Australian band Boy and Bear accept the award for Best Album at the 25th Anniversary ARIA Awards 2011 in Sydney, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011. The ARIA Awards recognise the achievements of Australian artists across all music genres. (AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy)
IT will be a simple process for Boy and Bear to share out their awards haul after the Sydney band dominated the 2011 ARIA Awards.
The folk five-piece made it five awards on the night, including the coveted Best Group and Best Album ARIAs for their acclaimed debut Moonfire.
The record was also named Best Adult Contemporary Album and Breakthrough Album, while its first single Feeding Line won the Breakthrough Single award.
Peaking at number two on the album chart in August, the overnight ARIA success of Moonfire is now likely to herald an overseas release.
Boy and Bear members Dave Hosking, Jake Tarasenko, Killian Gavin, Tim Hart and Jon Hart confirmed they would be taking an ARIA each, after joking on the red carpet they would split the trophy in five if they were lucky enough to win one.
“Tonight has raised the bar a little higher than we expected,” Hosking said after the band collected all five awards.
“But honestly we are completely grateful and to be frank it’s a privilege to be playing music for a living and we don’t forget that. We just love what we do.”
A more predictable outcome was three awards for Gotye, who won Best Male, Best Pop Release and Best Single for his chart topping single Somebody That I Used to Know.
The song spent eight weeks at the top earlier this year to become the most successful Australian number one since Savage Garden in 1997.
Gotye collected the Best Single award alongside Kimbra who features on the song.
“Thank you to everybody for just listening to the song that we made, I think that’s the greatest thanks I can give because I’m always excited by that,” Gotye said after receiving the award.
Kimbra, who thanked Gotye for “making me part of this amazing trip”, was named Best Female in her own right after shaking off competition from previous winners Claire Bowditch and Megan Washington.
The New Zealand-born singer teamed up with Gotye to perform Somebody That I Used to Know in a television first, while other stand out performances included a duet between Missy Higgins and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu.
The Living End added two more trophies to the cabinet with a Best Rock Album win for their sixth record The End is Just the Beginning Repeating and the award for Most Popular Australian Live Act.
Kasey Chambers slipped past husband Shane Nicholson to win Best Country Album, while Art vs. Science capped off a stellar year taking out Best Independent Release.
Despite receiving seven nominations, rapper Drapht made it just the one ARIA win for Best Urban Album, an improvement for the hip hop fraternity at least after Guy Sebastian won the category last year.
Sebastian still managed to walk away with the Highest Selling Single award for Who’s The Girl, featuring Eve, and P!nk won the ARIA for Most Popular International Act.
Kylie Minogue and The Wiggles were the latest Aussie stars inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, with Minogue later taking a swipe at critics from the early days of her career.
Passed greats were remembered, most prominently Billy Thorpe, with his family collecting the first ever posthumous ARIA for his album, Tangier.
Singer Delta Goodrem performed a moving tribute to the Australian artists who have passed away during a quarter century of ARIA Awards.