| Weekend | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by Underground Lovers | ||||
| Released | 5 April 2013 | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 46:34 | |||
| Label | Rubber | |||
| Producer | Glenn Bennie, Vincent Giarrusso, Wayne Connolly | |||
| Underground Lovers chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Herald Sun |   |
| The Age | |
| Sunday Herald Sun |  |
| The Courier-Mail | |
Weekend is the seventh studio album by Australian indie rock/electronic band Underground Lovers, the band's first after a 12-year hiatus. It followed a reunion for Sydney and Melbourne performances at the 2009 Homebake festival and the release of their 2011 retrospective album, Wonderful Things. A Rubber Records media release said: "This led to sporadic carefully selected shows and the realisation that the band still had something to say."
Indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1970s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock. As grunge and punk revival bands in the US and Britpop bands in the UK broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, some indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments and circuitry-based music technology. In general, a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means, and that produced using electronics only. Electromechanical instruments include mechanical elements, such as strings, hammers, and so on, and electric elements, such as magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, and the electric guitar, which are typically made loud enough for performers and audiences to hear with an instrument amplifier and speaker cabinet. Pure electronic instruments do not have vibrating strings, hammers, or other sound-producing mechanisms. Devices such as the theremin, synthesizer, and computer can produce electronic sounds.
Underground Lovers, are an Australian indie rock and electronic music band. The founding mainstays are Glenn Bennie and Vincent Giarrusso who had formed the group as GBVG, in 1988. By May 1990 the duo were renamed as Underground Lovers and joined by Richard Andrew (drums), Maurice Argiro and Philippa Nihill.
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"The moment we got back together it clicked", lyricist and vocalist Vincent Giarrusso told The Courier-Mail. "We did one rehearsal, we had six or seven song ideas and we went to the studio to record them. The first four songs on the album are from that initial recording and some of those are first takes. The song 'Can For Now', what you are hearing is the first time we played it." The band also reunited with producer Wayne Connolly, producer of their 1997 album Ways T' Burn, to get the guitar sounds they wanted. [5]
Wayne Connolly is an Australian producer/engineer and musician. Throughout the 1990s, Connolly played in Sydney band, The Welcome Mat, with whom he released a series of critically acclaimed albums and EPs on the Waterfront Records, Regular Records and id/Mercury labels. In 1994, he formed Knievel with Tracy Ellis and Nick Kennedy, who went on to release five albums and a series of singles on various labels in Australia, the United States and Japan including Murmur, Citadel Records and Albert Music. Knievel achieved high rotation on Triple J, toured locally and abroad, and supported acts such as Luna, Teenage Fanclub, Death Cab for Cutie and The Pernice Brothers.
Giarrusso said the album was inspired by the energy of director Jean-Luc Godard's 1960s cinema hit Weekend , and Godard's film was used in their video for "Au Pair".
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the 1960s French New Wave film movement.
Weekend is a 1967 black comedy film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard and starring Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne, both of whom were mainstream French TV stars. Jean-Pierre Léaud, comic star of numerous French New Wave films including Truffaut's Les Quatre Cent Coups and Godard's earlier Masculin Féminin, appeared in two roles. Raoul Coutard served as cinematographer; Weekend was his last collaboration with Godard for over a decade.
