🇦🇺 AU · Australia · Chapter 6 of 7
The Contemporary Scene: The Australian Indie that Conquered the World (2000–today)
In the early 2000s, Australia had something that no other English-speaking country had to the same extent: an independent public radio that acted as an arbiter of alternative musical taste with an influence disproportionate to its size.
Triple J — the national radio station of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aimed at young audiences — had built since the eighties a completely alternative musical ecosystem to the commercial mainstream: it programmed unknown Australian artists alongside the best of global indie, and its Hottest 100 — the annual poll where listeners vote for the best songs of the year — became the most respected barometer of young Australian musical taste.
That ecosystem produced something extraordinary: a generation of Australian artists who had been shaped by the demanding taste of Triple J and who, when they went out into the world, carried with them a musical sophistication that commercial pop rarely had.
Gotye: The Global Anomaly
Wouter André "Wally" De BackerGotye — was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1980 and moved to Australia at the age of two with his family. He had been releasing music in Australia since 2001, but his first major recognition came with his second album, Like Drawing Blood, which was voted the best album of 2006 by Triple J listeners.
What no one predicted was what happened with his third album. "Somebody That I Used to Know" was written, recorded, and filmed by Gotye at his parents' house on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria.
The song was an anomaly among its contemporaries. It deviated from the pop formula, defined at that time by heavy bass production and short choruses built by three or more songwriters. Gotye is the only one credited as writer and producer.
Holding the top spot for eight consecutive weeks, "Somebody That I Used to Know" topped charts in 26 countries and spent 59 weeks on the Hot 100. At the 2013 Grammys, Gotye won all three of his nominations, including Record of the Year, which was presented to him by Prince.
Gotye's story is also the story of the anomaly that did not want to be repeated: after the massive success, he practically disappeared from the public radar, returned to his previous life and to smaller projects. He was honest about the fact that the level of exposure of "Somebody That I Used to Know" was not what he wanted for his life. That decision — choosing integrity over fame — is also perfectly Australian.
Tame Impala: The Solitary Genius of Perth
Kevin ParkerTame Impala — was born in 1986 in Sydney but grew up in Perth, the most isolated city in the world of its size, on the western edge of the continent. That isolation — Perth is closer to Southeast Asia than to Sydney — is heard in his music: some of the loneliness of vast spaces, some of the music made without an immediate audience because the audience is too far away.
Tame Impala is the psychedelic music project of Australian singer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker. In the recording studio, Parker writes, records, performs, and produces all the music for the project.
What Parker did in his home studio in Fremantle — the coastal suburb of Perth where he set up his sound lab — was to build album by album one of the most consistent and influential projects in alternative music of the 21st century:
Innerspeaker (2010) — the debut: psychedelic rock with reverb and textures from the sixties, produced with a precision that no one expected from a twenty-four-year-old in a home studio in Perth.
Lonerism (2012) — the consolidation: more complex, more melancholic, with layers of synthesis and production that pushed psychedelic rock into territories the genre hadn't explored since the seventies.
Currents (2015) — the masterpiece: the turn towards synth-pop and R&B, without losing the psychedelic essence, producing the album that "The Less I Know the Better" summarized in three minutes and thirty-nine seconds of perfect psychedelic disco-funk.
"The Less I Know the Better" appeared on Currents, the album that reached the Top 5 on both sides of the Atlantic, debuted at number one in Australia, and won several awards including a BRIT for best international group.
Parker's influence on contemporary pop music is enormous and largely invisible: he produces for The Weeknd, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Travis Scott, Mark Ronson — his sonic signature is on records the world listens to without knowing that behind them is a man from Perth with an obsession for seventies analog synthesizers.
Flume: Electronics from Sydney
Harley Edward StretenFlume — was born in Sydney in 1991 and at nineteen won a Triple J producer contest that launched him directly into the center of the Australian electronic scene. His debut album Flume (2012) — produced entirely in his room in Sydney — was the first electronic music album to win the ARIA Award for Album of the Year.
What distinguished Flume from American and European EDM of his time was a melodic delicacy and attention to timbral detail that came from growing up listening to both dance music and Triple J's alternative indie. His productions were both danceable and headphone-listenable — a difficult balance to achieve that few producers of his generation reached.
The Australian EDM artist Flume had the most appearances in the Hottest 100 of the Decade, with four original songs, two remixes, and one collaboration.
Vance Joy: The Folk Pop of the Eternal Summer
James Gabriel KeoghVance Joy — was born in Melbourne in 1987. His song "Riptide" (2013) — recorded in a Melbourne apartment with ukulele, guitar, and minimal production — became one of the most extraordinary viral phenomena of folk pop in the 2010s: a song that started circulating on Triple J and ended up being number one in multiple countries and the background theme of countless weddings and graduations throughout the English-speaking world.
"Riptide" has the specific quality of songs that sound as if they have always existed: a ukulele melody so natural that no one can believe someone composed it in a Melbourne apartment in 2013.
Courtney Barnett: The Poet of the Everyday
Courtney Barnett — born in Sydney in 1987 — is the artist who most completely represents the tradition of Australian indie with literary quality in the 21st century: songs about everyday life in Melbourne — an apartment that needs painting, a walk through the shopping mall, a visit to the doctor — with an observational precision and humor that critics repeatedly compared to the early Lou Reed.
Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015) was one of the most praised debuts of global indie in the 2010s: songs that sounded as if someone were thinking out loud, with guitar riffs powerful enough to anchor the observation in something that could also be danced to.
Australiana: The Term Nobody Needed
In the 2010s, music critics and journalists began using the term "Australiana" to describe a specific stream of Australian folk and indie that took the tradition of the bush ballad — the landscape, the isolation, the specific harshness of the interior — and processed it through contemporary production.
Angus & Julia Stone, Paul Kelly, Courtney Barnett, Alex Lahey: artists who sound specifically Australian without needing explicit folklore, who carry the continent's landscape in the texture of their music even if they sing about Melbourne apartments or Sydney cafes.
Editorial note: Kevin Parker recorded Currents — the album that reached number one in Australia, the Top 5 in the United States and the United Kingdom, and which The Guardian chose as the best album of 2015 — in his home studio in Fremantle, Perth. Not in Los Angeles. Not in London. In Fremantle, Perth, which is geographically the most isolated place in the world of its size. The isolation was part of the process: without industry pressure, without executive producers looking over his shoulder, without the obligation to sound like what was trending at the time. 21st-century Australian indie is also the story of isolation as an advantage: the distance from the center that allows you to invent your own center.
10 · 2 en DoReSol
Top 10 of the Contemporary Australian Scene
Somebody That I Used To Know
Gotye · 2011
Number one in 26 countries. Recorded at the parents' house on the Mornington Peninsula. Three Grammys including Record of the Year. The most extraordinary Australian pop anomaly of the 21st century.
Currents (album)
Tame Impala · 2015
The most influential alternative rock album of the 2010s. Kevin Parker in his Fremantle studio inventing the psychedelic synth-pop that the entire industry would later adopt.
The Less I Know the Better
Tame Impala · 2015
One billion streams. The most voted song of the Hottest 100 of the Decade. The psychedelic disco-funk from Perth that no one expected and everyone embraced.
Riptide
Vance Joy · 2013
The ukulele song that played at every wedding in the English-speaking world. Australian folk pop in its most viral and genuinely emotional version.
Flume (album)
Flume · 2012
The first electronic music album to win the ARIA Award for Album of the Year. A teenager from Sydney in his room inventing the Australian electronic sound.
Never Be Like You
Flume ft. Kai · 2016
Flume's most listened single. Australian electronic music with the melodic delicacy that distinguishes it from American and European EDM.
Pedestrian at Best
Courtney Barnett · 2015
The most literarily ambitious Australian indie. Barnett thinking out loud about Melbourne with guitar riffs that anchor the observation in something physically irresistible.
Big Jet Plane
Angus & Julia Stone · 2010
21st-century Australian folk in its brightest version. The Stone brothers capturing the spirit of the Australian summer in three minutes of guitar and perfect harmonies.
Making Mirrors (album)
Gotye · 2011
The album that contained "Somebody That I Used to Know". The complete document of an artist who was more interesting than his most popular hit — which is rare and extraordinary.
Sometimes I Sit and Think (album)
Courtney Barnett · 2015
The debut that critics compared to the first Lou Reed. The poetry of everyday life in Melbourne as high art. The proof that Australia can produce world-class singer-songwriters without needing pub rock or synth-pop.
Next and final chapter — Australia Series: Modern Indigenous Voices — Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, Gurrumul, and contemporary Aboriginal music that connects the past with the present.
The full series
Australia
Pub rock, didgeridoo, Melbourne indie and Aboriginal sound. A musical continent of its own.
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CAP 01
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Aboriginal Music: The World's Oldest Musical Tradition (65,000 years–today)
When scientists speak of the oldest human culture that has survived
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CAP 02
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The Colonial Roots and Folk: The Song that Built a Nation (1788–1960)
On January 26, 1788, eleven ships anchored in Sydney Cove with 1,487 people on board: sailors, soldiers, officials, and 775 convicts deported from Great Britain. It was the First F
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The Australian Rock First Era: The Thunder from the South (1973–1980)
In the seventies, Australia had a unique nighttime entertainment system in the English-speaking world: the **pubs** — Australian bars licensed to present live music — were legally
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CAP 04
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The Australian Rock Second Era: The Generation that Conquered the World (1980–1995)
In 1988, two Australian bands were at the center of international rock at the same time — and they represented two completely opposing philosophies on how to be Australian in the w
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Australian Pop: The Icon Factory of the South Pacific (1970–2000)
Australia has a specific tradition in international pop that no other country in the English-speaking world has replicated with such consistency: the female artist who begins as a
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CAP 06 you are here
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The Contemporary Scene: The Australian Indie that Conquered the World (2000–today)
In the early 2000s, Australia had something that no other English-speaking country had to the same extent: an independent public radio that acted as an arbiter of alternative music
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CAP 07
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The Modern Indigenous Voices: The Song that Did Not Fall Silent (1964–today)
During the first one hundred and fifty years of European colonization, Australian Aboriginal music was systematically suppressed: ceremonies were banned, children were taken from t
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