When it comes to insane complexity, out there rhythms and brain frying technicality, Periphery are gurus. No strangers to these parts – they had the honour of warming up Dillinger Escape Plan’s audience on their 2010 Oz tour – Periphery will be packing up their gear and Tesseract and bringing their metal mind fuck to stoked ears around the nation on the League of Extraordinary Djentlemen tour. Emily Swanson got on the blower with axe acrobatic Misha Mansoor to get the lowdown on all things Periphery, their new albums and the djent movement.

You were the founder of Periphery back in 2005. What were you hoping to get out of music at that stage?
Kind of the same thing that I am now, which is just whatever I’m in the mood for without any limitations and whatever sounds good to me, but maybe now in the context of what sounds good to everyone in the band. The lucky thing is that like over the years every person who’s joined has joined as a fan of the band, so there isn’t really much arguing on where our sound could go or should go, because we’ve kind of like left everything… I mean, the first album probably covers quite a bit of ground, with the idea that allowing it to expand more and more in the future, so I find that to be as true today as it was back then. The goal is just the right music that sounds good to us regardless of what it sounds like.

It was actually a while before you released your first album, though. What was the reason behind that?
Yeah, getting the line-up together. That band that broke up, Bulb, was the only other band that I’ve ever been in, and that was me with a friend. Its like that classic story of you start writing together and then he wants to go in one direction and you want to go in another, and it all just imploded, right? It left me thinking, well if I wanna do what I wanna do, I have to do it all myself. If you do it yourself, you can do it right, and that was the approach, but then the tough thing was that this music ended up being very different from what a lot of people were playing, and a lot of people didn’t understand what I was going for, a lot of people had trouble wrapping their head around the sound I was trying to do, and it was very, very hard to find musicians who were on the same wavelength, so that took a lot of time. And then sort of learning through making my own mistakes, what sort of members would work and what wouldn’t work, so we’ve been through a lot of members and a lot of line-up changes over the years, but I wanted to ensure that when we put our album out that it would be with our line-up and so far that’s been successful.

So it really was difficult having extensive line-up changes…
The good thing I think, is because they all happened before our album came out, no one really thinking about them because it’s a lot more difficult when say, there’s bands that have different singers or different musicians on every album and you can hear it, then it’s right in your face, whereas for a lot of people, they aren’t even aware of this because the first album is all they really know of us. They see those names on there and they’re the same names that are there right now. So therefore it’s not really a big deal for most of our fans.

Having six in your group, do you ever have problems with disputes breaking out between all of you?
We’re all very opinionated and we do get into arguments, but nothing serious. It’s a democracy in the band. But sometimes you need a tiebreaker if we have three and three votes, but most of the times it actually works out really well, like our system has worked really well for us. We all generally get along really well. Touring is very hard, and if you don’t have a group of people who you get along with very well, you’ll kind of fall apart and in fact, that’s why we kicked out our last singer. It was day three of tour, and nobody wanted him in the band anymore. We just sort of found out that this guy could not handle touring, and he was a big diva, and it was like, “Oh man, we can’t live with this guy.” Touring is definitely the ultimate litmus test right there.

You’re heading back to Australia in July to play some shows for the League of Extraordinary Djentlement Tour. Now, can you tell us what exactly “djent” is?
Everybody’s been asking that and I’ve been trying to answer it to the best of my abilities. The real answer is that no one knows what djent is. It started out as this term that Meshuggah started using to describe their guitar tone, which is a special guitar technique. It’s onomatopoeia alright? It’s where you use four strings on your power chords and you palm it really hard and it sounds like djent djent djent, you know? And I like that sound a lot, so I used to talk about it on boards and forums and be like “This guitar is djenty, this song is djenty,” it was just very tongue in cheek kind of thing. It was just to have a laugh, right? But then I think a lot of people misconstrued what it was and they started to think that our style of music, which is low-tuned and syncopated, was djent and then they started saying that that was what djent was. Even though I’ve explained that that’s what it is a million times, it seems to have taken on a life of its own.

What have you guys been up to since you were here last year?
To be honest, we’ve just been touring most of the time, supporting our album. And we wanted to put something else out. We put out the Icarus Lives! EP, which is kind of a supplemental to the first album, it’s definitely not like a release that holds its own in any way, it’s really just for fans of the first album to give them something extra, a bunch of remixes and things like that, but it was something that we could basically get together in the week off that we would have between tours since we didn’t have a lot of studio time, we just didn’t have a lot of time at home to do that, and it was really just to tide fans over because we want to put out two albums next year, and it’ll take a while to do that.

So you’ve actually slated in two new releases for next year, isn’t that kind of ambitious?
It is ambitious, and it’s scary, but that’s what keeps it fun, because we’re not interested in doing safe things, we’re interested in doing things that will be a challenge, and that’s definitely going to be a challenge. It’s not arbitrary by any means either, I mean we’ve been toying around with this concept album idea for the longest time and at the same time, we had so many songs that didn’t fit the mold of the concept album and it was like, “Well, which one should we do?” and then we started to realise that we have so much material, that we can narrow it down to two albums and do both realistically if we really put our heads together and make this work. It’ll be a staggered release, probably three to six months apart, but I would like both of them to come out next year if it’s at all possible. We’re really excited about getting all that together, he writing side’s well underway.

You’re very free with music, letting your fans download a majority of your catalog; I’m guessing you’re a fan of the internet’s role in music?
We wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the internet. Within reason, I think that fans need to support bands because bands would not be able to exist and tour and afford to be in a band and continue to make music and continue to play shows if fans don’t support them, and I think that that’s a very important thing. I think using the internet as a preview tool to get into a band is great, but once you’re into them you should support them, especially the smaller ones because I think people have misconceptions about how much money bands make. Like, a lot of people think that because we’re in guitar magazines and what not that we make money, but the truth is we’re so broke. We are so broke and a lot of people are surprised to hear that, and we have a long way to go before we’re gonna be even remotely sustainable which is our goal. That we can just worry about making music and not have to work when we go home. Most bands do have to do that and if you support them, then they can continue to afford to make music for you. It’s important to buy merch and to buy CDs if you like them, but using the internet a preview tool is good, and if you are gonna be the guy who doesn’t buy CDs, then be sure to go to the shows and be sure to buy shirts and be sure to spread the music around so that other people can get into them.

You’ve stated that you want to redefine the way music is experienced. In what way do you want to achieve this?
Personally, I just wanna make the kind of music that sounds good to me and that sounds good to the band. We wanna make music that makes us happy and if other people like it, then that’s awesome, and if they don’t, it’s just music. It’s subjective and not everyone will like it. That’s been my personal goal with music. It’s just to be very selfish about it and write for myself and see how far I can get off of that, because at least if you’re doing that, then it doesn’t matter what anyone else says, at least you know you can be proud of what you’ve done. Even if everybody hates it, you can still be proud of what you’ve done. Maybe the only way I’d say I want to change the way music is experienced is the way that we arranged our first album and the way that we approach our arrangements, like tracks and interludes. It’s tricking people who are from the MP3 generation into listening to an album the whole way through. What we did, we strategically made it so that there’s not a gap, and our album is 73 minutes long, which is pretty damn long, and we made it so that there’s no gap in the sound so that people who are kind of used to shuffling around or just when they hear the silence they move to the next song or they skip around, they wouldn’t be tempted to do that because there wouldn’t be any break in the sound, so they’d think the song wasn’t done yet and before you know it, you’re listening to the next song. It’s just to sort of promote listening to albums the way they used to be heard, and I think our album was and our albums will be in the future, the kind that you can hopefully listen to from beginning to end, ‘cos those are the most rewarding in my experience.

Slotting into that neat slew of drum and guitar duos cropping up all over the place, John Barrett and Colin Sneed of Bass Drum Of Death are one to watch, or so says NME’s 50 Best New Bands of 2011 list. Channelling ’90s garage grunge with a smack of indie rock à la Death From Above 1979, we’d have to agree. Their debut album ‘GB City’ was released in Australia in May and is definitely one that will be taking up long-term residency in your player. BLUNT spent a few minutes with one half of the duo, founding member John Barrett, to chat about how he went from being Fat Possum Records’ worst employee to being in a band on the label.

You and Colin form Bass Drum Of Death. How did you guys meet?
Well, we’d played in bands together since high school and then also in college, so we knew each other from that and then I actually started Bass Drum as a one-man band sort of project. After doing that for a while, I decided that it would be better with a drummer. Colin had never really played drums before he played with me, I just knew that he’d be down for touring and that he’d get it, and I asked him if he wanted to do it and he said he’d give it a shot. He practiced drums for a week and then we practiced together for about two weeks and then we went on tour and we’ve been going like that ever since.

Was there any one moment that made you decide that you really wanted to be a musician?
Basically, it was the first time I ever heard Nirvana. My mum had one of those Columbia Record subscriptions where you’d get something like 11 CDs for a penny, and then they’d send you one every month that you’d have to pay for, and she let me get a couple of records and one of the records I got was Nirvana ‘Live From The Muddy Banks of the Wishkah’. After hearing that, I was like “Holy shit. This is what I wanna do.” I’d just sit in my room and go “Holy fuck! This is so bad ass”.

Did you have any reservations about getting into the music industry?
Not really, I kinda took the first couple of years that I was pursuing this project slow and stayed under the radar for the most part. I got to see other people I knew that were doing similar things to me and got to see how they did it. Once I got a record together, I kinda had a better idea of how to do things for myself. I’ve never really had any reservations, I’ve just taken my time with it and tried to make the most of it, just trying to get into a situation where I can do music and not have to come home and work another job. It’s easier said than done, but you know, I’m closer now than I was a year ago.

I actually read somewhere that at one point, you were probably the worst employee at Fat Possum Records and now you’re in a band on the label. How did that happen?
Well they put out a seven inch of recordings that I’d done – I’ll call it one-man band recordings – they put out the seven inch and were like “Hey, we’ll put this 7 inch out if you go play a bunch of shows cos nobody knows who you are”. So I did that, and in between the tours I was doing, I’d go in and help them out, filling pre-orders and doing general office work, and that’s kinda the reason why I was the worst employee ever, just because it was office work and I hate that shit. I was trying to fill like 25,000 Andrew Bird pre-orders and all this stuff, so I was taking a cigarette break every ten minutes just to keep myself sane. It’s not like I am a bad worker per se, it’s just that an office job is an office job, even if the product is cool.

‘GB City’ was released here in May and I read that you actually wrote and recorded the whole album yourself. How come you didn’t seek any otutside help?
One point was money, I didn’t really have that much money together to go and record it and second of all, some of these songs have been recorded seven times, so over the whole process I got a lot better at recording and figuring out where things needed to be. Basically, the third point is that I’m a perfectionist, so I like to have my hands on everything and if there’s somebody else involved, there can always be a communication breakdown where it’s hard to get your point across sometimes. I felt for what I was doing, it was just easier for me to knock it out all by myself and try to get it sounding as best as I could. People have labelled it lo-fi, but that’s not what I was going for. I was just trying to use very minimal tools and create something that sounded bigger than the tools that I used to make it with. Obviously I wasn’t going for something superslick or anything, but one of the things that I wanted to do with the record was just make sure that you could hear everything. I like most of the music that I listen to to be a tad bit dirty anyway, so that’s kinda how I wanted to do it.

Is there an overall theme running through the songs on the album?
Not really, when I was making it, I mean, I don’t really smoke that much anymore, but when I was making the record, I was going through one of my huge ‘pothead phases’. Even the record title, ‘GB City’, GB stands for ‘Gravity Bong’, so that’s kind of a theme, but all of the songs just sort of deal with different shit. I’m not at the point in my career where I can write a concept album. None of the songs come from smoking weed as a trippy standpoint at all though, it’s more that one song is basically about how smoking weed was way more fun in high school ‘cos it was kind of taboo and cooler than it actually is, and now it’s just one of those things you do to medicate, it’s not that much fun anymore, it’s more just necessary.

You guys teamed up with Odd Future members MellowHype for the song “64”. Who approached who to do that collaboration?
It was kind of mutual. We met and hung out with them at SXSW and we have the same publicist, it also turned out that we were booked on the same late night show on Fuel TV, and the idea was thrown out at me if we wanted to try and do that, and I said of course, I thought it’d be really badass. We hung out with them and we seemed to mesh well together, so it kinda worked out well. It was really, really fun rehearsing with them, that was the best part. Colin and I had practiced the song for a couple of days before we left to go out and do that, and then we get there and we play the song with them, maybe eight or nine times, didn’t really have it that well, and after the tenth time it was pretty decent, and they were like, “Fuck this, we’re done with this. We’re good. We’re ready to go” and then we spent the next two and a half hours jamming with them. That was way cooler than doing the actual TV show, to me, because it was all over the place. Hodgy [Beats] would get on the drums, I would play keyboard, and Left Brain would rap, and then Colin would get on drums and I would play guitar and we’d start playing some hardcore stuff and then Hodgy would be screaming, like real-deal hardcore shit, and basically, by the end of the rehearsal, he was covered in sweat and didn’t have a shirt on and was out of breath. The whole time we just kept passing around this handle of Sailor Jerry… It was definitely one of the funnest rehearsal periods I’ve ever had.

Is there anyone else that you really want to work with?
It’d be cool to work with Rick Ruben, but I really haven’t put too much thought into it. There’s nobody off the top of my head that I can think of right now. It would be cool to do something with Jamie Hince from The Kills though, because he has, in my opinion, one of the gnarliest and most original styles of guitar playing today.

At the moment you guys are playing shows for ‘GB City’, have you come across a favourite venue yet?
We’ve only played there once, but I think my venue is gonna have to be The Bottletree in Birmingham, Alabama. The hospitality there was off the charts. They hooked us up with food and the backstage area is super nice and has video games and old picture books and all sorts of stuff everywhere. And then in the back, in the back porch area, there’s two air stream trailers for the band and they’re tricked out with flat screens. When we played there and it was us and another band and we basically slept in there, so we didn’t even have to leave the venue at all and we just stayed in these awesome tricked out air stream trailers. Then when we got up the next day, the girl from the venue showed up and took us to lunch. It’s definitely the best I’ve ever been treated at a venue.

Since it’s just the two of you in the band, what’s the best and worst thing about being in a duo?
The best thing is that you can’t take sides. Nobody can gang up on anybody because it’s just two people. The worst thing is, it’s just two pople. You’re with the same person all the time. For us, it works well because we’re good friends and we can do the whole thing where, when we do have to go on six or seven hour car rides in a row, we can have two consecutive days where we won’t talk to each other, but then on the third, we’ll talk the whole time. We’re both pretty chilled about it and we’ve never really had any disagreements or reason for it to go bad, so it’s been pretty chill the whole time which is good when you’re with the same person every day for 24 hours a day.

By Emily Swanson

Formed out of the ashes of San Diego rock group Early Times, brothers Mike and Vic Fuentes conjured up Pierce The Veil, the four-piece post-hardcore outfit taking to venues near you with a vengeance. With two stellar albums under their belt and fond memories from stints on the Vans Warped Tour and Bamboozle Left, BLUNT chatted to Pierce the Veil frontman Vic Fuentes before he and the boys saddled up with Escape The Fate for a slew of shows Down Under.

You guys are heading to Australia in April with Escape the Fate. What do you love most about travelling around with fellow bands?
I think my favourite thing about travelling is seeing different cultures and the vibes of different countries. We went to Australia a while back and it was our first time there and was probably one of my favourite things we’ve ever done. The overall vibe and attitude of the people was amazing. I mean we’ve been to Japan where it’s completely different. Everyone’s more proper and a lot more reserved, so it’s crazy to see what it’s like around the world.

When did you first know that this was what you wanted to do?
The first time we ever played a show was just a backyard party in high school for one of our friends. We were playing really fast punk music then and I remember seeing all of our friends running around and going crazy while we were playing. That was the first time I ever felt such a rush playing for people, so ever since then, playing live has just been really addictive and really cool for us.

Looking at your album, Selfish Machines, you guys have a song called “Disasterology” and it makes a decent amount of references to Donnie Darko. Where do you guys get your inspiration for each song you write?
I usually write things down every day as I’m going. If I hear something cool or if I think of something, I just write it down, and I think that song for sure I was watching the movie and thinking, “Oh man, this has so many cool ideas and weird ways of thinking.” It’s such a dreamy, dreamy song, so that was definitely inspired by the kind of thinking that ‘every living thing dies alone’. I just thought it was a pretty crazy concept.

On that same album, you guys did a collaboration with Jeremy McKinnon from A Day to Remember on “Caraphernalia”. What was that like?
It was cool, I had the chorus in mind for that song and I just remember thinking that I wanted somebody with a really strong scream, and I kept hearing his voice on it. He’s a good friend of ours; we’ve known him for a long time and our bands have toured together many times, so I just called him up and he was down to do it. It was actually kind of an interesting process as we never actually met up or anything. He did it from a different studio across the country and just sent us the tracks and we put it all together and it came out pretty cool. Even for the video, when we shot it, he was in Germany and his videographer was cool enough to shoot all of his parts from there and we just put him into the video. It was crazy.

Okay, so you’ve beaten the sophomore slump and you’re planning on a new album later in the year. What can you tell us about that?
After Australia, we’re gonna take all of the summer off. We’re not gonna do the Warped Tour or anything like that, we plan on just writing the entire time and this time around, we’re trying to keep the ball rolling a little faster, as opposed to the last record. We took a long time off and it was a little scary thinking, “Hopefully our fans will still remember us”, so this time we’re trying to keep things really flowing.

Do you ever find it difficult to come up with new material?
Well the thing is, we tour for so long, like a year straight, and we get really itchy to write. We get all these ideas while we’re on tour and by the time we’re done touring, we have tonnes of ideas and direction and we’re just really excited to record.

I saw photos from the 2010 Warped Tour where a “cavalera mariachi” introduced you guys to the stage and the crowd went off. Have you ever thought about incorporating more of your Latin-American roots into your songs?
We always kind of subliminally do it, everywhere you look throughout the records, you’ll hear some sort of Spanish vibe, whether it be in the guitars or whether it be in the percussion. For example, the first song on the new record is called “Besitos” which is a Spanish word for kisses, and there’s tonnes of Spanish stuff everywhere. We really like to bring that out in the music.

Okay, so you’re in a band with your brother. I know if I was in one with my brother, we’d probably want to kill each other after about five minutes. How do you guys overcome that classic sibling rivalry?
[Laughs]. We’ve been playing together for so long and we’re actually pretty close in age, only about a year and a half apart, so I think we’re at an age now where we’re friends. We can go to bars together and hang out, so it’s not difficult for us at all. It’s actually kinda nice to have family around when you’re so far away from home all the time. When you’re in different countries, sometimes you can get a little homesick, but when you’ve got your brother around it’s pretty cool as you’re doing it together.

Life seems like it’s pretty crazy for you guys right now with touring and planning the new album. What do you guys do to just chill out and take a load off?
Most of the time we don’t, it’s kinda crazy. These tours just keep going and going, I mean, we’ve only had one day off on this tour and we’re almost halfway through it. It’s kinda like a full time job; it never really stops. We’re always either driving to gigs or playing gigs. Something people just don’t always realise is just how constant everything is. We never really get to chill. Like tonight, we’re in Seattle, Seattle’s one of my favourite places and we have a short drive tonight, so we’ll go out and hang out with our friends and that’ll be kinda cool to just kick back a little bit. It’s few and far and between, but it’s okay though. I think in this industry it’s so competitive you have to keep moving and working and playing shows as much as you can to keep reaching new goals and stuff like that.

How do you rate playing in-door shows with big summer festivals like the Warped Tour?
I think they’re both cool in their own ways; you have to work differently for each show. For a big festival, you know the Warped Tour was good for us as a band to learn how to control big crowds, and you can’t hide behind any lights or anything like that, it’s very much ‘everything’s in your face’, and that was kind of where we were able to bring a lot of energy to our shows. When we get back to club shows, it’s almost easier as we can control things more, but yeah I think doing the Warped Tour is almost like a good way to learn how to play live shows. I think it really helped us as a band. It’s a fucking fun tour. I love that tour.

What has been the craziest thing to happen to you guys on tour so far?
Ooh man, we thought we were all going to die not too long ago on the Warped Tour. Our bus caught on fire on the outside and we had some people run in yelling, “Your bus is on fire!” There was smoke coming through the vents and it was like a movie. I had to wake everyone up and for about give minutes, we thought everyone was gonna die, but we put it out with a fire extinguisher and it was all okay, but that was pretty scary.

The first song I heard from you guys was actually your cover of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”. What made you guys want to cover that?
We’re big fans, I’m a huge fan, Michael Jackson is definitely a huge inspiration for me and to a lot of other musicians as well. I grew up on him as my dad was always playing him on the radio and on CDs and tapes, so it was always around the house when I was younger. He’s been a big part of our song writing and stuff like that. He’s a very inspiring person, so we wanted to do “Beat It” ‘cos it was kind of a rock song of his.

You and your brother Mike had a side project going called Isles and Glaciers that was a kind of supergroup in the alternative scene. Do you have any plans to record some more stuff together?
You know, we literally get asked that question – I’m not kidding you – every single day.

Oh, my apologies…
No, no, it’s fine, it’s cool because it means kids like it and that’s good for us, but honestly I never really have a good answer for it. It’s kinda tough because everyone’s got so much going on. It was assembled out of so many different bands that it’s a little hectic trying to get everyone in one place at one time, though with that said, hopefully we’ll be able to do it again one day. I would love to and I’ve talked to some of the guys about it and some of them are into the idea, but you never know. It’s all about timing and if we can make it happen, we’ll do it.

What are your thoughts on the whole Jonny Craig scandal at the moment? I found out that he was apparently scamming his fans for money…
Yeah, yeah, Mike [Fuentes, Vic’s brother] and I kind of consider him to be like our third brother, as we’ve all known each other so long. He’s always been really close to us and he’s close to my family, close with my mum and dad and I definitely take him there to see them. There’s a lot of love between us, but through all that he’s also just kind of a wild person and pretty carefree. He’s also having some problems with drugs and stuff like that, and you know I really hope for the best ‘cos that stuff can destroy lives. We’re hoping for good things for him ‘cos he’s such a talented person. He’s the most talented person I’ve ever met, and it’d be a shame for it to go to waste. So I’ll always love that guy and hope the best for him.

Where do you think you’d be right now if you weren’t in a band?
Honestly, I can’t even tell you. I’ve always been really into art and design and actually before we started touring full time, I was going to college for graphic design, so I’ve always been really into that and I still kind of keep it up, so I guess that would be the other thing I’d be doing. Something still artistic hopefully.

By Emily Swanson

After going from after-hours jamming in their local record store to a slew of international shows, Brisbane duo An Horse have the accomplishments of a band that have spent years in the making. Tour with Tegan and Sara? Check. Death Cab For Cutie? No sweat. Manchester Orchestra? Them too. Throw in some shows at SXSW and an upcoming slot at the Lollapalooza Festival and you’re looking into the lives of Kate Cooper and Damon Cox. Currently playing shows the world over in support of their second album, Walls has been highly praised by the likes of Rolling Stone and Spin, and follows their 2009 debut, Rearrange Beds. BLUNT sat down with one half of the Brisbane indie rock twosome, Kate Cooper, to chat living abroad, the perks of being in a duo and grammar pet peeves.

You’re playing the Annandale tonight. Are you excited to be back on home turf?
Yeah, it’s great. We just played Brisbane last night and it was awesome, so it’s really good. We’re very excited to be playing.

When you look at the fact that you’ve played SXSW and you’re heading to Lollapalooza later this year, how do these major festivals compare to playing more intimate club shows like the one you’ve got on tonight?
Well, SXSW, it’s not like Lollapalooza, it’s more lots of little shows, so that doesn’t really compare, but playing festivals is great. It’s always weird sound though, because you’re always rushed in with no sound check, but these shows at home are awesome. Really exciting, you know, they’re our own shows, so we can play for a long time and just generally enjoy being back.

Last I heard you were living in Canada…
Yes, and Damon is in Melbourne.

How do you guys write songs together when you’re both living so far apart?
Oh, we get together when we have to. It’s only two of us, so it’s not really an issue.

Then again, since it’s only two of you, is it more of a challenge being in a band with just one other person?
I think it’s much better. There’s less people, you can travel more easily and there’s less cooks in the kitchen, so I thoroughly, no, highly recommend being in a duo.

I know you guys aren’t siblings, but do you ever fight as though you are?
Yes, sometimes, but not all that much. We’re like brother and sister in a good way; we get along pretty well considering we have to spend so much time together and we know each other pretty well too, so we know when to kind of disappear and give the other person time and that sort of thing.

I know you two were working in a record store together, is that how you first met?
Yes, we worked at Skinny’s Records in Brisbane and we worked together for about two years before we started actually playing music together.

And that’s how Tegan and Sara came across you? Was that just random? Did they just happen to walk into that record store?
It didn’t actually play out like that, we met them at an in-store and then a few years later, they asked us out on tour.

That must have been awesome…
They were good friends of ours by then, I mean of course it was awesome, it was really cool and they’re very supportive girls, so it’s pretty cool that they took a chance on us.

You opened for them and you’ve also played with Death Cab For Cutie. Who’s next on the agenda to play with?
Well we just finished a bunch of shows with Manchester Orchestra, who are an awesome band from the States, and we’ve played with Cage The Elephant, Silversun Pickups… We’ve just been really lucky to play with some awesome bands.

You actually said in an interview once that you’d most like to work with Kylie Minogue and Larry David. Now Kylie, I get, but working with Larry would have to be simultaneously brilliant and frustrating. Why’d you choose him?
No, no it wouldn’t because we’re very similar… I feel like we would be kindred spirits

I’m guessing you have Larry David moments?
Constantly!

‘Walls’ was released in April and has been seeing a lot of praise worldwide. How do you feel about the album having gained so much attention overseas?
For the most part, our career has been overseas, so I’m glad that people like it, I mean, I always think it could get more attention than it does, but I’m very happy with how the record’s going and I’m very happy that other people like it. Ultimately, I just care about what Damon and I think about it, and we really like it, so the fact that other people want to listen to it is pretty cool too.

I guess that kind of says something about our music industry when our own artists are doing better overseas…
Well some are, some aren’t. You know, there’s a lot of bands that are huge in Australia that aren’t really big overseas, it just depends where you kind of base your career or where you find people who believe in you, and it just so happens that a whole stack of people in the States wanted to work with us and believed in us, I mean, Damon and I have played in other bands in Australia for years and have had kind of no success, so I mean the fact that the guy who signed Pearl Jam signed our band is something of a cool thing to think about.

While we’re at it, what was the idea behind the album?
I’m not sure if there was one intentionally, but I guess at the time it was about being away and distance; missing people and constantly travelling and then when you get down time, just being in a new place. I guess it’s just kind of universal themes of disconnection.

I know it’s not from that album, but the film clip for ‘Postcards’ is awesome. Where did the idea for that come from?
Well, we needed to make a really cheap video, and we had worked with a couple of people who we’d worked with in the past and we kind of sat around and brainstormed ideas and it was actually the cheapest way to make a film clip. I don’t exactly remember how the idea came about, but we were pretty happy with it. It was pretty funny… It was done in four hours on a digital take with just one continual take done over that time.

Once you make a film clip like that, does it kind of set a precedent? Are you then always thinking of more cool and quirky ideas for clips?
To be honest, film clips really bother me because I think they’re a waste of money. I mean I like the fact that you kind of have to be creative to make them happen because they’re just so expensive and usually budgets don’t match that, so it does push our creativity, definitely. I guess it just comes down to the fact that when we do anything, we like to be doing something in the best way we can do it and what we think is the most creative. It’s more just trying to come up with something that we’re really happy with.

I know this album’s only just come out, but have you been writing songs in anticipation of the next one?
I actually haven’t had a day off since the record was released about two months ago, so I haven’t really done anything except eat and play music on tour.

Finally, “An Horse” stems from the grammatical use of ‘an’ before hard and soft ‘H’s. What’s your biggest grammar pet peeve?
Ooh, you know it’s probably the incorrect placement of apostrophes regarding ownership.

Like “it’s” and “its”…
YES! It’s so simple. I mean, I make the mistake often too, but it just drives me crazy. It’s painful to watch. I also hate ‘text talk’… It just drives me insane!

By Emily Swanson