The Blackmail » Music

Kudos Indeed

gabe — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:01:07 +0000

Text: Digby Woods Images: Surf City

New Zealand ‘surf-rock’ band Surf City has had quite an interesting time since their debut EP dropped in 2007. They opened for the likes of Interpol (whom they stole pizza from), Dinosaur Jr (who said they were, to quote Lou Barlow, “good guys”) and MGMT (who apparently are a lot more complex than previously thought), and played a slew of gigs including The Big Day Out, The Laneway Festival and SXSW in the States. Now, this Kiwi foursome is set to release their debut LP, Kudos. If that was what happened after their EP dropped, I’d hold onto your hat for what comes next.

Digby Woods: Was it a bummer having to change your name after the conflict with the Scottish band of same name, or were you not really fussed about it?

Davin Stoddard:Yeah, it was a bummer to change the name because we liked it. Probably the worst part about it was going to the whole process of getting signed to a record label and then getting a lawyer and all that sort of crap, going like, “You gotta change your name, you don’t want them coming down and doing this.” So we were just said OK, just did what we were told like good little boys, and it ended up being Surf City.

DW: Do you ever try and emulate the sound of a certain favourite band or song, like, ‘I really like Animal Collective’s Grass, let’s try and use that kind of melody for Dickshakers Union‘?

DS: Yeah probably, I mean, it happens. You’re just jamming around and it’s what comes out of your mouth, and then you’re like, “Oh shit, we’re going to have to go with it now.” It happens a fair bit. Maybe we’re just not terribly original (laughs).

DW: Do you have any non-musical influences that have had a particular impact on your music?

DS: I don’t know necessarily on the music itself. Myself, it would be skateboarding, doing things like that. Reading, stuff like Robert Anton Wilson and other various pretentious writers (laughs). I don’t know, just like television and films, I can’t think of anything in particular.

DW: Though affiliations with the genre of surf-rock can be literally interpreted from your name, do you identify with the genre at all?

DS: I like the idea of surf-rock, but now it’s become a by-word for whatever’s fashionable at the moment, like you’ve got a thousand bands that are named after surf-inspired somethings. I don’t know, it feels like I wish we had a different name because of that, it’s become so chic. Guitars sound pretty surfy though, so there’s no way of really denying it.

DW: When your EP came out in 2007, everyone proclaimed you as having a stripped-back, lo-fi surf-rock sound. Now with Kudos, there is a distinct element of reverb-driven echo-y sonic-rock, like Spacemen 3 crossed with Sonic Youth, in particular with tracks like Icy Lakes, Yakuza Park and Autumn. What prompted the turn toward this more distortion-y sound?

DS: I don’t know, eh? You’re probably just sitting there and you always wanted to make it sound a bit more grunty. I was listening to a lot of The Boredoms at the time, still am. I think they were one of the bands that as a collective we’d like to sound like, that we were influenced by.

DW: OK, this is an obvious question but necessary. Your style of production, your song-writing process, mixing, etc. How does it all start and then come together?

DS: Pretty much we just do it all at home, we’ve got a computer set-up, we bought a bunch of gear, some monitors, borrowed some mics here and there, and we’d just kind of get together and would do it whenever we could. At the time I wasn’t working, so I would spend a lot of time during the day, Jamie wasn’t working either, but the other two were, so we’d record stuff at night, record some drums on the weekend, work on those over the week. We tried mixing with a few other people but that didn’t work out like we thought, so we just ended up mixing it ourselves and then got some guy to master it.

DW: Was it the same kind of production for the EP as for Kudos?

DS: We used less mics on the EP, which was just because that was all that was available to us. This time we had a little more money to buy a few more things. We had these big ideas of recording an album in a week but we ended up not liking any of the songs we had, so that was aborted. So then we started again with what we had and just built on those.

DW: Why didn’t you like the first batch of songs?

DS: They just sounded too clean, almost too normal, like normal rock songs. Not that I have anything against that, like the structures on this record are definitely normal pop structures. It was just the sound that didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to.

DW: With songwriting, is it a collaborative process or does only one of you write the songs?

DS: Sometimes it can be one person, but a lot of it is just me and Jamie doing quite a lot of the songwriting and the structures, but then a lot of the time we can take that and put it on the computer and then work on it as a band.

DW: What about with lyrics?

DS: I’ll usually just sit down with a tune and just mumble stuff into a microphone and then listen back to it and try to make words out of it. Sometimes I write them beforehand, but not too often.

DW: The lyrics seem to be clearer on the EP compared to Kudos. Was this intentional?

DS: I don’t think so, although I did listen to it the other day and thought, “Oh shit, you can’t hear a word I’m saying (laughs).” I don’t know if it was a mistake or not, but there’s the possibility I would’ve turned up the vocals a little more had I listened to it now. But I’m still happy with how it sounds.

DW: Are lyrics then of secondary importance compared to the songs’ melodic and rhythmic structure?

DS: Yeah, it probably would be. Melody and rhythm is where it’s at.

DW: Are there any bands or musicians or even things in general at the moment that you think are particularly damaging to people’s ears and/or minds, maybe like Kesha or something?

DS: (Laughs) I don’t know if I should even say this, I’ll probably get in trouble for it, but things like Vampire Weekend, I just don’t really understand why they’re so popular. The blogosphere can be quite harrowing at times if you look. It’s one of those things where I should really try not to do it, but then sometimes you go have a look at this blog or that blog, and you look at the comments section and you’re like, “Oh my god!” (laughs). I’ve decided with this record I’m going to do my best not to look at any of the reviews whatsoever, because you’re either going to get real pumped up on yourself or real down on yourself and it just seems pointless.

DW: MTV described your sound as “surf, rock and electro with a smidgen of MGMT-style complexity”. Are such descriptions accurate in your eyes, or do you think they’re simply over-analysing?

DS: (Laughs) Yeah, it must be over-analysing. MGMT complexity sounds pretty funny. I heard their last record and it was pretty all over the place. Hopefully we’re not that complex. I always thought we were just ‘verse, chorus, verse, chorus’, you know, not that complex.

DW: Not that New Zealand isn’t an awesome place, but given the state of the indie music scene there at the moment, is it a scramble for bands like yourself to try and escape and make a viable living elsewhere?

DS: Yeah, that’d be right, definitely. It’s just such a glass ceiling there, you get to a certain point and it’s like, “What are you supposed to do now?” For ourselves we’ve never garnered that much of an audience, we’ll get maybe a hundred people in Auckland and that’s the top amount we’ll get there. There aren’t enough people over there, just not that much room for it.

DW: Have you found Melbourne crowds to be much more uninhibited than Sydney crowds, that they get way more into the gig?

DS: We did play a good show in Melbourne, we’ve played some shockers though too. The first we played it was all our own doing, we got way too drunk, acted like wankers pretty much. It was just one of those nights that we’d rather forget and that people who saw it won’t ever forget (laughs). And then the last time we played there, we were playing with Songs from Sydney, and there was a huge storm warning telling people not to come into town, so we had about 30 people at our show, and it was a huge venue too, and then after this guy came up to us and said, “The first time I saw you guys you were really good but this time you sucked?” (laughs) We were just like, “Yep, cool, sweet.” We’ve never really had that much of a crowd in Sydney either, so I couldn’t really offer an opinion either way. Brisbane though, we’ve played some of our best shows there.

DW: You’ve played support slots for Interpol, Dinosaur Jr and MGMT, coincidentally enough. What were they like to play with?

DS: Interpol were really private, they had this huge manager standing outside their door, just glaring at everybody. They had lots of pizza so we took some of their pizza and then got told off straight away. Dinosaur Jr were cool. Lou Barlow came into the studio, said we were good guys. We’d only played fifteen shows by that stage and were still finding our feet, we hadn’t even recorded anything, so that was pretty cool.

Surf City’s debut LP, Kudos releases nationally on September 3 through Popfenzy Records and Inertia Music.

Tour Dates:

Wednesday September 8 at the Beach Road Hotel, Bondi
Friday September 10 at Spectrum, Sydney
Saturday September 11 at the Workers Club, Fitzroy, Melbourne

For more dates, check Myspace.

If you’re in Sydney or Melbourne we’ve got two double passes to give away for each Surf City show. For your chance to win a double pass, email prize@theblackmail.com.au and tell us what Lou Barlow said about Surf City.

Next story: Afternoon TV – Chris Hopkins

Twelve Dark Noons

tristan — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:01:05 +0000

Text: Joanna Lowry Images: Naked On The Vague

Purporting to be a “psychedelic movie for the apocalypse in twelve chapters”, Twelve Dark Noons is far from a Twilight Sequel. A collaborative short film, Twelve Dark Noons will feature Sydney’s Naked On The Vague, a band with an established penchant for industrial soundscapes; artwork courtesy of Shawn Reed of label Night People; and music group Wet Hair. It’s being produced by Caleb Braaten of Sacred Bones Records, while Jacqueline Castel of Future Primitive Films (who has made clips for the likes of Zola Jesus, Blank Dogs, Gary War and Moon Duo) will be sitting in the director’s chair. After chatting to Naked On The Vague’s Matthew about ghosts, Ice Age rock formations and meeting future collaborators in Brooklyn bars that give out free pizza, it sounds nothing short of a deliciously spooky, multi-sensory venture. Transferring the jarring energy of a Naked On The Vague warehouse show to Super 8, expect a visual velodrome of audio pandemonium.

Joanna Lowry: How did the Twelve Dark Noons project come about?

Matthew Hopkins: It was initiated by Jacqueline Castel of Future Primitive films. We’d made loose plans in the past to work together on a video or film project. Basically Jacqueline and Caleb said they wanted to come to Australia and make a weird movie in the outback, we said “why not?”. Shawn Reed was brought in to provide artistic and spiritual direction. I guess you could say it is a product of everyone’s mutual interest in each other’s work.

JL: Who is involved and how did they get involved?

MH: Jacqueline Castel of Future Primitive films, Caleb Braaten of Sacred Bones Records, Shawn Reed of Night People records and music group Wet Hair, and us, Naked On the Vague. Jacqueline and Caleb simply proposed that they wanted to come over, bring Shawn with them and wanted us to be in on it, we simply said yes.

JL: Is it the first time you have collaborated with these people or have you worked with them in the past?

MH: We met Jacqueline, Shawn and Caleb on our first tour of the USA in 2007. Shawn had us play in his basement in Iowa City with his group Wet Hair during that tour. We got in touch with Jacqueline through a radio show she hosts on WNYU called Make the Product. We did a live set on her program and a little interview. Jacqueline plays a lot of underground Aussie stuff on her program so there were links through the musical community we both are involved in. As for Caleb, he was lurking in a dark corner of the Charleston, a venue we played in Brooklyn that gives out free pizza with every drink. He was enthused about our show and we had a beer and a laugh and became friends. He runs the label Sacred Bones for which we released a 7″ last year. We are currently recording an EP for Sacred Bones to coincide with the film’s release. The EP features the track Clock of 12′s, which became a kind of starting point for the idea of the film.

JL: What is Naked on the Vague’s involvement with the film?

MH: Both Lucy and I ‘act’ in the film; we are the only characters apart from a giant grandfather clock of 12′s. We will also be scoring the film, which will involve the whole band making spooky sounds. There is not much dialogue so we will be approaching the sound design as a recording or musical project within itself.

JL: The film purports to be “a psychedelic movie for the apocalypse in twelve chapters”. Is it going to have a linear narrative or is it going to be a series of vignettes?

MH: The film is structured in 12 short sections, each corresponding to the 12 hours of time on clocks. There is a narrative that threads each chapter revealing a fragmented account of what happened to the characters. There is a lot of wandering and isolation, which feeds the apocalyptic side of things. I wont say too much about the psychedelics, but I will say that it’s all very mathematical. Of the 12 chapters, sections 3, 6, 9, and 12 are key scenes, not so much linear, but in terms of the narrative they suggest a course of events. Sections 1,2,4,5,7,8,10,11 are more like departing points for these key scenes.

JL: Where is the film being shot?

MH: Originally it was intended to be shot on location in and around Mungo National Park in South Western NSW, but it had rained just before we arrived and the dirt road into the national park was pretty boggy. So we scrambled to find another desert style location. We came across the Perry Sand Hills, which are just near Mildura. They were incredible. Rolling red sand hills and rock formations, apparently formed during the Ice Age.

JL: Lake Mungo is cited as one of the locations – Lake Mungo has a bit of a reputation for being haunted by ghosts. Any paranormal experiences while you were down there?

MH: We didn’t actually make it to Mungo but we did make it to the Homebush Hotel in Balranald, where Phil the publican talked about some ghosts at his pub. I highly recommend visiting the Homebush Hotel.

JL: How is the project being funded?

MH: Through donations on our Kickstarter program. People can find out all about it here – http://www.kickstarter.com/

JL: What are some of the incentives for people to donate on the Kickstarter page?

MH: Some of the goodies one may acquire as a pledger to the project include editions of the DVD with hand made covers, t-shirts, posters, exclusive recordings by artists involved, books…tons of stuff. Basically the way Kickstarter works is that there are set amounts of money you can donate, with each amount providing certain goodies made and donated by the artists involved. This kind of thing works more like a pre-order of limited edition/exclusive goodies rather than simply money donation, or artist payment etc.

JL: Along with shooting the film, you will be shooting a music video for the song Clock of 12′s off an upcoming Naked On The Vague 12-inch EP release on Sacred Bones Records. Can you tell me a little bit about that? When can we expect to see it?

MH: Yes, we shot the video just after the film was finished. We shot it in our kitchen in Sydney using the haunted grandfather clock that features in the film as a prop. The 12″ EP will be out late 2010/early 2011 on Sacred Bones. The video will come out around this time also. We are currently just finishing the recording of the EP which will be a collection of songs and possibly some snippets/collage style bits from the film sound.

JL: What are your all-time favourite films?

MH: The Fly, The Elephant Man, Fargo.

Twelve Dark Noons

Next story: Eat Here – Eathouse Diner

Papa Don’t Preach

tristan — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:01:01 +0000

Text: Digby Woods Images: Nirrimi

At first glance, the name Papa Vs Pretty may be confusing to you. Most band names fall into one of two categories it seems. The first is fairly conventional, non-threatening and easy to understand (even if you don’t understand it). Think of AIR, The Beatles and Interpol. The second category is almost intentionally confusing and cryptic, like it wants to fuck with your mind, just because it can. Think of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Pink Reason and Times New Viking. This latter category is definitely the domain of Papa Vs Pretty and the fit couldn’t be more perfect.

In the competitive arena of the Sydney music scene, gladiatorial battles are common place for spots at The Metro (of course you haven’t seen any battles, they’re invite only. Duh!). However, Papa Vs Pretty have managed to deliver themselves in such a prodigious manner that they’re already doing support acts for the likes of Phoenix, Temper Trap and British India, and have just released their breakthrough EP, Heavy Harm, with EMI’s shiny new sub-label, Peace and Riot. Speaking with Tom Rawle, frontman for the PvsP, we delved into the chestnut of Melbourne vs Sydney crowds, the ambiguous nature of ‘psychedelic’ music, primal breeding and the state of the world. The future for these boys is hardly looking ugly.

Digby Woods: You were just up in Queensland for the launch tour of your third EP, Heavy Harm. How did you find it?

Tom Rawle: Yeah, it was great. I mean, we weren’t playing to a thousand people, we were playing to a couple hundred. It’s not much, but it’s just a matter of getting enough momentum and doing something that’s honest. If you do something that you truly believe in, it might not be as cool as everything else straight up, but if you just persist in it, people start to realise and pay attention, hopefully. If not then I’m fucked (laughs).

DW: As long as you were pleased with the end result, would you care then if only two hundred people ever turned up to your shows?

TR: If I were truly happy with it, I wouldn’t care. To me, I just want to make records that are good enough to make a statement, rather than listening to what everything else is and making something that fits into that because you want to live a particular lifestyle.

DW: How is the Heavy Harm launch going so far?

TR: Well, it’s kind of weird but really good that the EP is getting such a level of publicity, like MySpace are featuring it a lot, which I am eternally grateful for, because we just sent it over to them and they were like, “It’s good, we’ll put it all over our website,” and we were just like, “Fuck, okay, cool.” I mean we’re on most of the pages, you go to the main page with the feature albums, and there’s Arcade Fire and all these bands underneath it, and we’ve got this big banner. It’s weird, it feels wrong (laughs).

DW: You’re local though, and one always promotes local.

TR: I know, which is incredibly great, because not everyone works like that. I mean we’ve gone from like 120, 000 views to something like 194, 000 in a week. I think we’re on rage as well, and Channel V sometimes, which is really weird, but I don’t have pay TV, so I don’t see Channel V anyway.

DW: Is Channel V the one with that girl, whatshername, Fuzzy?

TR: Oh, we saw her walk past in Melbourne I think. I could be wrong, because when you’re on tour you begin to forget which city is which, just because you’re tired and they all have the same things. There are little differences with each place, but really they’re all the same, except for the audiences. Melbourne audiences are fucking awesome and Brisbane as well.

DW: What about Sydney?

TR: Sydney’s good as well, but Sydney always seems to be a little bit more restrained than Melbourne, they just seem to go nuts a little more. People are a little more self-conscious over here. I know when I’m standing in a crowd and everyone’s really quiet, you don’t want to be like “YEEEAHHH!” and jumping around, whereas in Melbourne people don’t seem to care. I remember when we played with Surfer Blood, there were people crowd-surfing and I’d never seen that here before. Like the keyboard-percussionist, Marcus, he just jumped into the crowd and it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen but also the craziest thing. It’s fantastic to see bands like that because they’re just honest.

DW: Do you guys still work on the side, or are you a full-time band now? Are there any uni constraints for anyone in the band?

TR: Yeah, we still work. Angus (Gardiner – bassist) does some promotions thing with his girlfriend and goes to Sydney Uni. He does philosophy and music, so he’s very, very smart and he does lots of intellectual things. Tom (Myers – drummer), he lives up in the Hunter Valley and comes down here for rehearsals, so he’s so busy. He’s a trooper. I don’t know anyone who spends more time on transport, in transit, than he does. He’s an apprentice winemaker, so whenever we go up to his place we just drink wine, which is pretty good (laughs).

I’m the most boring of the lot, I work at a café on Wednesday and I go to uni at UTS, which is okay, although I’ve been lost in bureaucracy recently, so I attend there, but very confused, I confusingly attend there (laughs).

DW: What are you studying at UTS that has you so tangled in red tape?

TR: I do Communications. I didn’t want to do a music degree just because I suck at theory, and my parents are pretty keen on me getting a degree, so I just try and cram everything in, have that as my last priority.

DW: Yeah, I did Communications and thinking back on it, I can’t remember anything very specific.

TR: It’s helped a little bit, like I understand a bit more about marketing than I used to, and as much as it’s un-indie and un-alternative to care about that, the most well-marketed, image-conscious bands to me are those really alternative, indie bands, where you can see that they’ve really sussed out their stuff on the visual spectrum of things. Even the concept of their music is very straight to the point, and I’d like to get to that point but I’d rather just find it than trying to deliberately structure myself as something obvious.

It feels like it’s getting pretty close, like the [Heavy Harm] EP is more cohesive than the last one and the album is sounding very much like a single voice, it doesn’t sound like all these fucked up things coming from different places. It’s just starting to converge to become one thing, so I can’t wait to do the album, I’ve got it all sussed out in my head, what it’s going to sound like, look like, so I’m really excited for that.

DW: Compared to the three EPs you’ve done, are you preparing for a more intense period of post-production with the album, given expectations?

TR: Well, post-production and doing mixing is not too bad. It’s kind of fun, you get to lounge around and listen to music, just try and get it sounding as immersive as possible, because I just want to make a record that has an ambience in itself. Like Grace, Jeff Buckley’s album, that record as a whole, you just need to put headphones on and it’s like you’re somewhere else. OK Computer or Hail To The Thief, that album in particular, it just has such an atmosphere about and it has its own space. It’s like it somehow managed to jump into your imagination and create this geometric space that wasn’t there before, and this whole entire world just gets laid into your brain.

DW: That’s quite a metaphysical perspective. Looking back, how do you think the band evolved from its early formation with EP1 through to its current stage? What have been some defining points?

TR: The first EP got one review in Drum Media, maybe one in Brag, and I did that all at home and I wasn’t expecting anything really, I just wanted something to give to record labels and booking agencies, and hopefully they’d like us. But the people I was playing with at that point in time left the band because they wanted to share writing credits for the songs. I was pretty young, only 16, and that freaked me out because I’d written those songs before they were in the band, and I’m an extremely anxious and paranoid person, so that freaked the shit out of me and I kind of hit the ceiling for a while.

So we disbanded in that period of time and whatever interest was there was dropped. We didn’t play any gigs and it just got really quiet. Then we did EP 2 when I formed the band again with Gus and Tom, and we get on really well. Heavy Harm was much more of a collaborative effort compared to EP1, which I’d done all by myself.

So yeah, that was a weird point in time, and it’s weird now that Triple J are playing our songs, in a good way though, I’m really thankful that they’re playing [Heavy Harm] because I was really freaking out. Like after we’d finished it I thought, “Fuck, no one’s going to play it, no one’s going to like it.”

DW: Why did you think no one would play it?

TR: I don’t know, like I don’t know how to write songs, it just kind of happens, I can’t really calculate it. I know that at the moment what’s cool is that electro-rock cross-over and really folky stuff, like “Let’s use heaps and heaps of harmony.” I love Grizzly Bear, they do it fantastically, but there are about a million other bands that are trying to sound like Grizzly Bear, and I couldn’t try and sound like anybody. I know I probably do sound like a fuckload of people, but not intentionally. I can’t write songs for a purpose and because of that I know that the songs aren’t exactly what’s trendy at the moment. There’s not that much production to them, they’re just kind of… there. My hope was that the melody would be strong enough, that the actual structure of the songs would be good enough for people to get into them.

DW: Is song writing still solely attributed to you, now that PvsP has become a three-piece?

TR: Yeah, but it’s not a monopoly or anything, that’s just how we work. The process is still very much that I write the songs then take them to Gus and Tom and they flesh them out and make them better. Later down the track once we become a really tight unit, which we’re getting to, then I’d like to start writing some stuff together and see how that goes. But for this EP and for the album the song writing is still very much my domain.

DW: Are there any bands that you strive to emulate in terms of song writing and song structure?

TR: Queens of the Stone Age, they’re a band I really admire, Elliot Smith as well. His songs are incredible, you could play his songs on an acoustic guitar and they’d still retain their awesomeness, whereas like, you couldn’t play Crystal Castles’ new song on an acoustic guitar. Although the singer’s really fucking hot and I love them for that (laughs). I can’t remember, what’s their song at the moment, the new single?

DW: No idea, I haven’t even listened to their new album.

TR: It came out on rage and she looked really hot, so I just kind of bopped along to the song (laughs). If you think of a band like Human League though, who were a completely electronica band in the 80s, songs like ‘Don’t You Want Me?’ and ‘Fascination’, you could play that song on a piano and it would still be a fantastic song, you could play it on anything. The Beatles’ songs are how old? 50 years old or something, and they’ve stood the test of time.

When we played in Melbourne recently, there was this fiddler guy playing on the corner of Flinders St Station, and he was playing the melody from Eleanor Rigby. That melody is so strong that some dude is playing it on a fiddle miles away from where it was originally written, years later, on some random street and people recognise it. That’s a strong song. I’d be so happy if I could write melodies that were that good.

DW: Well, it’s early days for you yet.

TR: (Laughs) I’m not expecting to get to that level at all, but that’s what I admire.

DW: You’ve mentioned Queens of the Stone Age and Jeff Buckley, The Beatles and Elliot Smith. Their musical influence, whether conscious or not, is quite apparent in your songs. However, are there any non-musical influences that have an impact on your music?

TR: Well, a lot of the time I seem to go to parties and I don’t know what to talk about at all, I just kind of sit down and feel awkward. I’ve kind of noticed that at a lot of parties, all these people get together and when they’re not together they watch TV and they come together to talk about what they’ve seen on TV and that’s the talking point, or what they’ve seen on the internet. So they all talk about the same things, drink, get intoxicated, more to the point where it becomes about primal things like fucking and making out and doing that sort of stuff, and it just seems to be this obvious display of primal breeding, but without the actual breeding.

Not that I have a problem with it at all, like I don’t despise it, I don’t disagree with it, I don’t have any negative feelings towards that particular thing, but to me it feels like I know what is going on, and everything that is happening before and during it is just this very shallow masquerade. I usually get really angry or jealous that I’m not taking part in this.

I’m saying I know but I’m probably completely wrong. I just see all this behaviour that looks so devised and I don’t know how to react to it, so I go home and write songs, and then I realise that, oh, that’s a reference to that particular incident and that’s a reference to that particular incident, etc. Like I’m extremely bad at handling situations with the opposite sex, so I’m always writing about failures in that.

DW: That’s the biggest cornerstone of rock music though, or even just art in general, the relationship between love and pain.

TR: It’s interesting because I feel you write the best songs when you’re at your most isolated or lonely. Sometimes I feel it’s almost my job to feel a bit separate and to observe what’s going and take my own thing from it and write about it. I don’t enjoy thinking that way though, that’s why I write to feel better.

It’s not just parties, it’s everything, where everything comes down to fucking and having a family. It seems to me no love is without some kind of game, like this person is with this person because they’re physically attractive and it makes them look more attractive, and this person has money, future prospects, a certain social status, or this person is all I could get. But you can never really know what anybody else is thinking or feeling. Maybe you can but I can’t. I don’t know, everything just seems really obvious but unexplainable, which is very annoying (laughs).

DW: It says on your Wikipedia page that your songs deal with themes of lost love, disenfranchisement, technology, human emotions and the state of the world. Do you agree with this description?

TR: I know that the guy who wrote it, he got all of those points from reviews and interviews that we’ve previously done, so those are all legitimate interpretations of our music, but personally I’ve never thought that much about what I write. Although that’s not to say I don’t identify in some small way. I’ve been in fairly interesting romantic situations as much as anybody, and occasionally I get pissed about how things are like most people, but everybody is affected by similar things.

DW: Being a self-described ‘psychedelic-grunge’ band, do you think the term ‘psychedelic’ has lost some of its meaning in the music world recently due to its constant overuse? What does it mean when applied to Papa Vs Pretty?

TR: I think psychedelic to anyone nowadays is just phaser and reverb and any song that is longer than five minutes, or long hair. But we don’t really have any of those things, Heavy Harm as a record doesn’t even have that much reverb. A lot of my favourite bands don’t use that much reverb, whereas you get bands nowadays like Best Coast where it’s just like reverb everywhere.

I guess when applied to us their was a period where we were doing prog-rock songs that were five to ten minutes in like a billion sections, that could potentially be seen as psychedelic. I wouldn’t say it’s psychedelic though, I don’t even have a phaser pedal. My reverb pedal actually broke the other day, so it’s physically impossible for me to be psychedelic now (laughs).

DW: The cover art of your debut EP is quite surreal, like something out of a Terry Pratchett novel, almost Dali-esque. Who created it and what is the meaning behind it?

TR: This company called We Are Synapse did the artwork and the video clip, which is this animation-type thing. We didn’t know what we wanted for the artwork and our label set us up with them and they’d done some awesome stuff.

Originally I wanted a clay head on the cover that looked kind of real, kind of fucked up, and it would just be sitting there on a bust, but then it seemed a bit too morbid. We got drafts back and it looked more like a Tool album. So I thought, what’s a way we can give it more colour.

Then I looked at this Japanese artist, I can’t remember his name, and he does these heads with all these detailed drawings on them, and I thought it would be cool to have like a 3D-type world in the head with a waterfall coming over the top of it. So I told this to We Are Synapse and they did their own interpretation of it, which took a while to get right, but they have awesome skill with illustration, really detailed. So they did it and we gave it the thumbs up. It was a really smooth process.

DW: It seems about half of all band names are fairly straight-forward and the other half are almost intentionally confusing. Papa Vs Pretty is definitely in the latter category. Are you merely satirising Madonna or is there something deeper at work?

TR: Madonna?

DW: You know, the song, Papa Don’t Preach?

TR: (Laughs) No, no, I didn’t even think about that. When I first started the band there was another guy who sung and wrote lyrics, and I played guitar and wrote the music, so we named the band together. We were in math class and I asked him, “What was your first word?” and he said “Papa”, and then he asked me what mine was, which was “Pretty”, and I can’t remember how it happened but the ‘Vs’ thing got involved because not many bands at the time had ‘Vs.’ in the name. It’s the name that stuck, we didn’t really know what to think about the band name, we were more interested in the music. Now though I think it could be a pretty awful band name, some people think it’s terrible. It’s actually a talking point with some reviews, they’re like, “Terrible band name, good music.” (Laughs)

DW: Have you ever thought about changing the name?

TR: I have but there are bands out there with more ridiculous names that are huge, like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam. It’s a pretty moot point I guess. Some bands have awesome names and all the hipster-type people go, “Fuck yeah, cool band name!” except they have this really ‘abstract’ sound that’s been done by about a billion other people. Whereas if you have this bad band name then you have to really prove yourself with your music.

Papa Vs Pretty

Next story: Twelve Dark Noons – Naked On The Vague

Double Pivot

tristan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:32:22 +0000

Text: Gabriel Knowles Images: PVT

It’s a funny thing that the best things in life don’t always seem that way to begin with. For every advancement made by the human race there’ll always be a group of us who can’t see its benefits and frankly, just don’t like it. PVT’s latest album Church With No Magic, while not radically divisive, is most definitely a sonic advancement and as such its it takes time to fully appreciate just how far they’ve pushed their sound.

“We’re trying to use electronics and technology in a way that’s more visceral and physical,” drummer Laurence Pike explains from Sydney’s Centennial Park where the ducks squawking in the background couldn’t be in starker contrast to the dark, experimental, rock-electronica that PVT produce.

“It’s been extremely positive (the response), as far as a progression goes that’s what we’re always aiming for with our records. We’re not the sort of band that exist in one shape or form that people can easily pigeon hole, it’s funny because people in music media have trouble with that because that want you to be easily definable because that’s where the can place you for ever more. I think our aspiration as artists is to develop what we do and get better at what we do and as a result our music continues to change.”

Pike, who’s joined in the band formerly known as Pivot (until a nu-metal band in America laid claim to the name there) by his brother Richard and Dave Miller, is happy enough to let people take their time coming to terms with an album that’s seen the band add vocals (courtesy of Richard) into the mix for the first time. “It doesn’t really matter, in six months time they’ll probably catch up,” he offers initially.

“It’s the only thing, it’s why you do it. We want to make music that’s meaningful to us and continues to push us and explore the limits of what we’re capable of. I wish more bands would do that,” echoing what many a music fan must be feeling before drawing to the inevitable conclusion. “It’s the commercial nature of music, it’s easy to put together a band that’s an imitation or copy of something popular, it’s maths. “I think we’d be doing it regardless and I think that’s the difference. That’s when the good things and innovation happens, and longevity too I guess.”

“That’s the best thing about being on a label like Warp, the artists they sign are capable of making those decisions themselves and are capable of pushing their music forward into interesting new places. That’s what they’ve built their brand on so they give us a license to do what we want, we’re lucky.” Pike continues before explaining how this freedom allows them to approach the recording process exactly as they want to.

“We just go into the studio and start recording, we tend to improvise as a means to spur new ideas. We go in with 10-12 ideas that could be as small as a tiny drum loop at a certain tempo and then we come out with a bunch of music and filter through it for few weeks until we find the thread of a record. Then we chip away at that and re-record things, initially it’s a very unconscious process. We’re unlike most other bands in that regard, there’s no principle song writer. We’re an experimental band in that we experiment with the process itself.”

“We don’t rehearse a lot either,” Pike admits, “I think we’re lucky that we don’t need to rehearse a lot and we like to keep things a bit unsaid. We learn how to play songs as we tour rather than rehearsing something into a concrete, definitive version and then just going out and playing that every night for 200 shows.”

PVT

Next story: A Humble Abode – Small House Books

Electric Smiles

gabe — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:04:39 +0000

Text: Gabriel Knowles Video: Alex Serafini

Electric Smile Band Define their output as “journey music”, just exactly where and when this journey takes place is probably as much up to the listener as it is the band. ESB’s self titled debut release is a trip through terrains like dream scape psychedelic and progressive jams, crooning melodies, tribalistic melodies and oft mechanical vocals.

The cloaked musicians joined us for a video interview and an impromptu rendition of their hit single, Poker Face.

Blue Odyssey (MP3)

Electric Smile Band

Next story: This Is Happening – Michael Vandino

Ab Fab

tristan — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:38:44 +0000

Words: Digby Woods Images: Fabulous Diamonds

Nisa Venerosa and Jarrod Zlatic are Fabulous Diamonds, a Melbourne-born psychedelic folk-pop duo that has been causing quite a stir since their self-titled debut album launched back in 2008. Since the they have been clocking up the frequent flyer miles with tours in the US, UK, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal. Oh, and Australia, of course.
Now the time has come for their sophomoric effort, nostalgically titled, Fabulous Diamonds II. So, are the duo still as ‘overtly hypnotic’ as they were? Is there still that same ‘undercurrent of friction that cuts through the drone and propels the songs forward’? Let’s find out.

Digby Woods: You’re sound has been described variously as noise-pop, post-punk, classic dub and neo-psychedelic. In light of this apparent inability to properly classify your music, do you consider your music as being beyond genre? Do you think that music is headed this way in general?

Jarrod Zlatic: Well I don’t think we are beyond genre – it’s just hybridised, and with anything people are going to read it differently… I mean music has always been a case of hybridisation so I don’t think music is heading that way as it has always been “there” so to speak. Everything is a combination of what came before it. Blues, rock, techno etc.

DW: Vice Magazine described your self-titled seven song debut album as “the soundtrack to your next DMT trip”. An accurate description?

JZ: I guess. Personally I don’t associate us with anything that is overly or overtly psychedelic, I try to avoid ‘psychedelic’ whenever I can. I mean we would be just as suitable to somebody with a bottle of red wine and Xanax, maybe more suitable.

DW: Your first album cover is a favourite of mine. Is there a story behind it’s invention, or did Jarrod just want to show off his hairy back?

JZ: It was an accident. It was the only useable photo out of a very random photo shoot with our friend Karl Scullin.

DW: Fabulous Diamonds II is book-ended by two songs that each stretch past the 10 minute mark, double the longest track off your first album. Are you entering into an even more experimental and expansive style, or do you just have more to say this time around?

JZ: Oh there are less songs this time around so I’d say we have less to say. Nisa and I have been discussing the next album and we’ve started writing an 80 minute long song that will constitute the whole of the next album. Each subsequent album is a further refinement upon the last one, I have a feeling our final album will be an ambient recording of us hanging around in my lounge room eating pizza.

DW: None of your tracks are named, in the conventional sense. This is true for both your first and latest album. Do you prefer people to interpret your songs how they wish, based upon they’re own experiences, or do your simply enjoy the mystery it evokes?

“The untitled eighth studio album by American metal band Korn was released on July 27, 2007, through Virgin Records. The standard edition holds thirteen tracks, the deluxe fourteen. The album was intentionally released without a title, as vocalist Jonathan Davis reasoned, “why not just let our fans call it whatever they wanna call it?”[1] The album has been certified Gold in the U.S.[2] It is the band’s least successful release to date, with the album barely surpassing sales of 500,000 copies.”

(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untitled_Korn_album/)

DW: A simple but important question: What is the process of your song-making? Do you have a very precise strategy or is it a more free-flowing, rush-of-blood-to-the-head kind of thing?

JZ: Um… like wood carving. We whittle our jams down from large blocks to small pieces.

DW: How would you distinguish your sophomore effort from your debut one? Various reviews have commented that you appear to be more refined second-time around, that your direction is clearer, or is this a moot interpretation?

DW: What do you think about pirated music and people downloading it for free? Would you be upset if people did that to your music?

JZ: Funnily enough four or five separate blogs, independent of each other, posted our album for download all on the same day. It was kind of strange and I felt a little annoyed but at the same time that is the process through which I find new music so I’m not going to stop anyone – but I don’t see why you have to post a whole album, post half the album or something. It’s not like it’s a limited edition release or particularly hard to find.

DW: You’re signed with US label Siltbreeze for the vinyl releases of your albums, home to other such musical luminaries as Pink Reason, Psychedelic Horseshit and Times New Viking. What made you decide to sign with them in particular?

JZ: Well we didn’t sign with them, there are no signatures involved. Tom approached us and asked us to do an album for him. I don’t think anyone really “signs” with a label unless it is a big label these days. Also it is not like we were having our email box inundated with offers, we still don’t, Tom was the only person that asked – it was lucky for us that the only person interested happened to also run a good label.

DW: Fabulous Diamonds II comes hot on the heels of your debut album, only two years later. Are you going to be taking some time out after the launch tour, or are new songs/ideas already in the works?

JZ: Two years is a long time, especially by contemporary music standards. With our launch ‘tour’ it’s not really a tour as such, it’s a few dates scattered across a few months. We have plans for a new album and a 7” 33rpm EP for next year (hopefully).

Fabulous Diamonds are slowly touring Australia from July 17. Fabulous Diamonds II is out now through Chapter Music.

Next story: On The Brink – Benedict Brink

Twerpentine

tristan — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:38:18 +0000

Words: Tristan Ceddia Images: The Twerps & Oliver Georgiou

The Twerps are the type of band whose records can stay on rotation in some households for weeks on end before anyone bats an eyelid. Their heart felt garage rock and smooth grooves resonating in the minds of those that listen. Tristan Ceddia asked the little buggers from Melbourne some questions about how this has come to be.

Tristan Ceddia: How and when did The Twerps form?

Martin Frawley: Um rick and I started playing together around 2008 in the middle of the year, I had some songs I had been writing and they weren’t really fitting into the other band I was playing in… So Rick and I wrote songs over a few boozy Sundays and then thought why not start a band together? We then asked Pat who was around all the time and a close friend and we also needed an extra guitar and we had our eyes on Julia who was a banging guitar player in Batrider! Then we started playing rock shows!

Rick Milovanovic: When Marty and I met, from day one, all we did was revolved around music. We hung out and kicked about heaps, but it always came back to ‘How rad were Panel Of Judges last night’ or ‘Would you choose a hip hop song or a punk song for your skate video clip?’ or ‘Where’s Dunedin?’ or ‘Fuck man, learn bass so that we can cover that song’, I guess one day we spent the whole day writing little tunes in Marty’s bedroom, and to us it actually sounded like the stuff we were into, kind of. We listened back 100 times to everything we recorded and thought it was the shit simply because we’d made it ourselves, not because we thought it was a smash hit or anything. We’d start off trying to cover a song, but because we couldn’t figure it out it would eventually turn into our own little tune.

Julia McFarlane: Marty, Rick and Pat had been mates for years, going to shows and getting smashed on horse tranquilizers together. They were pretty tight, having punch ons with crap dudes and generally keeping the streets safe from trouble. They made a band based on wanting to copy some of their heros and some people including me loved the songs. I asked if I could play with them and they kept me hanging for a while just to make sure I was keen.

TC: The Twerps is a great name. Along with song titles like Little Guys, you have a real Sandlot Kids/ Stand By Me sort of vibe going on… Is there anything behind this?

Pat O’Neill: Rick was in Stand By Me. I’m not too sure where the name came from. I think it came about over beers between Marty and Rick before Jules and I came about.

RM: Pat’s referring to Corey Feldman. We called people we didn’t like ‘twerps’. And then one day we realised that we were just that, twerps. Actually we didn’t really think about it much, it was just a word we were throwing around 100 times a day. You mentioned Sandlot and Stand By Me and in a way you’re right, they’re both gangs, made up of members that like hanging, and are bound by friendship. Like when you were kids.

JM: And an affection for those movies. I don’t think the song writing was conceptualised to that extent where there is much behind it other than having fun.

TC: You guys were all great friends before starting the band right? Have you always played music together?

PON: We’d all been friends for some time but none of us had ever played music together before. Rick and I had never played in bands. Come to think of it, I’d never played the drums before. I think Rick and Marty decided that they shared a similar taste in music and were enjoying showing each other new stuff and is was most likely through this that they decided they should have a crack at making music they liked together.

RM: It was quite stratigical to come to think of it, Marty and I started muckin around together, nothing serious. We had a specific sound that we wanted to begin with so we hunted our good friend Julia, she was our favourite guitarist and wasn’t playing in any bands at the time. And Pat always spoke about wanting to learn drums, so we came together like that. Eventually we started practicing together on Saturday arvos, Saturday arvos are our thing, practice, hang, catch up, few drinks, then go out and watch a band together or do something fun. Around the time we started that ritual we got asked to play our first show at Albert’s Basement with Panel Of Judges and Jarred Quarrel – these friends had played for me as a punter for years and now we’re playing for them. As much as I say it’s all a joke and a bit of fun, that night was an rad experience for me. It ended up being a rad night, all our friend came and watched.

JM: None of us had played in other bands together – although Marty’s old band You Will Die Alone and my old band Batrider played together a fair bit.

MF: Not really the other band I used to play in played a few shows with Batrider and Rick showed me heaps and heaps of cool tunes! And Pat and I drank lots of beers together so I guess we just had to start a band together.

TC: You have had the pleasure of playing with some great bands including the Black Lips, The Bats and Deerhunter who asked you to support them not long after you formed. It must be a real trip to be playing with bands of the like…

PON: We’ve had some great opportunities in the last year or so and we’re totally appreciative of that. It’s humbling playing with such amazing musicians and great people and getting inspiration from them and more importantly, drinking beers with them.

RM: For me the exciting part is to be playing in front of the Bats fans, or Deerhunter fans. There may have only been 50 of them when we were playing, but they’re Bats fans! That’s the trip for me. It’s not like you’re personally asked by the band to support them, some of them don’t know or care who you are, it’s just rad to have the chance to play in front of people there to see that style of music. And you get to enjoy the headline afterwards and not have to worry about a ticket. It was cool chatting with some of them afterwards, but not about music, just about other stuff like the Superbowl.

JM: It’s cool playing with bands that you have heard and loved that live in different hemispheres to you – but I think you realise pretty quickly that it’s actually funner doing your own shows – at pokey little venues or people’s houses. Those gigs are my favourite.

TC: Marty, I know your father was in Paul Kelly & The Dots. I assume growing up around music and musicians had a big influence on you?

MF: My dad showed me how to play guitar and never put pressure on me to play but was always keen to learn about what music I was in to and teach me those riffs! I’m sure if my dad had been a lawyer or builder I wouldn’t be playing in a band now. I’m very thankful!

TC: You recorded your Self Titled 7″ with Mikey Young (Eddy Current). This has contributed to the really organic sound of your record… I imagine this was a fairly stress free environment to record in?

PON: It was totally stress free especially as they were only intended to be demos so we could document for ourselves what we’d written in the first few months of the bands existence. We just bashed out the tracks in a rehearsal studio, in an hour or so, with Mikey sitting in the corner with the occasional thumbs up. It didn’t feel like recording and we’ve tried to keep that vibe with the last few recordings that we’ve done.

RM: Recording with a friend in a pretty chilled environment makes it totally easy. I can’t imagine doing it any other way like booking an expensive sound room, with the clock and metre ticking and having to perform for an engineer who doesn’t know your or your band. We wouldn’t be into playing a gig that way so it didn’t make sense for us to record like that. We recorded with Mikey on the spot just to document what we’d been doing with no intention of releasing the songs, we didn’t think about it at all. It has to be stress free, that’s the only way it works for us. And Mikey’s as honest and as chilled as they get so he totally set the mood as Pat said.

JM: Yes, it was very stress free! At the time I think we were intending on using the recordings for demos – which I think probably added to the relaxed performances. I don’t know anything about recording – so all I can say is that because of Mikey’s temperament I think the process was very efficient! There’s nothing worse than getting sick of your own songs during recording. Mikey is a gem!

TC: Rick, you once told me a great little story about when Marty recorded the song Dance Alone… Marty, is it true that you made up lyrics to this tune on the spot?

MF: Yeah, I had some ideas of what I wanted it to sound like but was a little nervous about writing lyrics as we had only played a few shows and then when we went to do the take Mikey, Pat and Rick were all looking at me like, GO! It’s rolling. Sing! So I just made some shit up and that’s what came out. I still haven’t learnt the lyrics for that song, I think I kind of like it all fresh and real to the moment… That moment kind of sucked though!

RM: Marty’s one of those dudes that can freestyle and pull rhymes out of thin air. He can still recite Bias B lyrics…the Metropolitan Mayhem number, I always get him to do it. So he winged the entire Dance Alone song at Mikey’s house night, I swear you can hear Mikey and I pissing ourselves in the background. You’d have to ask Marty, but I don’t think he knows the lyrics, it’s always difference when we play it, actually all our songs are, we keep saying we need structure, but it never happens.

TC: I know Julia formerly played in Batrider and Rick you have just formed Boomgates with some other friends, are there any other projects going on that we don’t know about?

PON: I’m playing drums in Dirtbag at the moment which is the solo project for Gill Tucker of Beaches and Spider Vomit with her brother Johnny on bass and Jack Farley on guitar. We’ve played a few gigs and recorded a 7″ which will hopefully see the light of day sometime this year.

RM: And Marty plays guitar in Panel Of Judges. Dion from Panels played with us too, everyone seems to be cross pollinating in Melbourne at the moment, it’s awesome. Then there’s other projects that aren’t about music which also keep us busy, keeps you going, keeps you challenged, it’s good.

MF: Dirtbag is killer! And I have just been writing and putting together songs for a record Julia and I are going to make. It’s a reggae record. Well see what it ends out like!

TC: You guys stand alongside a strong set of Melbourne garage rock ‘n’ roll bands. Who can you see stepping up next in Melbourne?

RM: Oh so many man. Can I list the ones that have already stepped up. Let me begin with easily the raddest group I’ve seen, and I’m not that surprised that it comes from one of the most talented dudes around, Scott O’Hara – his new band Bitch Prefect. We played with them in Adelaide and man it felt like I was watching the band that I day dream about being in. They were so true and real that it was like i was splashed in the face with a bucket of icy cold water. Other band that are killing me at the moment are Scott and Charlene’s Wedding, School of Radiant Living, Woollen Kits, Bum Creek, Terror Of The Deep (NZ), Parading, Circle Pit (SYD), Super Wild Horses, Dick Diver, UV Race, the list goes on… pretty much all local. They’re our friends’ bands so you can accuse me of being biased, but I swear that list represents the best (newish) stuff happening in Melbourne, really exciting stuff, hit makers, string breakers, all I wanna do is watch these bands play shows, then hang with them afterwards because they’re all great dudes.

PON: Some of my favourites would have to be School of Radiant Living, Woollen Kits, Constant Mongrel and the soon to be infamous Boomgates.

TC: What’s next on the agenda? Touring? Recording?

PON: We recorded a bunch of tracks with Mikey a little while back. We’ve also been writing songs pretty prolifically of late so we’re just deciding what to do with them now. We have a split 7″ coming out with The Ancients. Hopefully we’ll have an album out later this year with some sort of tour to follow. We’re also looking in to a tour of the US some time early next year.

JM: It’s just a matter of getting the time to fit it in around our schedules. Sometimes I wish we were all on the dole and could just bum around making music all day.

MF: We’re in the process of mixing our album which was recorded with three different people in three different locations, so we’re going to try and get it sounding like an album. We’re having fun thats the main thing. Fun!!

The Twerps

Buy the 7″

Next story: Euro Trash – Sam Hendel

Tortoise And Hare

gabe — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:38:13 +0000

Words: Gabriel Knowles Images: Tristan Ceddia

At first glance it’s actually quite funny that a band called Tortoiseshell have taken five years to get their first release out. But then when you dig a bit deeper it’s actually quite impressive given some members hadn’t even played in a band prior to their first jam sessions back in 2005. Back then there were one member short of the current five and stereotypically, art school was the common denominator for all except singer Rick Mansfield who had chosen the less conventional path into a musical career as a financial advisor.

So Rick, along with his brother Will, Dominic Broadhurst and Pat Dagg formulated a live show and headed off to play their first gig where their friend Dominic Kirkwood was enlisted to introduce them, he ended up on stage playing percussion and his been with the band ever since. Tennis, as they were know then, continued to play shows around Sydney for the next few years, building up a solid fan base while they perfected their craft.

Outside of Sydney though, their reputations hadn’t quite preceded them. “We played in Newcastle with the Lost Valentinos and there was about four people there and I went outside for a smoke and the bouncer said ‘yeah everyone’s at karaoke, Youth Group were here last week and they had less people’,” Pat, the band’s bassist recalls, we went to the karaoke night afterwards and it was really good!”

Back in Sydney Tennis plugged away for a few more years and after some radio play headed into the studio to record their debut EP, but it didn’t all go quite according to plan. “We recorded an EP but none of that’s going to see the light of day except This Girl,” Will begins. “There was a bit of a rift, I know Rick had his eyes on a bit of a pop sensibility,” Pat elaborates. “Will pulled Rick’s hair at one point!” Dom Broadhurst laughs.

“We’re all creative people, you know we all met at art school. It’s tough for someone to have an idea and it get backing from the rest of the band straight away,” Will continues, “we can almost not get offended now when someone offers another opinion!”

“I think that and that we’d never played in a band before,” adds Pat.

In any case with fellow Sydneysiders Canyons taking an interest in the disco-pop track This Girl, the group realised that their talent lay in stripping things back. Not an easy task for a five piece band with multiple guitars and an abundance of percussion. “It’s a lot harder to write really simple songs with five people, you have to work on the layers,” admits Pat. With the band taking a more considered approach to their recording process, rather than just jamming, there’s an air of confidence about their output now. It also helps that the band have moved into a warehouse in inner Sydney and are in the process of filling out their own recording studio.

“At this point of time where we’ve got this set up with the warehouse we can record our own music and get our ideas down it makes things a lot easier. We don’t have to pressure to capture something like when you’re in a recording studio that you’re paying for.” Dom Kirkwood, whose role has expanded to include keys and guitar explains before Pat jumps in, “I get a little anxious sometimes and want to push forward and now that we’ve got this space we can do that.”

This Girl is out now digitally and on vinyl (featuring a blissed out dub version from Canyons) on Hole In The Sky.

Tortoiseshell

Next story: Gods And Monsters – Tara Marynowsky