Gold Coasters Bleeding Knees Club have had a hell of a year. Alex Wall and Jordan Malane had, up until a year ago, not played much music, but they got together spontaneously for a warehouse show and have kicked out the jams since, pulling hints from their favourite bands to make Virginity, their lo-fi debut EP which splashes messy, youthful energy into songs barely two minutes long (you can stream the whole thing on the band’s Bandcamp page).

They’re about to go overseas to record their debut album with Dev Hynes (Lightspeed Champion) and play their first international festival and club dates, but before they do that they play FBi Social on Saturday with Dead Farmers and Step-Panther – I can’t make it but I wish I could, so you should all get along to check out some quality music! Alex and I had a bit of a yarn over the phone one March evening about the excitement of being a band on the rise.

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I saw you just posted the video for your single Have Fun?

Yeah, we just released it. We sort of sat down and brainstormed with the guy who directed and filmed it. It’s just kind of what we do anyway, we hang around. We filmed it like, two weeks ago, it was just one day.

You’ve been playing together for a year, but you’ve known each other for longer, right?

Yeah, we’ve been friends since we were like one year old or something like that. Yeah, we met at a day care sort of centre. We’re both 21.

Before you started making music, had it crossed your minds at all?

Oh no, not at all. We both played a little bit of guitar but not really, and then Jordan got a drum kit one day and then we just started playing I guess, just randomly. We played at an art show one night and I guess that was it.

How did you start to write songs?

At the start we were just making random songs, and then when we started to get shows we started writing songs actually that were songs, not just noise. I kind of write it all myself at my house, and then me and Jordan will jam on it and add some little bits here and there.

In a year you’ve gone up really fast and things have happened quickly – some bands try for years and that doesn’t happen. How’d it happen so fast for you guys?

I have no idea, I don’t really know how it happened. We just put our demos up on triple j Unearthed and they kind of liked it, but I really have no idea.

Are you planning to make this your career now?

I went to uni, I’ve finished uni and stuff, not that that helps now. We’re gonna do the shows and ride it out, if it’s still going good. It’s really good, it’s better than sitting at home and doing nothing or working at McDonalds or stuff like that. It’s pretty fun, we enjoy it.

In the last few months you’ve done your first few international supports. Do you get nervous?

I don’t think we really get nervous any more. The Wavves tour was kind of nerve-wracking, that was like really big crowds every night and we like their music as well so it was kind of scary what they would think of us. But I don’t know, you kind of get used to it after a while.

The sound you’re making has come back in recently (Wavves, Girls etc) – what drew you to that?

We both used to listen to that music, I guess, that’s the kind of music we listen to and we were listening to it and thought it could sort of be entertaining to do. I really like that sort of genre of music and stuff.

How did you keep that lo-fi sound in the studio?

We recorded mainly live… We recorded in a home-made studio with one of our friends recording us.

Did you write the songs on your EP to group them all together, or just separately?

‘Camp Out’ was one of the first songs we ever wrote together when we first started, we weren’t really planning on doing an EP. We wrote two songs for the demo that we did and then we got enough songs to do an EP so we sort of just decided to do an EP. We’re going to record an album in May overseas, so we have a few songs, a whole album’s worth of other songs, I guess. They’re sort of all just teenage having fun sort of songs, I don’t know how to say it. They all have the same storylines to them, they’re all about girls and guys having fun.

I heard you named your EP after the fact that your manager lost his the night before recording began…

We thought he lost his virginity and then we found out the other week that he lied about it. He’s still a virgin. He’s not our manager any more, but the guy that was managing us is still a virgin so the EP is kind of a lie!

Have Fun was used on a Myer TV campaign. How did that come about?

They just emailed us and asked us if they could use our song, and we thought it’d be a good idea at the time.

Most bands don’t interact much with the internationals they support and yet here you guys are, having Lightspeed Champion produce your upcoming album. How did that conversation strike up?

Well, we really didn’t even talk to Lightspeed Champion much when we were touring with him. He told our manager that he really liked our band, and our manager asked him if he’d like to produce it and he was pretty excited about the idea, so we just sort of organised it and stuff. We haven’t really spoken to him much.

What’s the current progress with the upcoming album?

We’ve kind of demoed the whole album, so we’ve got a rough recording of the whole album at the moment, but we’re still writing a few new songs to put on it that haven’t been demoed and stuff. I guess I’ll write some songs in the meantime are better than other songs are. Yeah, it’s the same sort of vibe as the EP, I think. There’s a few slow songs as well.

Since you’re entering a proper studio this time, do you plan to keep the lo-fi/DIY ethics of the EP? Are you worried that might be compromised?

I think we’ll still record in a pretty rough sort of setting and stuff, but we’ll just record it live so I don’t think our sound will change that much, though I kind of want it to be a little bit of an improvement from the last recording. Just sort of progressing a little. I think the songs are a little more structured better than the EP, the EP was pretty badly recorded, I reckon, so it could be a tiny bit better but it still won’t be some pop clean album or somethng like that.

You’re about to go overseas not only to record, but also to play your first international dates. People over there don’t have triple j and they might not know you. Excited? Nervous?

It’s the first time we’ll be overseas as a band, it’s really exciting. We’re trying to get some bloggers and stuff to write about us, hopefully we’ll have a few fans over there.

Lots of young bands have crazy tour stories. What are some of yours?

Weird stories… I don’t know. Weird things always happen, I can’t think. Adelaide’s pretty weird, it’s a weird place. The whole place is just weird, I don’t know, it’s like everyone just does what they wanna do there, there’s no groups of people, everyone’s just like…weird. I don’t know any weird stories. When we toured with Yacht Club DJs, we went to R&B Superclub and broke everything, I think. I can’t remember. Maybe leave that question!

‘The Perfect Space’ – The Avett Brothers

This time last year I was balls deep in the beginnings of my love affair with The Avett Brothers. I saw them for the first time (and the only time, but hopefully not forever) at the beginning of April 2010. I’d been told about them from various internet friends and I listened to their album I And Love And You. I fell in love. I saw them live. I fell further in love. For a while last year, around this time, this was all I really wanted to listen to.

I really love that entire album. It’s perfect, absolutely perfect. But I particularly love this song because it marries two completely different styles. The song is split almost cleanly in half but it never feels forced or sounds strange. It’s like it was meant to be. The band has the most incredible harmonies that still send shivers down my spine like the first time I heard them. I think this song is a great representation of the two sides of the Avetts’ personalities – they have the very down-trodden melancholy that pervades many of their songs, and the more upbeat bluegrass-flavoured foot-stompers that bring the ruckus on a lot of others. I was obsessed with this song and listening to this live version is invigorating. It reminds me of standing front row at The Factory, staring up at them with a massive smile on my face. Amazing. Their touring cellist, Joe Kwon, is nuts as well – he inspired me that night to be more diligent with my own cello playing, and I told him so on Twitter and he was very gracious towards me in reply.

I’d recommend this band to anyone looking for something a little different. I And Love And You is the album I’m most familiar with – I’ll admit I haven’t listened to a lot of their other albums – but it’s fantastic from start to finish. Recently I became enamoured with their song ‘Head Full Of Doubt/Road Full Of Promise’, as it really reflected things going on in my life at the time. It was an enormous help to me getting out of a rut. They have lyrics that are achingly honest and I owe a lot to them. Check them out.

And thus ends the 30 Day Song Challenge. It’s been fun, although I know I didn’t stick to writing a post a day. I really love talking about music (oh really, Giselle?) and so it’s been really great to able to write about songs that have meant something to me and why they mean what they do. I am always growing as a person and music has always been a part of that, from my childhood until now. I doubt it’s going to change, but I know I’m going to change. Thanks for reading along on my little trip down memory lane. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

‘Only Yesterday’ – The Carpenters

When I used to do the Throwback Thursday segment on this blog, I talked about my childhood and the music I grew up with all the time. It means the entire world to me that my parents made sure that music was integral to the way I was raised, and listening to any of those songs from back then is a really special experience for me. The main artists we listened to were Simon & Garfunkel (now you know where my obsession stemmed from) and The Carpenters, but there was also a healthy dose of The Beatles, Bread, John Denver, Anne Murray and a few others in there too.

I get a lot of crap for liking The Carpenters, I really do. Apparently it’s not the same as liking cool old stuff like The Beatles or the Rolling Stones – The Carpenters are just plain daggy. If you sift through a pile of second hand records I can guarantee that you’ll see a Christmas album of theirs in there, every time without fail. But from the moment I heard Karen Carpenter’s voice, I’ve adored it. My dad always said that it sounded “just like velvet”. He’s not wrong. It’s one of the most beautiful voices I’ve heard in my life and it brings me back to feeling the way I felt when I was very young.

We never listened to albums in my house – it was always greatest hits collections, which is fine by me because in the case of bands like The Beatles and S&G, I ended up discovering their full-lengths on my own and appreciating them in my own time and in my own way. I’ll admit that I’ve never listened to a proper Carpenters album, or a full John Denver album, but I’m going to remind myself to get on that soon because all the hits they had are gold to me. They mean a lot to me and they sound fantastic, I’m sure just as much as they did back when they were released.

The only Carpenters recording I know back to front is Very Best Of The Carpenters, a compilation album released in 1982 which came into my household in 1994, when my dad bought my mum a copy for Valentine’s Day (dude is ahead of the times!). We played it often in the car, and while ‘Top of the World’ was our main jam (I still know all the words and my dad taught us the harmonies), I’ve already written about that on the blog before so this is my second pick. I always thought that the melody of this song was really amazing and I love the lyrics, too – if I ever get married I’d like this song to play a part in the wedding somehow.

I’ll never be embarrassed about liking The Carpenters – so many of my childhood memories involve them, from singalongs in the car with my parents to my little sister, then aged around five, writing a letter “to my long lost friend Karen Carpenter” and throwing it passionately into the wind, only for it to flop back down and smack her in the face. Lol.

Blending the understated guitar sounds of post rock with a playful punch, Brisbanites Tin Can Radio’s debut album toes that line carefully to create a release catering to two primal music listening needs – to dance like a maniac and to sit silently, absorbing every nuance.

The upbeat tunes, like A Deafer Silence and the sax-and-string-tinged Best Kept Secret, take the stop-start style of Two Door Cinema Club and Antidotes-era Foals, especially the tinny, frantic drumming, creating palpable and infectious urgency. Skeletons flicks from luscious female vocals bathed in an overpowering electronic buzz to an excitable danceability lathered in sharp synth rhythms.
Then there are ambient drifters, delicate post rock guitars aplenty (and in the case of Drift To Extinction, string experimentation) and no need for vocals. Explosions In The Sky is an easy reference point on Breathe Out’s build-ups, metallic drumming notwithstanding. The effort is admirable and quite beautiful, and gripping closer Ode To The Shire is even more courageous – almost hitting the 10-minute mark, it builds on a careful electronic-tinged guitar base, eventually falling into a drive overlapped by nonverbal vocals. The drumming here becomes more spacious, giving the other elements breathing room – what results is a sea of textured sound, eventually delving back into gentle guitar against the sound of people chatting animatedly. There are also tracks marrying the two styles – the initially shy piano-led Forever Ago ultimately bursts into that high-energy synth again, bowing out with a shiny brass farewell.

It’s risky business crossing such a number of opposing styles on a debut, but here that daring braveness pays off in a big way, placing Tin Can Radio in a unique corner of Australian music.

Independent release; out now

‘We Can Work It Out’ – Beatle Barkers

I have a friend who I often go record shopping with. A few months ago, we were trawling through the bargain piles at Newtown’s Egg Records (definitely recommend the place, by the way!) and I came across the beautiful album cover you see up there.

I was unsure whether to feel disgusted or absolutely delighted, and after laughing my face off for about 20 minutes I told my friend that if it was $5 or less I would make a purchase and bring the dear thing home. I brought it up to the counter and was informed that it would indeed set me back a mere purple note, so I thought, who the hell would I be to refuse such a tantalising offer? So, along with a copy of Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones (which, upon returning to my record shelf, I realised I already owned), I took this baby home with me.

Let me explain to you exactly what this is before you press play up there. It is a collection of Beatles songs barked by dogs, and occasionally accompanied by other farmyard animals. The reason I particularly appreciate this one is because the usual guitar stroke that starts it IS REPLACED BY A MEOW. I cannot even contain my happiness at this.

The reason this makes me feel guilty is because I do not believe this was meant to be enjoyed by anyone, however ironically. I believe it was created to send its listener into the deepest recesses of hell. And yet there I was, sitting on the floor of my room laughing manically as I listened to dogs ruining classic songs by replacing the lyrics with disgusting barks. I’m pretty sure I’ve listened to it most of the way through on more than one occasion.

I do not deserve to be called a Beatles fan, but I don’t give a bark. I love The Beatles and I love musical puppies.

I’ve really been digging this video lately. It’s the kind of aesthetic I really enjoy – it has absolutely beautiful costumes and imagery, and the kind of carefree ‘hippie’ attitude that I so love in life. I love the contrasts between the scenes – it goes from a very stern-looking Victorian tea party (Miss Thorburn looking positively bored, pouring her sugar all over the place while everyone else sips daintily at their teacups, pinkies up) to the same kind of thing inside, like a portrait, to a much more free-spirited setting where she’s running around in shorts, paint splattering everywhere as she dances without a care in the world.

Nikki Thorburn is a singer/songwriter from Sydney, and her music falls into the indie pop category. This tune is an upbeat little number not unlike something you’d expect to hear from artists like Lenka. Cute, but not nauseatingly so. I think the video goes so well with it too, and Nikki’s voice has that delicious sultry edge to it while still maintaining a certain youthfulness.

The track comes from Nikki Thorburn’s new EP, To The Place. You can check out more of her tunes on MySpace.

‘Asturias’ – Isaac Albeniz

Well, I wish I could play the guitar full stop. I should probably teach myself as I know it’s not that hard and a lot of people have done it with no problems at all. But I am lazy. When I was in high school I was the bassist in a band called Angry Salad. We covered Silverchair and Lash and Joan Jett in the music rooms during lunchtime and for assessments. We sucked. More specifically, I sucked. (Also, apparently there was a for real band called Angry Salad. What the hell?)

So anyway, the point is that guitars and me do not really go together because I am uncoordinated and bite my fingernails and generally fail at life. I should probably try again, but probably won’t because failure is horrifying to me and I do not want to be horrified by my own lack of talent. So I’ll probably never figure out how to play a simple chord let alone a proper tune, but this is a piece I adore and have always, always wanted to know how to play. It’s an absolutely beautiful piece of music.

Related: When I was 17 a boy learned it for me. That’s still one of the sweetest thing a male ever did for me in high school. Dudes were mean to me in high school and I didn’t get my first kiss until I’d started university. Whatever, bitches love me now.

‘Box’ – Tim Fitz

It’s official, I have a little crush on Tim Fitz. The Sydney-based singer/songwriter recorded Infinite Space in his home, helming production duties himself as well as playing all of the instruments you hear, and it’s a beautiful release. Best of all it’s succinct – when you have a terrible attention span like I do, that’s certainly something to appreciate!

The EP flows well, rolling through a series of moods and timbres, starting with the stunning piano flourishes and spacious drums of the eclectic ‘Disposable Youth’ and going to Spanish-flavoured guitar on ‘L’Esprit de Escalier’ and the more sparse ‘Hopelessman’, right through to spoken word against percussion on ‘Endtroduction’.

My pick here is ‘Box’, which takes a more conventional form with simple finger-picked guitar and Fitz’s gently reverberating voice. It’s pretty easy for folk-based music to get samey and indistinguishable from everything else similar around, but there’s a real earnestness here that you can’t fabricate. It’s a little like something Dallas Green might have written.

Infinite Space is full of lovely lo-fi gems that transport you to the bedroom where they were made. You can name your price for the eclectic six-song EP on Bandcamp.

Elegie – Gabriel Faure

So, here is a video of me actually playing. Woop! I have played the cello since I was three years old and though I do wish I was more diligent with it, whenever I do pick it up it’s like entering a whole new world. I used to resent the instrument because I was pressured a lot when I was young to practise and such, and so it became a chore more than a pleasure, but now that I’m older it’s something I appreciate much more.

This is one of my favourite pieces and one that is somewhat of a staple for me. I want to learn new pieces – right now I’m trying to conquer a Cesar Franck sonata. I also want to join or start an Arcade Fire-esque band but no one is with me. WHO IS WITH ME?

Sydney band Underlapper has recently released its third album, Softly Harboured. It’s an interesting mix of genres and sounds, with guest appearances from Parades and a healthy dose of strings. The band launched the album last week at the new FBi Radio venue in Kings Cross, and I caught up with guitarist, bassist, synth player, pianist and vocalist – a lot, I know! – Greg Stone a couple of days prior.

You can download their four-track single mix, Drinking Dust, for free here.

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Can you tell me a bit about the album?

I guess a lot of it, well probably half of it anyway, was written while we were touring the previous album, so I guess that stuff on the album tends to sound more I guess like our live shows. I think that definitely came through a lot, but then when we actually finally went in to record those tracks, we started writing the rest of the album and then those last lot of tracks tend to be more electronic based, I guess more similar to what we were doing on the older albums. So I think there was definitely a distinct two halves in the album itself, but as is always the case with us, six people, it always tends to be jumping all over the place. I don’t think we could ever really stick to one thing.

The sounds on the album are all quite different. Is there a common thread tying it all together?

I don’t think there was really a reason, it’s just there’s so many of us and we all listen to such a wide variety of music and I guess the only real tie is I guess we all sort of take influences in, a whole lot of stuff, and the stuff that comes out sort of has an aesthetic to it, whether it’s the actual structure, the band structure, what instruments we use, or whether it’s just the way the song’s written. Even though it does jump all over the place, I think there is sort of a thread that ties it together.

Do you write songs together or separately?

Usually someone will have an idea and then they’ll bring it to the group and then everyone sort of writes their own individual parts. Someone might bring something to the table that’s fairly well structured already and other times it’s purely just an idea, and then we make it together and just jam and see what happens. It certainly comes up, I guess the majority of us also do other things with other projects so I guess we each have other outlets where we can maybe focus on something ourselves, so I guess that gives us something to do outside of Underlapper, but with six people you’re always going to have a difference of opinion, but I guess we’ve been together for a while now so everyone knows their place in the band and it’s a fairly democratic sort of thing.

How do you choose whether you want to sing something or if you want a vocalist coming in?

I think when we’ve written a song, it’s usually myself or one of the other guys, Morgan, that does the vocal, so I guess if either of us have a particular melody or something that we want to do on a track then we’ll definitely usually be the first one to do it, but I guess in particular with songs like the first song from the new album, we always have a female vocalist in mind for it. So I guess it’s just about thinking what the song actually needs, but I mean the third track where there’s sort of five people adding vocals to it, we were going for a choir section type feel so we all had that in mind, that we were going to bring in a few people for that one.

How about recreating those songs live?

The ones where we’ve got some female guests doing lead vocals, we probably won’t be doing them at this stage but definitely down the track we’d like to play them so we’ll get them to come and do their part. But as far as the other ones go, the songs were sort of pre-written before the recording so we sort of had a way that we played them live and then sort of wanted to flesh the sound out more on the actual recording, so we’ll pretty much just go back to how we used to play it, but if there’s people there that were on the album we’ll definitely get them up for a thing if they want.

So are they friends you already knew?

There’s a couple of guys from Parades who we’ve known for a while, who we remix and stuff and played shows with them and stuff, and they always liked the song that we asked them to sing on so they were keen to come along, and a couple of the girls were from this a cappella group that they no longer do any more but they were actually friends with the drummer, so when we wanted to get a couple of people in we sort of approached them, and there’s just a couple of friends in there as well that we knew.

In terms of the strings on the album, do you leave those out live?

For the launch, Peter Hollo who did the cello parts is actually going to play for us, which is really good, but outside of that show we’ll probably just get other instruments to play those lines, I think.

Generally how would you say your music translates live?

I think the more band type songs, like I guess with the live drumming and that sort of thing, I think they translate fairly similarly, as they are on the album. The more electronic based ones, whilst they’re still based around loops when we play them live we might add a few other instrument lines over the top of them. But I guess in general they’re still fairly true to the album, but they might have a bit more of a life, they might be a bit fuller in sound.

In your 10 years together, what do you think has changed and stayed the same?

I guess it’s always about influences, really I think. Particularly going back when we first started, the first album definitely had that sort of experimental hip hop vibe and that was something as a group we were really into at the time and interested in creating because we didn’t feel like that was something that was happening in Australia. Then I guess the second album we were starting to move into that more folktronic post rock type thing. So I think it really is just the influences and what we’re interested in making as a group. I think we’re definitely not the sort of band that has a definite style or sound, so I think influences is probably just the biggest change for us and what we’re into at the time, really.

How about in terms of relating to each other and writing?

I guess that’s definitely changed over the years, when we first started it was definitely a sort of one and all type of thing. But with the new album it’s definitely been more I guess one or two people doing something and bringing it to the group as opposed to all of us, and it’s definitely as you get older I guess it’s harder to make time when everyone can get together, so it is more of an individual approach which is then translated onto the group.

You mentioned your side projects before – did they start before or after Underlapper and how have they influenced the band?

When that started it was definitely the same thing, it was sort of the first real group that we were all in. I mean we’d all done stuff when we were younger, but this was the first serious group we’d been in. For example, Morgan used to do a project called Morning Stalker and it was definitely more of an ambient guitar loop based thing and he definitely brought that sound to this new album. So I think you’re always sort of bringing your own personal influences into the actual sound of Underlapper.