Rolling Stone story: ‘Jebediah Return From Hiatus’, 2011
A news story for the March 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. Click the below scanned image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.
Jebediah Returns From Hiatus
Much-loved Perth rockers prepare for fully-fledged comeback with fifth LP
By Andrew McMillenInstruments in hand, four Perth musicians glance nervously at the ceiling as debris falls around them. Overhead, a Godzilla-like monster trades blows with Comet Girl, a costumed vigilante who’s fighting a losing battle. All looks lost until another superhero arrives: Jebediah! The two heroes join forces to vanquish their foe.
Embedded deep in the realms of fantasy – a warehouse in Sydney’s inner suburbs – the real Jebediah, Perth’s celebrated alt-rock outfit, are shooting their first video in more than six years. “She’s Like A Comet” is the second single from the band’s fifth album, Koscuiszko, due in April. Between takes, drummer Brett Mitchell laughs about the “contrived” nature of music videos. Earlier, he was attempting to drum along to the song at a precise speed of 145 per cent in order to capture some slow-motion footage. A few hours into the shoot, as frontman Kevin Mitchell sings into a microphone placed just inches away from a camera, one of the crew expresses his surprise that the singer is so willing to be filmed: he’d heard of Mitchell was camera-shy. ”They must have been being sarcastic!” bassist Vanessa Thornton laughs.
Amid a worldwide climate of once-popular acts reforming for cash, Jebediah – completed by lead guitarist Chris Daymond – are different: they never broke up. Though their last release was 2004′s Braxton Hicks, they’ve played a handful of shows per year, and 2010 was no different: the day after their video shoot, they played to a packed Annandale Hotel, before doing the same at The Zoo in Brisbane. With a seven-year gap between albums, the band is relishing the new material.
“This one’s easily the most fun I’ve had making a Jebs record since the very first one [1997's Slightly Odway], and I also think it’s the most playful we’ve been in the studio,” says Kevin Mitchell. “It’s the closest thing to the first album, where we made a record without considering anyone except ourselves.”
For more Jebediah, visit their website. The music video for ‘She’s Like A Comet‘ is embedded below.
The Vine interview: Kim Moyes of The Presets, 2011
An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Alongside labelmates Cut Copy, The Presets have arguably been the most influential Australian band of modern times. After meeting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1995, Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes quickly ditched the ambient electronica they were fussing about with in instrumental band Prop, in favour of a more playful electronica, tinged with darkness. The duo’s EPs in Blow Up (2003) and Girl and the Sea (2004), gave way to debut album Beams (2005), released via Modular Records, which delivered their first club (and festival) hit, ‘Are You The One?’.
The band’s sound soon found favour with a mainstream shifting away from the tired posturing of guitar rock; one moving towards a more hedonistic, celebratory club-like culture that began pervading everything from festivals to the local pub. Whether it was right-place right-time, or something more intrinsically linked to the band’s quickly growing fanbase, The Presets second LP Apocalypso was released in 2008 right as a newly branded mainstream were feverishly scrolling for new icons. Preceded by the mega-hit ‘My People’, which quickly became a generational anthem, sitting in the ARIA Top 100 singles for over 18 months, the album struck a chord,. That year, Apocalypso was second only to AC/DC’s Black Ice in sales terms. (It’s now gone three times platinum in Australia). The band embarked on a solid two years of touring, packing out halls, accumulating international fans (the Black Eyed Peas will.i.am claimed that ‘My People’ was a “huge influence” on that bands album ‘The E.N.D’) and making mockeries of festivals “dance” tents. Apocalypso cleaned up at the 2008 ARIA Awards, winning Best Dance Release and Album Of The Year, as well the Artisan Awards for Best Cover Art and Producer of the Year, a sweep which brought an intense, bizarre period for the band to a neat close. After five years of touring and recording, they retired for a much-needed break.
With a third album to be released sometime this year, and ahead of their re-emergence on the live scene as part of the Future Music Festival touring across Australia next month, Andrew McMillen connected with drummer and keyboardist Kim Moyes to discuss his change in addressing music, the weight of expectations and the ugly side of Australian culture.
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Hey, Kim. Besides a few shows in January, you spent most of last year out of the public eye. Was that a good year for you?
Yeah, it was a great year. The whole last five years – up until the end of the last few shows of Apocalypso – we were touring non-stop. If we weren’t touring, we were making a record, and then we were touring again. It was great. It was a huge experience in my life and career, but at the end of that I think we needed to have a few months off to defrag, enjoy some home time with our partners. We both became fathers in that year. We started working again about a year ago, and it’s been a steady, long slog since then. Right now we’re getting to a point where we have an album starting to take shape and just trying to put the final touches on it. We’re ready to go back out there and face that public eye again.
Was it a bit of a shock to the system to live through five years of non-stop creativity and touring, and then come home and adjust to the everyday pace of life?
Not really, because – without going into it too much – having a kid is kind of like a whole other pace of life [laughs]. There were a few moments where we got to really unwind and enjoy nothingness, and that was not unusual at all. It was bloody awesome. The rest just kind of…I feel like fulfilling the next bit of our lives, that we felt needed to be fulfilled.
You’re playing MS Fest in Tasmania in a couple of weeks, which will mark your return to live shows. What made you say yes to that gig?
We’ve done it a couple of times and always have a really good time there. We really like working with the guy who puts it on. We have a really good relationship with those guys and we thought that’s probably a really good, nice way to start things again. We’re doing the MS Fest, and then the Future Music Festival. It’s an isolated run around the country and a reinvigoration for us. Even being in rehearsals this week – getting ready for it, trying out the new songs and seeing how they fit, tweaking them and all that sort of stuff; it’s really taking the creative juices to another level.
I think there’s only so much… I was talking to Jules [bandmate Julian Hamilton] about this yesterday. I remember when we wrote Beams, and I remember when we wrote Apocalypso, and both those situations we were [playing in other] bands (both Kim and Julian have worked as touring musicians for other bands, most notably Hamilton with Silverchair – Ed) and recording with other bands, and we really felt this urgency to go and work at our [own] music. So we’d be working all day at rehearsal studios with a different band and then at nighttime we’d go to the studio and write songs. We’d done that at fever pitch, and then the same with Apocalypso; we came back after three years of touring and we were so highly attuned to what we were doing and what we needed to do in the next record, that we went in and did it in a short time.
I guess the drawbacks of taking a break from it all is that those things start to fade a bit in your mind; they’re not at the forefront and you start to forget. In a way it’s really great for your creativity to take on new ideas, new concepts, and try things you normally wouldn’t do, and that’s what we’ve done a lot of. But getting back into rehearsal this week and having this run of shows to look forward to, this reality check is really starting to complete the picture. As a result, we’re going to have a really interesting record. But nothing that’s too far away from what we normally do. It’s an exciting time.
For the full interview, visit The Vine. And I highly recommend that you do, if you’ve already read this far: while the above questions/responses are quite standard, the interview took a real left turn once we began discussing how Kim thinks Australians view The Presets, and how they’ve influenced Australian culture in unexpected ways.
For more of The Presets, visit their website. The music video for their song ‘If I Know You‘ is embedded below.
The Vine interview: Adam Franklin of Swervedriver, 2011
An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.
“In their nine years together, Swervedriver released four startling albums, ranging from storming guitar experimentalism to mind-blowing psychedelia – all dedicated to the nihilistic joys of the open road.”
That’s a line from the band’s 2005-released two-disc compilation, Juggernaut Rides: ’89-’98. It’s an entirely apt description of the sounds and imagery summoned by this British four-piece, whose core duo consisted of singer/guitarist Adam Franklin and guitarist Jimmy Hartridge. Formed in Oxford in 1989, they soon prospered in a time when interest surrounding guitar-led alternative rock and the nascent genre of shoegaze was at an all-time high. They were signed to Creation Records – home to My Bloody Valentine – and released two genre-defining albums within two years: 1991’s Raise, and 1993’s Mezcal Head. Despite their British upbringing, Franklin et al were fascinated by American muscle car culture, and sought to provide the soundtrack to imagined high-speed jaunts across the States. Their first single, ‘Son Of Mustang Ford’, sums up Swervedriver’s ethos in four minutes of scorching guitars and breakneck percussion.
Label woes and band instability eventually brought them to a halt in 1998, following underwhelming sales for Ejector Seat Reservation (1995) and 99th Dream (1998). As it turns out, the band’s final shows took place in Australia while supporting Powderfinger, ending in December 1998 with a last show in Margaret River, outside of Perth (or “self-destruction on a desert highway just outside the world’s most isolated city,” as the Juggernaut Rides liner notes dramatically put it).
In the intervening years, Franklin continued to record and tour as a solo artist, also under the name Toshack Highway, as well as under Magnetic Morning, a collaboration with Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino. Swervedriver reformed in 2008, and three years later – ahead of their first Australian tour since 1998’s ill-fated expedition – TheVine connected with Adam Franklin.
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To begin, Adam, I want to quote a song lyric. “And the photographs of God I bought have almost fade away”. [A line from The Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Snakedriver’.]
Oh, yeah. That’s a good line.
I mention this because I read your Magnet Magazine guest editorials, and I was particularly interested in what you had to say about that song. You said it’s one of the greatest lines ever in a rock and roll song, which is pretty high praise.
Yeah, I think it is. Like I said in that blog, the lyric is a surreal sort of thing, and I wonder how it crossed Jim and William’s mind to have that lyric in there. I guess they might have thought of all these things that could happen that’d really suck, and one of them would be if you bought these photographs of God, and then they faded away. I thought it was a great tune, as well.
I’ve got a favourite Swervedriver lyric: the opening two lines to “Last Train To Satansville” (“You look like you’ve been losing sleep’, said a stranger on a train / I fixed him with an ice-cold stare and said, ‘I’ve been having those dreams again”). To me they’re a wonderfully evocative couple of lines. Are you particularly fond of those lyrics?
We probably were at the time, because I think that those lyrics were reproduced in full on the [Mezcal Head] album sleeve. But it was inspired by this song ‘They’re Hanging Me Tonight’ which was a song by a country singer named Marty Robbins. They both have a similar sort of narrative. The key line in that song was “They bury Flo tomorrow, but they’re hanging me tonight.” He’s in a prison cell, waiting to be sentenced. That song just seemed to have that twangy sort of vibe.
Speaking more broadly, what do you think when you look back to some of the material you recorded as a younger man?
Well, I think most of it stands up pretty well. I haven’t really listened to the recordings that much. We’ve been searching around for slightly more obscure b-sides and album tracks to play live, and there are some good things tucked away. There is quite a good catalogue for Swervedriver, really. I’m quite impressed by how many songs were written in that short two years, or whatever, because I think we released four EPs that all had four songs on them, and a nine-song album [Raise] as well. It’s actually quite a lot of stuff. And that stuff was written – it wasn’t like we had songs lying around for five years before. They were all pretty much written around that time.
We got quite prolific. It’s quite different now, because now I have songs I’ve had lying around for two, five, or ten years. And it’s good having those things, because every now and then you think “Oh, actually, I finally found a way that this song might work”. Our recent albums are sort of a mixture of new songs as well as things that can be up to 10 years old.
I came across the compilation Juggernaut Rides. I had to order it off eBay because there’s pretty much no other way to get it these days. It’s great, I love it. It’s a really good summation.
People ask me what my [Swervedriver] favourite album is, and people think you shouldn’t say compilation albums, but to me it’s a good selection of everything, really. It doesn’t have all the best stuff on it. I quite like the fact that it’s not chronologically laid out, so you just jump straight into the middle.
What does it mean to you to know that songs you guys recorded together are still extensively a part of peoples’ lives?
Oh, it means everything. It’s great. The music proves it has longevity. In the early nineties, you’d get little snipes in the press sometimes and people talk about the bands that supposedly were more important that I suspect aren’t still being played by anybody 20 years later. It never ceases to amaze me when people say this song or that song moved them in a way, or helped them through a period of time, and all that kind of stuff. Or that they sort of rocked out to it or whatever. It’s great.
For the full interview, visit The Vine. For more Swervedriver – highly recommended – visit their website. The music video for their song ‘Son of Mustang Ford‘ is embedded below.
Mess+Noise interview: Amy Findlay of Stonefield, 2011
An interview for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.
Interview – Stonefield: Rock ‘N’ Roll High School
Forget gimmickry, Stonefield’s Amy Findlay tells ANDREW MCMILLEN the all-sister quartet from country Victoria want to be known for their music.
There’s an endless fascination associated with staring into the musical past, as evidenced most recently with the Critics’ and Readers’ poll-topping debut by Perth-based psychedelic rock act Tame Impala. Seemingly from that same well of inspiration spring Stonefield: four sisters from country Victoria, aged 12 to 20 years old.
Brandishing a youthful take on 70s-inspired rock, they won last year’s triple j Unearthed High competition, and have since secured a booking at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival in the UK. Richard Kingsmill, music director of triple j, could be heard singing their praises at the One Movement festival in October last year: “They’ve just had an absolutely brilliant musical upbringing,” Kingsmill enthused. “They’ve got very wide and considerable depth in their music knowledge. They’re four sisters who can really play, and who can really belt it out. They’re already great live. I think they might be a band that might evolve into something.”
Ahead of their Glastonbury Festival slot in June, the Findlay sisters are booked to play the St Kilda Festival, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and Pushover 2011 in the same month; a gruelling schedule, considering that half of the band members are still school-aged.
You’ve got a pretty full gig calendar coming up. Will it be a struggle to fit in rehearsal and gigs around Sarah and Holly’s school commitments?
Amy: Well, we managed to do it throughout last year when we had a lot of stuff coming up, but I think we’re going to have to do a bit of time management to fit in rehearsals after school. They’re going to have a few days off, obviously, and if it gets too much, they’re probably just going to be switching to home-schooling. So we’ll see how we go.What does the band’s typical weekly schedule look like?
At the moment, because everybody’s on school holidays, we’re just practicing as much as we can every day. This month hasn’t been too full-on with gigs, so we’ve had lots of time to write, and rehearse old songs. But when it goes back to school, it’ll be band practice every afternoon that we can, and on the weekends, playing gigs as they pop up. And interviews during the week.Of which you’re handling most. You’re the mouthpiece.
Yeah! [Laughs]Were you elected into that position, or did the others not want to do it?
I just ended up doing it because I’m the older sister, I guess. It naturally happened that way.Where do you rehearse?
We’ve got a shed on our farm, so we go in there and make as much noise as we like, and no-one really hears. Unless it’s a windy day, and the sound travels. [Laughs]I saw a post on your MySpace blog where one of your wrote that you’d been “warned to look out for “sharks” in the music industry”. Who told you that?
A lot of people in the industry; managers and things. When we first won the triple j Unearthed High competition, I got as many phone numbers as I could and spoke to them, and got some advice. A lot of them said that there’s “sharks” in the industry that we should look out for. There’s also good people, of course. We haven’t really come across any of those sharks, just yet.
For the full interview, visit Mess+Noise. For more Stonefield, visit their Myspace. The music video for their song ‘Through The Clover‘ is embedded below.
Mess+Noise interview: Brent DeBoer of Immigrant Union, 2011
An interview for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.
Immigrant Union: ‘We’re Six-Sevenths Australian’
Dandy Warhol Brent DeBoer has made a fresh start in Melbourne with a new seven-piece band Immigrant Union and a down-home country-rock sound. Ahead of a residency at The Tote, he talks to ANDREW MCMILLEN about the farmhouse jam that started it all, the status of the Dandy’s new album and whether his residency claim is legit. Photos by CARLIN SUNDELL.
Take one part Dandy Warhol, one part Lazy Son and one part Galvatron and you’ve got Immigrant Union, a new Melbourne-based act that more readily adheres to the Dylan/Young model of country-folk songwriting than any of those aforementioned acts. After meeting at Melbourne’s Cherry Bar and discovering their mutual appreciation for strumming classic country on acoustic guitars, the Dandy Warhols’ drummer Brent DeBoer and The Lazy Sons’ singer Bob Harrow recruited keyboardist Peter ‘Gamma’ Lubulwa of The Galvatrons to record together.
Between each band member’s touring commitments, DeBoer – who now lives in Melbourne, and last performed in Australia with the Dandys in September 2010 as part of the Parklife Festival tour – brought Harrow and Lubulwa across to his hometown of Portland, Oregon, in March 2010 to record with producer Gregg Williams (The Dandy Warhols). Though the results of their sessions haven’t yet been released, Immigrant Union are set to play a Thursday night Tote residency alongside Stonefield throughout February.
I want to clarify a few things in the band’s bio. It says that 24 hours after first meeting, Bob and yourself “ended up on a farm outside Nagambie [in Victoria] drinking VB and strumming classic country rock‘n’roll”. Is this a euphemism for something else?
No, no! We met that night at Cherry Bar. Matt Hollywood from the Brian Jonestown Massacre and I were hanging out there, and Bob came up and said, “Are you guys playing a gig? What’s going on?” He thought that maybe Jonestown and Dandys were on tour together, or something. We talked to him for a while, and hung out at Cherry all night. The next day, we were going on a road trip to a family friend’s farm, and we asked if Bob wanted to go. He rode along, and we just sat on the porch and did what dudes like us do, which is sit around and strum guitar.That sounds like a pretty organic way to start a band.
Oh, hell yeah. It was just so fun. That night, Bob played a couple of the songs he’d written, and they sounded really cool. I did the same, and Matt did the same. Of course, Hollywood was really busy in a couple of other bands. But when I started dating Sarah – who is now my wife – I was here [in Australia] quite a bit, so I’d always call up Bob and we’d always end up doing the same thing, strumming guitars. Sooner or later, we started to realise we had quite a few songs going, and started recruited more members.And it just so happened that you and Bob were fond of the same specific genre of music, which you now play.
At the time, Bob was in The Lazy Sons. He was the lead singer, and they’re pretty hard-rocking. He sings really high and loud. It’s kind of in that AC/DC, almost Axl Rose style. Real extreme. It’s really impressive, but he also has a thing for Dylan, Neil Young, and stuff like that. He’s getting his ya-yas out at that side of the spectrum at the moment.
For the full interview, visit Mess+Noise. For more Immigrant Union, visit their Myspace.
Elsewhere: a video interview with The Dandy Warhols in Portland, September 2010; the transcript from the same interview.
Rolling Stone album reviews, December 2010: The Naked and Famous, Fuzz Phantoms
Two albums reviews for the January 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.
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The Naked and Famous 
Passive Me, Aggressive You
Somewhat Damaged/Universal
New Zealand punks bring the dance-noize to new audience
Owing to their fascination with Loveless-like walls of guitars and the synth-led electro-pop of Passion Pit and MGMT (circa Oracular Spectacular), this N.Z. five-piece have a foot planted firmly in both past and present. Their debut album bristles with nervous energy, like they’re itching to impress. And they do. Central to Passive Me, Aggressive You’s success is the skill with which their two main reference points are balanced: “Frayed” paints a mood of dark, distorted menace, yet it follows the album’s most optimistic jam (“Punching In A Dream”). In “Young Blood”, though, the band has conjured up one of 2010’s best singles. Alisa Xayalith delivers its self-aware opening line (“We’re only young and naïve still”) amid a storm of skittering synths and a hefty bass swoon. It’s a monster track masterfully handled, yet there’s the unshakeable sense that their best is still yet to come. Despite pursuing two disparate musical styles, The Naked and Famous embrace both, and thrive.
Key tracks: “Young Blood”, “Punching In A Dream”, “Frayed”
Elsewhere: An interview with singer/guitarist/producer Thom Powers for The Vine
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Fuzz Phantoms 
Fuzz Phantoms
Independent
Kisschasy frontman’s garage rock side-project unveiled at last
Best known as the lead singer and songwriter of pop band Kisschasy, Darren Cordeux has left his bandmates behind – for the time being – in favour of pairing up with his partner Tahlia Shaw under the Fuzz Phantoms moniker. Funded by 50 individual backers via online platform Kickstarter, this debut is a 12-track, 28-minute collection that flits between power pop and garage rock. Shaw is no gun on the kit, but her loose style is nicely juxtaposed by Cordeux’s considerable chops: his occasional flights of six-string fancy (best exemplified in “Met A Youngster”) are tasteful and impressive. Fans of Cordeux’s past work will find much to like here. The singer seems to have found solace in simplicity: stripped back to basics, Fuzz Phantoms sounds like two musicians (and their bassist pal) enjoying themselves. They’re unlikely to set the world alight with this release alone, but for the moment, the pair seem content – and rightfully so.
Key tracks: “No Crime”, “Nowhere”, “Met A Youngster”
Mess+Noise album review: The Holidays
An album review for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.
The Holidays – Post Paradise
Somewhere between Cut Copy’s electro wonderland, Gypsy And The Cat’s soft rock, and Empire Of The Sun’s delusions of pop grandeur sits Post Paradise, the debut from Sydney’s The Holidays. Despite such reference points, the album somehow remains interesting. Put it down to the strength of the songs, which unerringly achieve that rare pop trifecta: accessibility, originality and memorability. Tony Espie, who’s worked with The Avalanches, Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy, has mixed the album, which may account for its overall slickness and sheen.
Favourite moments? The way the guitars intercut the vocal melody in ‘Broken Bones’; the ethereal introduction to ‘6AM’, which dissipates upon meeting the sound of an alarm clock and takes a right turn into tropical pop-land; the double-tracked phaser effect applied to the guitars in ‘2 Days’, and the joyous, nonsensical vocal hook in its chorus; and the seemingly effortless chillwave upon which ‘Conga’ rides (accompanied by bongos, widdly-widdly guitars and an incessant, sensual bass throb).
Full review at Mess+Noise. More of The Holidays on MySpace. The music video for ‘Golden Sky‘ is embedded below.
Rolling Stone story: Hungry Kids Of Hungary
A story for the November 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, on Brisbane band Hungry Kids Of Hungary.
Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.
Hungry Kids of Hungary Stay Close to Home for Debut Disc
Queenslanders finally drop their debut after a pair of promising EPs
For Brisbane-based indie pop quartet Hungry Kids Of Hungary, the three-year path to their debut album was paved with transcontinental correspondence, two EP releases, and a stack of national tours supporting the likes of OK Go, Little Birdy and Bertie Blackman.
Escapades took shape in the suburban home of producer Matt Redlich, with whom the band recorded their second EP, last year’s Mega Mountain. Over cold drinks on a warm Brisbane day, singer/guitarist Dean McGrath and singer/keyboardist Kane Mazlin reflect on a recording process that began in January 2010 and concluded six months later.
Ultimately, the band were faced with a choice: record with a familiar face in a comfortable, inexpensive environment, or return to Tony Buchen’s studio in Sydney, where the band recorded earlier single “Let You Down”.
As an indie band faced with financial realities, though, the decision to remain Brisbane-bound seemed simple. ”We love Matt’s recording space,” says McGrath. “It’s underneath his house; it’s just cosy, and suits us down in the ground. There’s a pool out the back. We started recording in January – when it was far hotter than this – so we could do takes and then go for a swim. I was interested in doing something different and pushing us out of our comfort zone, but I think the right decision got made in the end.”
The band also found that removing time and money constraints had a positive effect on their songwriting. “We actually did some pre-production this time,” reveals Mazlin, in reference to an exhaustive process of rehearsal, deconstruction and rearrangement of each song.
“Sometimes you end up putting it together exactly the same as you started,” says McGrath,”but I think it’s a dangerous thing to have an album’s worth of songs ready and then just recording those 12. The cool thing about stretching it out over a long time is there’s four songs on the record now that weren’t written at the start of the recording process.”
Hungry Kids formed in mid-2007. Drummer Ryan Strathie had played in separate bands with both Mazlin and bassist Ben Dalton; McGrath was a mutual friend. As McGrath and Mazlin share vocal duties, the band agonised over Escapades‘ tracklisting. “It was always going to be a little tricky for us to make everything flow,” says Mazlin. “But I think we managed it.”
When asked to pinpoint the band’s sound, McGrath is laconic. “Pop’s the simplest way to describe it. It’s what we do. I think it’s unnecessarily complicated to give it a whole bunch of sub-genres.”
More Hungry Kids Of Hungary on MySpace. The music video for their song ‘Coming Around‘ is embedded below.
The Vine interview: The Dandy Warhols
An interview for The Vine with The Dandy Warhols – all four of them – conducted in tandem with my girlfriend Rachael in the band’s hometown of Portland, Oregon.
Why? We won a competition to do so.
Interview – The Dandy Warhols
Despite their early ambitions to re-energise the shoegaze genre (which will make more sense after reading the below interview), The Dandy Warhols emerged from Portland, Oregon in the mid-1990s to become best-known for brandishing a unique take on alternative rock that favoured lengthy psychedelic compositions and instantly accessible pop tunes in equal measure. After hitting their stride commercially with …Dandy Warhols Come Down in 1997 and Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia in the early 2000s, the band were dropped by their label Capitol Records in 2005. Ties between band and label had been strained for some time, as evidenced in the infamous 2004 documentary DiG!, which chronicled the band’s career in parallel to The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Rather than despair, the band made the most of their freedom by establishing their own label, Beat The World, which they now use to promote their friends’ bands, in addition to their own material. 2008’s Earth To The Dandy Warhols was their debut LP as an independent band, and they’ve recently released a greatest hits compilation entitled The Capitol Years: 1997-2005.
Ahead of their Australian tour as part of the Parklife Festival, my girlfriend Rachael and I met with The Dandy Warhols in Portland on September 9 2010, after winning a competition organised by Virgin Mobile, Pedestrian.TV and Parklife Festival promoters Fuzzy. After watching them record a rare acoustic set for the local community radio station OPB – wherein they covered songs by Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, as well as a couple of their own – we decamped to their studio space, The Odditorium, for an extended interview during which the four members come and go.
To read the full interview – around 50 minutes’ worth – visit The Vine.
Footage of our trip to the US is embedded below; read more about it here.
