you a happy summer and let you know that there is an indiepop song from the Very Most available to download FREE from our site!
mr. collette, how are you doin ? haven..t heard from you since a while and wonder if there are some new informations, results & other nice things you..d like to tell me ? :-) yours sincerly, fröken sandra.
looks like we're both playing castle tones, which is cool!
andrew
New Anonymeye album ‘The Disambiguation Of Anonymeye’, featuring collaborations with Seaworthy and Mirrored Silver Sea, out Monday May 18 on sound&fury (www.soundandfury.com.au). First 50 pre-orders from s&f webshop also receive a bonus 3” CDR of exclusive material including collaborations with ii and Marisa Allen (Bremen Town Musician).
