(ABC/Warner Music)

Still hot after all these years

With over 500,000 votes registered this year, Triple J’s annual audience survey of music over the previous 12 months is the largest of its sort in the world. But, better than that, it’s become its own kind of national party over the Australia Day weekend. For the double CD of the event, they’ve trimmed the songs down to 43, but it’s still a solid selection, including all of the first 14 placegetters. And there’s heaps of in-the-moment names to keep you occupied, from openers and overall winners Muse to closers PNAU. Over half the acts are Australian, including Kisschasy, Faker, Cog and Cut Copy (and very few Americans, I see, some exceptions being Foo Fighters, Modest Mouse and Lupe Fiasco). But from current buzz bands like Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs and Cold War Kids to older hands like Kings Of Leon, John Butler Trio and The Chemical Brothers, the temperature rarely drops. If you want a one-stop look at what happened musically last year, this’ll do the job quite nicely. By the way, I went back to that very first collection in 1993 and found only one band in this year’s – Radiohead. Is that what you call generational change?

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BILL HOLDSWORTH

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