Sines have been playing around Adelaide for a couple of years now and with roll out of their debut album are beginning to pick up momentum. With a tight and dynamic live show and great song writing chops they’re definitely one to watch. Sonic Vandals sat down with singer Caitlyn Hearne and guitarist Matt Gelling to chat about the band’s origins, the benefits of studying jazz, and their influences and song writing inspiration.

Sonic Vandals: Tell me about the band. How did you start? How did you all meet?

Matt Gelling: So I first started working on this band back in 2016. I formed this band and started working and writing for it after my old band had just split up, which was a band called I Exalt. After that band broke up, I was a little bit over doing the metal heavy extreme kind of thing. I wanted a band that was a little bit more diverse and where I could put in many of the different styles of music that I was listening to at the time. Like Post Rock, a little bit of aggressiveness and also something that’s a little bit more accessible to people as well. Unfortunately, extreme death metal is not exactly the most accessible genre in the world. 

Caitlyn Hearne: A bit more of a niche market. 

MG: Yeah, exactly right. I started writing all that music, but one of the biggest lessons that I had learned from my time in that band was how important it was to have the right people around you. While I was doing all my studies and all that, I was waiting, just trying to find the right people, and it took me quite a few years to get there. Fast forward to about 2018 and I started doing a bachelor of jazz at the Adelaide University. 

SV: Right, I can hear that.

MG: Yeah, just a little bit. And from there (Adelaide Uni) I had met Caspar and Lenny beforehand and. 

SV: Bass player and guitarist?

MG: That’s right, correct, yeah?

In the back of my mind, I didn’t think they would be interested in that, but I thought you know what, let’s run the Hail Mary and just see what happens. I knew that were phenomenal musicians and they seem like good people as well, so I asked them and they go “Yep, all right”. For about a year we had just the three of us and we were bouncing a few ideas off of each other for a little while. About a year later, we thought of who we’re going to get for drums, and that’s when we had the idea of getting Zed to play drums. He had also done the bachelor of jazz and as I said, is an absolutely phenomenal drummer. And once again I thought nah, he’s not gonna do it. So I sent a message and he said “Yeah, sure I’ll do it”.

MG: One of the biggest issues that I had when trying to find the people for this band was trying to think of a vocalist that I wanted. What I originally had in mind, I auditioned a few people to do it and to put it as kindly as I can, they didn’t quite fit what I wanted. Caitlyn had done a few cover gigs with me beforehand and she did an absolutely fantastic job learning a stupid amount of repertoire in very short time. In about a day or two or something like that. And at one point I think I was talking to Caitlyn, I thought “Yeah, bugger it, right? Let’s ask her and see what happens”, so next day, same thing again. I thought she would also not really be interested, but she said “Yeah, I’ll do it”, and that’s how we got started.

SV: Have you studied jazz as well, Caitlyn? 

CH: Yes, we all went through the jazz course.

SV: How do you guys write?  Do you write all the music?

MG: I write the majority of the music. What I generally do is for the instrumental side of things I’ll usually write skeletons. Here’s the ideas, here’s the melodies, and then I’ll bring it to the band and then they’ll put their two cents on it. So, especially with things like rhythmic patterns, the rest of the band are absolutely phenomenal with that. And then from there Caitlyn will put her vocals over the top and write her lyrics and somehow it all comes together.

CH: Matt will send me demo versions of the instrumental, and then I’ll write the melody and lyrics over that and then we might rehearse it as a band. We might change a few things here and there and go from there.

MG: We try to find ways as a band to keep tightening everything, to make sure there’s no fat to the songs but there also nice, interesting little quirks along the way. It needs to be accessible to people, but we’re also all jazz musicians, so it also needs to be interesting for us to play as well

SV: Yeah, well, there are definitely lots of interesting little quirks. There’s one song, I can’t remember the title but its halfway through the album and it’s got that little eastern sounding breakdown in the middle. I love that that’s really cool. It’s definitely an interesting album. There’s so much different stuff going on there, it’s accessible to. Caitlyn, what’s your history before this band, had you been in any other ones? 

CH: Not in this genre. I was in another original band called Burjon, it was very different music, and I didn’t have anything to do with the writing. In probably year 12, a friend introduced me to bands like Northlane and Karnivool and stuff. I loved that music because when I was younger, I loved Evanescence. Like I would walk around- and I was like, 5- walking around with my little Discman, just going for it. I guess I grew up loving that kind of music and then had a big phase of it in year 12 and then haven’t really revisited it since. And then when Matt asked me, if I was keen to try writing something over this track, come in, see how you go, that was really exciting. It’s so cool to revisit this and to actually have something to do with it in an original creative sense as well, not just consuming. I wasn’t really in any other original bands that I’d kind of written for, so yeah, this was nice to get my writing chops up.

SV: What about the lyrical themes what sort of stuff inspires you there? 

CH: Yeah, a lot of mental health stuff. I guess going through those phases especially late high school and through UNI where I really struggled with body image and that whole relationship with body and food really played a big part in I how I felt from day to day and the ups and downs of that.

SV: I think that’s a real big problem in society today for so many people. That’s something that really needs to change.

CH: Yeah, and that’s it, it is so pervasive, if that’s the right word, you just don’t really appreciate how many people experience that, and it’s not just girls. I kind of drew from I guess the emotional and mental struggles from around that time. This kind of music is really good for just digging deep into the nitty gritty of those hardcore kind of emotions, which is nice. 

SV: It’s good for catharsis.

CH: Yeah totally. The songs are very mental health focused in that respect. Exploring the pain of the experience, but also the lessons you learn through it all

SV: That comes through, definitely. And your vocal style, there’s definitely some different influences coming there. There’s one song on the album that where you have a bit of an R&B sort of thing going on. It’s a ballad, track four, the name escapes me right now. The fire?

CH: Oh yeah, Awaiting the Fire.

SV: Yeah, I’m terrible with song titles.

CH: Did you get sent the songs?

SV: Yep 

MG: Yeah, they were the correct titles though. 

CH: Oh ok, I didn’t know if you’ve heard the rest of the album.

SV: Yeah, yeah, I have. 

CH: Yeah, awesome cool. 

MG: It always takes me a second to remember the titles myself because we spent so long with all the song titles being these different code names.

CH: Yeah, the working titles they tend to stick.

MG: Every single time I’m writing a record, there’s usually an umbrella code name, so for this one, almost every song was like titled after some colognes, so Aventus or Sauvage or something like that. So just trying to remember what the actual song titles are is a bit of a struggle as well.

CH: Now when we’re at a gig and I’m calling the actual name of the song I’m like, “Oh, is that this one?”

MG: I’ve had to put in brackets all the code names, so that all of us can remember.

CH: For example, Rescue the working title was Filth. 

MG: That was because of the guitar intro, I just stumbled across it and thought “That’s filthy, that feels right, that’ll do.”

SV: I’ve actually seen that before, one of my daughters she comes to a lot of shows and she’s always stealing setlists from bands, she collects them, and I’ve seen other bands do that for sure, it’s probably a common problem.

CH: Yeah, getting used to the first label you put on something it kind of sticks.

MG: One day we’ll remember the actual titles. Maybe!

SV: So Matt, what inspires you to write?

MG: So you have your musical influences and all that. I mean, I love the post rock genre because I love the reverb, which obviously there is an enormous reverb influence on this just because it allows you to get lost and immerse yourself within the sounds. As much as I have attempted to stay away from it over the past couple years all the metal stuff is going to be there, a little tinge to it, a little something, a little aggression in there. But in terms of what I actually write and what I wanted to connect to people, or what I want people to hear, it’s more….This is my wish mentally, but this is my personal thoughts and feelings in this form, if that makes sense. It sounds a little wanky, but for every creative I do believe that this is our, I think you said the word before, catharsis. If every creative person was able to say what they wanted to say in words, then we would never have a need for music. So for a lot of the music that I write I’ll think of an experience in my life, and how does that sonically reflect this? For example, to take a particular thing that siren, the Middle Eastern theme in what’s the song called?

CH: Run?

MG: No, not that one. The heavy one. Aventus.

CH: Oh, Waking Up.

MG: And we were just talking about that. “Waking Up” that whole siren thing that’s meant to represent a particular stage where everything is falling apart, and you’re left by yourself. Just absolute silence. The siren represents that I’ve got tinnitus in my ear. So when I’m by myself, that’s all I can hear and that note that that siren is, is that exact same note. So that’s the representation of that when everything is falling apart, that’s the only sound you can hear and nothing else. A lot of it is purely experiences that I’ve had, how I want it represented in a sonic form or different feelings and things like that. That’s how I’m influenced musically and how I want to be creative.

SV: There’s definitely a lot of attention to detail in the recording, and that explanation makes a lot of sense.

CH: I didn’t realise the tinnitus thing.

SV: And then the drums come back in, the double kicks and off it goes. 

MG: Pure fury and rage.

CH: I think that song particularly it is more, I don’t know if metal is the way to describe it. A bit more hard hitting in that respect, so it kind of draws from that world so there’s that element of, yeah, we gotta get some of that in the album.

MG: Yeah, that whole song is meant instrumentally as a fall. You’re going through the motions of an emotional episode, let’s say that. 

SV: It doesn’t follow the standard verse chorus verse structure either. It’s obviously a journey, right? 

CH: And I found that one hard to write over, but it was good, yes. 

MG: The whole thing with that song is a little bit more intense than the rest, but at the start it’s meant to be neither here nor there. At the start, it’s not really angry or happy, it’s just there, and then it slowly meant to descend into more and more darker themes and then slowly get out because that was a particular experience I had at a certain time. Everything was kind of neutral. Everything was kind of neither here nor there, and then there was that slow descent into in a not very nice place and then slowly getting back out of it again. So every single song on that record – there is an intent for every part. There is a specific story or experience or something that I had that I wanted to put out there

SV: Having seen the band live, I can see there’s a chemistry between all members.

CH: We all get along very well, Caspar, Lenny and Zed are just the loveliest human beings, and very funny people. Good vibes in the band.

MG: It’a very easy group to work. There are no egos or anything like that. Everyone knows what they need to do. Everyone knows that you rock up, be prepared, bring something to the table, have their own two cents and their opinions which are way more often than not enormously beneficial. It’s about creating an emotional connection on stage and all that, I am a big believer and I have been since about 12 years ago when I played my first gig. If you’re playing your own music, you need to mean it, people aren’t stupid, they know if you’re getting on stage, just going through the motions. But if you’re on stage and you mean what you are expressing, if you mean what you’re playing and that’s it, people can see that there’s that weird energy connection thing. That weird mystical thing that people understand but can’t explain but understands. And that to me is the most important part when you’re playing live is to mean what you play.

SV: Absolutely, and that definitely comes through. I had no idea what to expect going off the name. But that’s another question I wanted to ask you was the origin of the name and if there was any meaning behind that.

MG: The band name has the least amount of meaning, but even then even then – way back in 2016 – a quick little connection – there was a metal band that I really loved called Fallujah and they had an instrumental track called “Alone With You” and this was the first time I was aware of ambience in this sort of thing, so I went on a massive spree trying to find any genre that sounded like that. Which then brought me to post Rock and discovering all those bands. Then going through post rock channels, I discovered a band called Jacob from New Zealand and the first song I heard from them was “Blinding with Science” on an album called Sines and I kind of took that name as a pet project, but the more that it kind of sat there it was like, “I like this”. This is a nice little nod to where this thing started from. The only problem with calling the band Sines is I’ve now found every time I try to tell somebody the name of the band, they say “what’s your band called Science?” No –  S I N E S! 

CH: Yeah, and also some people ask me is it Sin-es or is it Science, because I guess like I if you haven’t really heard about a sine wave then you it might not click. You might pronounce it differently.

MG: So it has some drawbacks. But yeah, that’s where it came from. 

SV: I do have a question that relates to the fact that you’re all jazz musicians. Did you guys all finish the course? And something I’ve always found really interesting is that people who are really good musicians technically aren’t necessarily good at writing or creativity, they don’t necessarily have that emotional connection to what they’re doing, but you guys clearly do. You can write good songs and you’re doing it for the right reasons. How does having that jazz background help you to write songs, how does that help you translate the ideas that are in your head into reality. I’ve played in a few bands over the years and done all sorts of different musical things and things rarely come out sounding the way they do in my head. How does the jazz background assist you to bring out your vision? 

CH: I’m not a jazz musician, I studied the jazz course so that I could learn as much about music in that period of time as possible, to give me more tools as a songwriter and to be able to speak more of the musical theory terminology and language to better communicate with the band about things that I want in the music. I enjoy listening to jazz and singing jazz a lot but since then I haven’t really done any any jazz gigs or anything like that so I’m definitely not a jazz musician. But it it definitely helped, it helped developed my ear and my music theory knowledge. If there is something a bit trickier like for example, one of the songs “Survive” in a bridge section, I’d written something over that section, and something didn’t sound quite right. I think I spoke to Caspar about it and he said “oh, it’s because of this key center and you’re singing this while I’m doing this” and that made sense. Whereas maybe if I didn’t have as much knowledge about music theory and having that understanding of why it clashed, I wouldn’t have been able to rewrite it as easily. That’s just one example. I studied it as an aid for original music rather than I really love jazz.

MG: I have an enormous love-hate relationship with jazz. One day I will tolerate it the other day I can’t stand it, so it depends on the day. The original reason why I went to the jazz course was after I finished my diploma, I needed something to do and I kind of figured that there’s still more to learn. Caitlyn, just mentioned about the language of music and understanding all the different parts of that. One of the benefits of jazz is that it uses everything, every single device that you possibly think of. Also, it’s not enough to know just a little snapshot, you need to understand every single thing that’s going on.

CH: Like any genre, it’s just a big umbrella term, there’s so much within that, like Latin and ballads and swing and everything in between. 

MG: Exactly. One of the one of the biggest frustrations that I had when I was doing I Exalt, the band, before that was I could have ideas in my head, I just didn’t know what I had to do to get it out. So studying the Jazz course allowed me to understand. “OK, so this is what’s going on in my head, so this is how I get it out onto here” because I will be forced to learn all the wide spectrum of what everything actually is. For me personally in terms of, the writing, you mentioned before there are like amazing technicians who are very logical if they’re creating, which can be expressive, or maybe not, who knows? My thing is always about writing something that is an experience of feeling or whatever, so there are times, especially at the start there are times I’ve written something and go “This sounds cool, we’ll work with this” then I’ll go to Caspar and Lenny and they’ll say “Oh, this is cool, you did this thing, you did some time modulation” and I’ll be like “I did?” Well, thanks for explaining it to me and now I know what it is, but that’s just what I had in my head. So the Jazz course definitely helped understand a lot more. I have an idea in my head, this is what I want to do if it makes sense, great, if it doesn’t make sense, oh well, as long as it sounds good and has a purpose.

CH: You don’t necessarily have to study jazz to be able to do that. Going into I was like “oh well if you’re good at jazz, then you’re good at anything – well, not really, but that was my kind of mindset going into it and you don’t have to study jazz to be able to do all that stuff. But you know, it’s a structured, institutionalized course. You’re practicing music nonstop for three years, so you’re going to get better and that’s going to be beneficial in in other areas, but yet you don’t have to just studied jazz to do that. 

MG: As Caitlyn just said, it is very institutionalized and that’s not necessarily a knock, it’s just it is what it is. But when you come out you’ve learned so many tools and when you’ve done this you want to do this, you want to do that and also the song comes this overly complicated thing that doesn’t make sense to your normal person in ways, it’s this abstract thing, so I think it’s important regardless of how advanced you become as a musician or as a songwriter or as a creative or whatever it is, you have to remember what you’re writing the music for.

SV: You always want people to be able to relate to it without having a jazz degree.

MG: Exactly.

CH: As you get better at something there is that temptation to – I didn’t really feel this in the jazz course because I was always catching up and struggling – but I guess there is that temptation to show everything you got, in that culture of trying to show all of the things that you’ve been practicing for the past month and here’s everything you know – here’s all the complex stuff and more complex than better. I guess there is a temptation to do that as you find more facility on your instrument but you gotta use it with taste, I suppose.

MG: Gotta write a good song, man!

SV: Well, that’s interesting because one of the other interviews I did just a few weeks ago was with Chelsea Lee Smart. She talked about jazz quite a bit and one of her issues was with how restrictive it was, and she wants to get up there and rock out sometimes and you just can’t do that.

MG: I used to get in trouble whenever I did my performances for moving too much. I was used to head banging, stomping my feet on the floor and moving around being a nuisance. Now I’m going to a jazz course and have to sit, stand still and play! Yeah, I definitely understand the want to just rock out and have some fun.

SV: For sure. You see guys like Django Rowe and Ben Finnis or playing in rock bands as well as and their bloody good at what they do. In fact, it’s amazing how many of my favorite Adelaide bands are full of jazz musicians. It definitely has its place, and it is a good breeding ground for creativity, I think. Where do you see yourselves going?

MG: So particularly over 12 months, we’re going to continue playing more and more Adelaide shows continue growing the bands and as soon as possible continue start to push interstate as much as we can.

SV: That’s been hard thing to do in the last couple of years.

CH: I joined at the end of 2019 so just pre COVID. It kind of put a stop to things for a while but we were still writing and getting things together. I’d only just joined, and I was still writing stuff, so you know it wasn’t the end of the world. But yeah, certainly has affected everyone in every industry really but especially the arts.

MG: More Adelaide shows, go interstate then take over the world!

Chelsea Lee Smart is a jazz vocalist with the heart and soul of a rock singer. With her highly charged and cinematically inspired band Djawbreaker, she has taken traditional jazz, expanded it sonically, and upped the intensity to deliver a dynamic and immersive live rock and roll experience. Sonic Vandals sat down with Chelsea to talk about studying jazz, her creative process, and breaking free of the strict rules of the jazz scene.

Sonic Vandals: You’ve already studied music and now you’re picking up law. 

Chelsea Lee: This is my second course, yeah. 

SV: They kind of crush the joy out of it a bit, maybe not so much with music because there is creativity in it.

CL: Yeah, I guess they kind of they slam you down a little bit ’cause even though it’s music, and it’s subjective it’s all their opinions. Opinions definitely crush your soul a lot. Especially peers’ opinions Like oh man, you know you can’t please everyone!

SV: There’s no point even trying. One of my mates is a music teacher and he’s played in a quite a few bands over the years, but he decided that he was never going to make any money out of it, so he studied music for three years so he could become a teacher. He did find it a bit soul crushing at times because there were all these rules to follow, whereas when he was playing in the band, he did whatever the hell he wanted, it was all free creativity.

CL: And that’s what you should be doing. It should be that free creativity, self-expression. You should learn through yourself and through playing with others. But I guess if you know you need that qualification to teach and be in schools you have to go through that process. And if you want to learn more theory-based stuff then you do that, but it kills you, it’s really hard.

SV: So you studied jazz at uni?

CL: Yes I did jazz performance for three years and then I did my honors in jazz performance straight after that in 2016 and I did a cert 3 before that as well. So a cert 3 for one year and that was in 2012, so that just got my theory up. In high school I didn’t do any theory, just did performance and then the bachelor for three years. And yeah, then did honors ’cause I thought I might want to study overseas. I didn’t end up doing that, but maybe if I want to in the future I can. 

SV: Maybe one day you can become a musical lawyer.

CL: Yes, yeah. That’s it. I can go to court and just perform all the laws for everyone. “Have you guys heard this new interpretation?”

SV: Yeah, that’s it.

CL: I found it really hard because I’m really sensitive as well. A lot of musicians are sensitive.

SV: Yep, that’s right, every musician I’ve ever met is an introvert. The serious ones anyway.

CL: Yes, yes, that’s right.

SV: There’s some who do it for the attention, but the ones who do it because they love it are all introverts.

CL: Absolutely, absolutely. And they make great music. Django is obviously an introvert.

SV: He rarely speaks on stage. He just plays and lets the music do the talking.

CL: Yeah, which is the way it should be. It’s hard enough having to speak at a gig and be like “Hey guys this is what this is about” and then you hear yourself talk and you think, “Oh God I can’t deal with that anymore.” It’s not an alternate personality like many celebrities claim it to be, but it is like that. You have to get the job done, you have to talk so maybe it’s just like a different character within yourself. And it comes out to kind of just take over and get you through that kind of thing. Then I’ll get back into the actual job (of performing), but I hate it. I hate talking. I always embarrass myself, say something stupid. I feel like every time I speak my internal monologue is like, “Alright, that’s enough, you need to shut up.” I get nervous and fumble when I tell jokes. But not good ones. It’s just really mumbling whatever comes out and then I gotta step back and just do the music. Stop talking! But some people, like Holly, she is really good at talking – Cookie Baker. She’s brilliant, she knows how to talk and she’s an extrovert for sure. 

SV: One of he few.

CL: Yeah that’s right. One of the few for sure. You just want to play music, but you gotta do it and all that stuff comes along with it. So you have to decide how to manage that and just work around it. Growing up, you get that skill level. You learn how to talk to people and socialize and it helps and everything but it’s not the best part of the job.

SV: No it’s not. I did play in a band back in the 90s for about two or three years. We played about 6 gigs. I think we were fucking terrible.

CL: But it was so much fun, right?

SV: It was fun, it was for a while anyway. The first show we did I don’t think I said a word between any of the songs. I hated it.

CL: You have to do the self-promotion stuff as well. It’s torture. Naomi Keyte. I talked to her about it. She said “I really like doing it.”

SV: She’s very good at it, actually.

CL: She’s phenomenal, yeah?

SV: Some people when they’re self-promoting you think, “oh, God, here we go again.” You can tell that they’re only promoting themselves, whereas she’s promoting her art. And that’s two different things. Her art is very good, and she is very engaging. She gives her fans plenty. Her photography too.

CL: That’s a great distinction, I never thought about it like that. Putting the art first, because if you don’t get it out there, who’s going to listen? How you’re going to get your voice out. You want it to be the right kind of voice as well, you know. Not just your opinions, but your soul kind of coming out or your taste or whatever you want to call it. Naomi’s great at it. She really knows how to do it in the right way. I hate doing it. It’s the worst thing. Not only is it painful to have to talk yourself up –“This is why you should come and see me.” You have to describe your music and it’s a painful process. Then you have to get group photos. I don’t want to do that, right? You have to force yourself in order to promote your work. It’s painful, you know.

SV: And I guess that’s why so many people have publicists to do it for them. 

CL: Yeah. If you can afford it. It would be great though, to someone do all that stuff. Even have Holly do it, you know?

SV: She would be very good. She could sell anything to anyone. 

CL: Yeah, 100%. What is that thing you do – trying to sell me this pen kind of trick you do. She’s amazing, she could do that. That is part of her job , producing and promoting.

SV: She does promotions for a living, doesn’t she?

CL: Yeah, she works with a lot of people and does a lot of the promotional stuff and producing. So they don’t have to worry about it which is really great because people need to concentrate on the music. It’s especially good for Django. He gets a lot of work obviously as the sideman. But for Steve (Johnson, St Morris Sinners) and me for instance, because they’re our bands, our projects, we’re not doing as much other stuff, but we’re doing so much of the behind the scenes stuff like the writing and the organizing stuff. We don’t get seen as much, but I think that’s how we like it. With others, like Django or Dylan, they’re always in the band. That’s their job. You know they make it sound phenomenal too, everyone loves them because they’ve got this great sound and they can adapt so well.

SV: I am amazed by how many different styles of music I’ve seen Django play over the last few years. I think the first time I saw him play was with Koral Chandler, way back in I don’t know when, that would have been, 2016 or something like that. I don’t know how he does it.

CL: It’s the time and the practice.

SV: Guys like him must play guitar all the time. He’s a music teacher, right?

CL: Yeah.

SV: To have that kind of passion for it is amazing. I wish I could have played like that but I never put the time into it. There were always distractions.

CL: Life comes along mostly and gets in the way. You can say that about any skill. You could be the best at building a table because you do it every single day and you learn all that stuff. But yeah, there’s so much in life that comes along and kind of takes that opportunity away from you unless you – some people just know how to make it their whole life to keep with it. And to not let even moods – that’s a massive thing that gets in the way. Not getting so down and being able to overcome that as well. That’s a big thing. And then study or work gets in the way of that time, and then you’re tired and you don’t have time to do it then you’re like “I don’t want to do it.” Well, you see something and get angry “I don’t wanna do it anymore.” That stuff comes and goes. But somehow, these guys manage to do it.

SV: Yeah, I guess that’s the thing about being a professional musician, it conditions you to be able to perform on command. There are some bands I’ve seen maybe five or six times and they’ve never done a bad show. I’m wondering how the hell do they do it every single time. And there are other bands that you see who are good one day, terrible the next. They’re obviously the ones whose performances are more driven by their emotions as well, aren’t they? I mean, if there’s nothing to be angry about, maybe I can’t perform at my best. 

CL: Yeah, that’s the thing and you get so many different colors coming out of those emotions. You could have the same set list in a gig, and if just one of you is experiencing a different emotion, you’re going to play that whole gig completely differently. And because everyone is listening to each other they’re going to adopt that feel and then they’re gonna play more towards that energy. And that can change the whole thing, and that could even change the way that you approach the music in the future too. I remember when we did the Fargo record. With my first album launch at COMA, the way that we played the music, it changed. Before we did the record (Midnight Cowboy), so that was with Angus and then we did the record and then we did the release of the record. But I did all the material I wrote in New York for Fargo before we recorded Fargo pretty much. And then when we recorded that, even before that there’s this period where we were trying to figure out how to play it. So that’s when Steve Neville came in. So originally it was going to be Django, Dylan, Angus and me, and then obviously Angus went to New York, so we couldn’t do that. Then we got Steve and then we played with him a couple of times and it was great, different. We thought it was gonna be more jazzy than what it came out to be.

SV: It’s definitely a rock ‘n’ roll record. 

CL: Absolutely yeah, which thank God, I love that so much. Being around in the jazz scene, Angus and Django, Nick Pennington was around too, I looked up to those guys so much and used to figure out what they were listening to then I listened to that. I’d try and figure out what was the most happening kind of jazz going around I’d. I fall in love with it myself and I wanted to do that kind of jazz and so that’s what the first record was and that’s what the second record was meant to be. So when I was in New York I stayed in Matt Sheens’ apartment. He’s a jazz pianist and he’s one of the best. He lives in New York now, but he came to visit here, and I was over there so I rented his room out. I’d go out and see a Bill Frisell gig or a Wayne Krantz gig and I’d want to write something like that, so I’d go home like go there and start nutting out this stuff on Matt Sheens’ piano. So I had all this material and then when I got home I had my guitar with me again and then I did a few more tunes. One of the launch gigs was at Ancient World. It was a horribly attended gig, pretty much no one was there except the other bands, but it was the most special musically. We got there and Django says: “I’ve only got my Strat, is that OK?” I said “Fine, let’s do it.” Then Dylan said “I might just pop home and get my electric bass.” I said “Yeah, cool whatever you want.” And then we played and this whole new sound that we’d never practiced came out and it was that more rocky kind of experimental vibe. From then on that became our sound, at least for that record. After that felt like I didn’t want to go back to playing normal jazz, it’s just not me anymore, not like it used to be. And then when I went to New York again, we did the Badlands records and that was more jazz, but also, I was playing with completely different personnel, even though it had Angus.

SV: A couple of songs have a bit of a rock vibe, maybe a more experimental Radiohead vibe to them.

CL: That’s the dream.  I just want to write Radiohead stuff the whole time.

SV: Blue Candy. That reminds me of Radiohead. Kid A era, or probably more Amnesiac.

CL: That’s my favorite record of Radiohead, Amnesiac 100%.

SV: I reckon that’s underrated.

CL: It is.

SV: I prefer it to Kid A most of the time.

CL: Me too, me too.

SV: OK Computer and Kid A are the most revered, but they’re not the best. I actually like A Moon Shaped Pool and In Rainbows and Amnesiac more than those early records.

CL: I haven’t checked out that much of A Moon Shaped Pool. 

SV: I really like it. It’s a strange record. It’s not like a Radiohead album. It’s as if Radiohead started making experimental folk records, it’s different.

CL: Yeah, I feel like my top are Amnesiac 100% and then Hail to The Thief.

SV: Yeah, that’s good. 

CL: And then even The Bends. I think I really love that one because that’s just more rocky. Those three are the ones I’m mostly in the mood to listen to out of all of them. I appreciate them all, though. I used to do this thing where I would buy an album while I was listening to one of them, and I’d have it ready for when I finished listening to the last, once I properly absorbed it. I used to have a Volkswagen Beetle, the 2000s era. And it had a CD player and I had that all through, from 2011 until 2020. That was my first car bought with my own money and it was my favorite thing in the world. So I had this CD player in the car and I used to transcribe jazz and listen to jazz the whole time. And then I got into Radiohead a bit more. So then I’d listen to one album, then I unwrapped the next and be like “Please be good.” I was so nervous, but yeah, it was immediately amazing. Then I would buy another one and get it ready and then do this whole thing again. That’s how I used to listen to them.

SV: What about the King of Limbs? 

CL: That’s one I haven’t listened to that much, actually. Gotta be in the right mood too. Especially with Djawbreaker, I listen to a lot of Led Zeppelin and soundtrack stuff like Quentin Tarantino soundtracks and great compilations. They’re the main things. Then I started listening to the Beastie Boys. Maybe I could turn this into something you know, figuring it out, for inspiration.

SV: There’s a fairly broad range of styles across all their albums as well.

CL: Exactly. I checked out Ill Communication, that one. It’s such a weird record, but it’s brilliant. It’s got that 70s sound.

SV: 70s cop show soundtrack. 

CL: Yeah, yeah exactly. And that’s what Djawbreaker was based off. The Death Proof soundtrack, that Miami Vice kind of thing. So yeah I listened to that the other day. It’s really cool and just weird as hell, I didn’t expect that at all. Brilliant.

SV: They’re a hip hop group, but a very musical one. Have you listnened to the Hot Sauce Committee?

CL: No.

SV: That was their last one before MCA died and it’s a really strange one as well but a different kind of strange. I think they just jammed a whole heap of stuff together and then sampled it all and cut it up and pasted it back together and came up with all these songs. It’s worth listening to. It’s very highly produced in that it probably couldn’t have been created without technology. But it’s raw at the same time.

CL: Yeah, ’cause I guess the way that they do it, even though it is highly produced, it’s unique in that way. What year was that one?

SV: I think it was 2011. So you have fair bit of material out there that needs to be recorded. 

CL: I was thinking I would love to maybe work on this year doing an album for Djawbreaker. The idea was to do a score for an original film, which I’m still working on with my partner. I know how to record a record and I know the process and I can handle that myself rather than working with someone else on their different timeline and ideas which I find really difficult. I can’t do it very well. I’d love to make a record but do it in that way that Quentin did. It’s kind of like a mix between Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a time in Hollywood soundtrack, where it’s kind of like you’re listening to the radio, and they have ads and a bit like MF Dooms Mad Villainy album. That’s really great. So obviously it’s hip hop and we’re not, but it’s based on Superheroes. You have the villain, but you have all those kind of 50s and 60s TV show sounds popping up, a 50s Batman kind of thing like the sounds from those Adam West shows. I want some really interesting sounds in there. I don’t want it to be like song ends, song ends and nothing else. I think I’m ready to start thinking about how to make it like a sonic painting, I guess.

SV: So not exactly a concept record, but a record that starts here and it finishes there and it couldn’t go any other way. 

CL: Exactly, so I’d love to start working on that. I’ve got tunes and stuff, but I think once you’ve written a whole bunch of tunes, that’s when you start growing and then you have this whole different concept of the tunes, and maybe you don’t like them anymore. Some are good but, you grow a lot, your perspective changes, and then it’s finding the time to write new stuff as well, that’s another thing. 

SV: Those songs you did at the Grace Emily last year were really good, and they fitted in well with the covers. I wouldn’t say the covers were any better.

CL: Thank you. I wanna be able to write songs that, that fit in well with covers and fit well overall, so nothing sticks out like a sore thumb. When you have a certain sound in mind for a project, it works a lot better that way, whereas doing jazz, I felt like I had different ideas for different songs, but they wouldn’t necessarily blend well together as a group. I felt that with my first and third jazz records. I had that problem but I thought, oh, whatever, it’s just like a moment in time. With Fargo and Djawbreaker, it was more of a sound concept. It was a lot easier to, have stuff that worked really well together, and especially with covers and stuff, so I’m trying to think of all these covers we need to do as well that would be fun. At the gig coming up I want to try and throw a couple more different things in there this time just to kind of wake us up a little bit. We were going to do an Oasis tune a couple of gigs ago.

SV: Wow, that’s different.

CL: Yeah, we tried it, we rehearsed and everything, it just didn’t really work, it didn’t really fit.

SV: Which one?

CL: What’s the Story Morning Glory. Yeah, which is cool ’cause you know the way that we could expand it sonically was the idea. But it was too heavy from start, there was no dynamic I think. That’s what it was.

SV: I’m not gonna lie, I haven’t really listened to much Oasis, just some singles. Not really my thing.

CL: I absolutely love Oasis. Dad used to listen to it. Maybe we’ll do a couple of covers. I’m still listening to Led Zeppelin, I still want to do that, but I’m searching for different things. I’m still trying to find things in the Beastie Boys and then MF Doom with his record, I’m still trying to find things in that. Just different sound. I don’t want to be stuck in the same realm of one sound. I wanna find something that makes me feel excited instead of being like “oh I can write this and I know it’s gonna kind of go this way.” I tend to do that. I get stuck a lot, but I want to be able to find something that is just a bit different but works surprisingly well, I guess you could say, I’m trying to find that. That bit of excitement, but yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. Nirvana has always been a big thing for me as well. I try and put some of that in there a little bit. It’s hard, especially when you’re such a critic of your own work, and not just songs of other bands or what they’ve created, but the history and how they got to that spot and their emotional state at the time of writing. Their background. That’s a big thing cause I wanna feel empathy with that person when I play one of their songs. I want to feel like I understand the depth of what they were going through. I want to feel like I’m not alone. I want someone else to relate to me in that way. Because, you know the guys, they don’t write the songs for the band, but they sure as hell make the songs. Because I’m doing all the lyrics and the songwriting I want to make sure it’s as deep as possible, as deep as I can feel.

CL: I always on this massive spectrum. You know, I’m really excited about it, I love the band and then I always go to the other end of the spectrum where I don’t know what I’m doing, I feel like it’s so common like “God, what the hell am I doing all this stuff for?” It’s back and forth, back and forth. And I just feel like I’m on a rollercoaster, I’m so erratic about it. But yeah, we’re excited. I think we’re excited for the gig, and do the album and be a little bit more experimental. 

SV: I really love Fargo, that really took me by surprise, it has an experimental aspect to it.

CL: Thank you. Yeah cause that’s branded as a jazz kind of thing. The material started out as straight jazz, thank God it didn’t end up that way!

SV: How do you go about writing the songs? Do you write on guitar?

CL: I used to do piano, that was my main thing, and then I knew some bar chords as a kid and then I used to live with Django and Kyrie and another friend at the time. 

SV: Kyrie is an amazing drummer.

CL: She’s the best, she’s phenomenal, I have nothing but respect for her drumming. She’s such an incredible jazz drummer as well. She doesn’t play that much jazz anymore, but she’s amazing. I used to live in a musical household and then I bought my first electric guitar, which is a telecaster, and cause I was working a bit I could afford it. I started noodling around and I wrote a couple songs from Midnight Cowboy on the guitar and then I wrote a couple on piano and guitar for Fargo. And when I was in New York and I wrote the third record I borrowed a housemates guitar so I wrote a couple songs on that, then a couple on the Rhodes Piano and a really shit keyboard at someone else’s house, I wrote Blue Candy on that one and then for Djawbreaker it’s guitar. You get a different result from each instrument you know.