Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Music
Indigenous music has been one of the Australian music industry's great success stories of
recent years, and Queensland has produced some outstanding Indigenous musicians.
Christine Anu is a Torres Strait Islander who was born in Cairns. Her debut album,
Stylin'
Up
(1995), blends Creole-style rap, Islander chants and traditional languages with English,
and was followed by the interesting
Come My Way
(2000) and
45 Degrees
(2003) - highly
recommended listening. Ever evolving, she even released a colourful children's album
Chrissy's Island Family
(2007).
Brisbane's pub-rock scene has produced a couple of Australia's all-time greatest bands.
The Saints, considered by many to be one of the seminal punk bands (and oft quoted as a
founding inspiration for the Seattle grunge movement of the 1990s), began performing in
Brisbane in the mid-1970s before moving on to bigger things in Sydney and, later, London.
Their 1976 single,
I'm Stranded,
was a high-water mark for the band.
More recently, the iconic Brisbane band Powderfinger - a five-piece melodic rock outfit
- played a dominant role in the Australian music industry from the 1990s until their break-
up in 2010. Sing-along anthems and angelic-but-grunty guitar riffs define their classic al-
bums such as the breakthrough
Double Allergic
(1996);
Odyssey Number Five
(2000);
Vul-
ture Street
(2003); their best-of album,
Fingerprints
(2004); and their last hurrah,
Golden
Rule
(2009). They played their final concert in Brisbane in late 2010 before a crowd of
10,000. Critics were left scratching their heads as to why the band failed to harness a
broader international audience. Lead singer Bernard Fanning has also released two solo al-
bums,
Tea and Sympathy
(2005) and
Departures
(2013).
The Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) award-winning debut album
Polys-
erena
(2002) by Queensland band George is deliciously haunting. Katie Noonan (George's
acclaimed lead singer) went on to release her first solo album
Skin
in 2007. She's worked
on myriad collaborative recordings and performances since then, including projects with
jazzy trio Elixir.
Another star hailing from the Sunshine State is Pete Murray. He looks more like a rugby
player than a sensitive lyricist, but his beachy acoustic licks and chocolate-smooth voice
have earned him national and international acclaim. His debut,
Feeler
(2003), and more re-
cent offerings
See the Sun
(2005)
, Summer at Eureka
(2008) and
Blue Sky Blue
(2013) are
all summer-sweet listens.
