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.

Stephen Johnson is one of the wild men of Adelaide rock ‘n’ roll, on stage at least. His band St Morris Sinners is one of the most intense and creative in the scene. No one who has ever attended one of their shows would forget it, as the charismatic front man leads the band and their enthusiastic audiences to catharsis. Sonic Vandals sat down with Stephen to talk about the cultural impact of Twin Peaks and most importantly their brilliant new album Zbilanc that was unleashed on the world back in April.

Stephen Johnson: So, who else have you interviewed?

Sonic Vandals: So far Georgy Rochow from Hey Harriett, and I’m going to interview Chelsea Lee on Saturday.

SJ: From Djawbreaker. Awesome, she’s really nice.

SV: Yeah, I met her once, very briefly.

SJ: Very good singer, just a really cool musician. Django plays with her as well.

SV: I’d say she’s probably about 20 years younger than me as well, but she’s into a lot of the same movies and TV shows as I am.

SJ: She’s got great taste, right?

SV: Yeah, it’s really interesting that generational thing. You guys all seem to be into shows like Twin Peaks that were around when I was a kid.

SJ: Was it considered cool then? I remember my dad saying, he remembers Twin Peaks getting really popular. He’s a bit older, he’s nearly 70, and he’s said things like “I remember the 90s when you guys were little babies and Twin Peaks started, it was on TV and it was it had traction and people talked about it, but it was still weird and off.”

SV: I think it’s growing in popularity. It was way ahead of his time, it was so strange, particularly that first season and a half when Lynch was still involved, because that was meant to be a limited run. He had a story that he wanted to tell-

SJ: And expand it.

SV: And then it became this weird soapie type thing. When mainstream tastes finally caught up more people go into. I know back then a lot of people didn’t see it and only caught up in the last five or ten years.

SJ: A lot could be said as well for the fact that you can freely access it as a full series at a time. Back then you’d have to watch it weekly, so there’s probably things where you do engulf yourself in something like that, watch the whole thing like and you binge it, it’s a long stretch, but like I feel like if you’re watching week by week, you might forget things like tropes and what’s going on and that kind of thing

SV: Yeah, you’re right. I found that sort of thing very frustrating with a lot of things. The X files was one that I really loved, but you couldn’t always be home on Thursday night at 7:30 or whatever it was.

SJ: Unless you’re taping.

SV: There were lots of standalone episodes, but that’s another one that would never have been made if Twin Peaks hadn’t come first. There were so many ideas that were not so much recycled but expanded upon.

SJ: Yeah, ideas that might start like, something like cinematography, things that David Lynch did in a lot of these earlier films. I think in the TV series, I think that Twin Peaks is where he got to like show to the masses ideas and concepts from films like Eraserhead and Blue Velvet and like Lost Highway etc. But he had more of an audience on TV and he got one chance to do it. Which is cool, but I don’t think they’ll let people like that on mainstream TV anymore at all, really. I don’t know, I don’t really watch mainstream TV.

SV: I don’t know either.

SJ: Married at First Sight? (laughs)

SV: Yeah, I haven’t watched anything like that. I do get Twin Peaks vibes from some of your music. Django’s guitar particularly.

SJ: Yeah, he’s a big Lynch fan. I feel like those guys, all three of them collectively, when we did the album Nick, Angus and Django all very big Lynch fans. I was always the one where like I like some of his movies and I really like him. I’ll watch really long interviews, like the one he did with David Stratton. I find him really interesting, but I never really tapped into Twin Peaks as much as they did. I watched it, I thought was good, but it wasn’t really my vibe. I do like certain facets of what he does with cinema. So, Nick and Django and Angus were definitely sprinkling their Twin Peaks vibes. Some of the songs like She Swiped Left there’s definitely a ‘Peaksy’ vibe to it.

SV: Definitely the guitar, that line after the chorus, that’s Twin Peaks all over.

SV: So, the new album – when did you actually record that?

SJ: We recorded the second half, the sad half, first.

SV: Oh, so it was done in separate sessions then?

SJ: Yeah, it was done separately, and that fits into the whole imbalance thing as well. We went in and we recorded 3 songs with the original bass player George. We got through that in about 2019. They sat for a year and then covid hit. We also went to France after a bit of big hiatus. The France thing put some energy back into us and we had these songs that were sitting there, so we recorded 3 of them with George, and then I moved back to Melbourne and Django and George were in Adelaide and Angus was in America. We all went our separate ways, and in some ways covid could be thanked for the album actually being finished and the band started up again. COVID made me move back to Adelaide and made Angus move back to Adelaide. George had moved from Melbourne, so we got Nick, and Nick was the person who drove the last bit of the recordings. Nick wrote horn section parts; he wrote piano bits. He came in and melded with Django and Angus so well musically. So, with those guys working peacefully Nick was the missing link. If you look at them together, hanging out they vibe so much.

I had this big writer’s block after we did those initial recordings. Suddenly I got back in Adelaide, and I forced myself to start trying again for the second half the album and somehow managed to pull through. I got to the last few songs and tries to take a different approach with them lyrically, than I did with some of the old stuff.

SV: And that’s very clear in the second half of it. Like you said, it’s very sombre. Is the second half more personal? The first half seems more satirical. It seems to be poking fun at various facets of modern life.

SJ: Originally the idea was the second half will be sad and sombre and have a big orchestral string arrangement, which didn’t really end up happening, but I’m glad where it actually did go. Those songs are quite personal to me. And I then realized that the first half was supposed to be angry music, but it all came out satirical and a bit tongue in cheek, funny. I’m the kind of person who looks at today’s culture absolutely wholeheartedly as a leftie, but I also come at it like South Park where they just pay out everyone, no one’s off the hook. I wanted to throw that element in there where we can all make fun of ourselves and you can make fun of where things are going, especially for Australia. For me another big influence was a Redgum and John Schumann. As a kid listening to his album (If You Don’t Fight You Lose), he has a few songs on there that are more scathing and political. Stuff like Gentrification Blues comes down from that album.

SV: That was the first Redgum album, wasn’t it?

SJ: Yeah, that’s the 1st one, from 1978. With the first side, for each song there was certain music I was listening to that I wanted to convey in the lyrics.

SV: That came through really well. Big Rev Kev is another. You seem to be going after redneck culture there.

SJ: That’s the only character-based song on the whole album.

SV: You used to do a lot of character-based songs on all the other ones.

SJ: It is a nod to the old stuff, but also technically he’s supposed to be the guy that killed crazy Dave. I was listening to a lot of Captain Beefheart at the time. I was listening to Spotlight Kid, and I wanted to do some chuggy, funky thing, but it ended up being this Cruel Sea sort of vibe, which I like. I was listening to heaps of Beefheart at the time, and that’s what happens in my music. I’ll be listening most of the time a particular album or an artist, and I would be churning through their stuff, not necessarily stealing anything, but it’s more the vibe or the sound of the music. It’s not even lyrical stuff. It’s the feeling of a certain album and I try to convey that in a character or a setting sense.

SV: And it it does come through. The band as a whole has a very classic rock feel to it, but it’s twisted. There’s the whole garage rock thing going on there, but there’s other things going on as well. I love all the discordant stuff Django comes up with, all the pedals he uses, he comes up with some crazy sounding stuff. Songs like Epitaph – was that written during a Velvet Underground phase?

SJ: That’s one of the first songs that was written for this album, it was written in 2017. I wrote that one and Organ Grinder and Elephant in the Gloom. All three of those songs were actually written a time when I was pretty down and depressed and in the dumps in a pretty bad way. Dianne was written then as well. The beauty that comes out of that is that you write stuff that you look back on. That was 6 years ago now. Sometimes I actually look back on those lyrics go ‘wow you know I can’t believe I wrote that’ – I’m really proud of those songs and me personally, I’m really hoping that people listen to the second half as well, because I think the second half has a lot to give in different ways and it shows a diversity that the band can reach. We want to keep changing and evolving. We still want to be rocking band. But I wanted a different tinge to the new rocky stuff, and I think we conveyed it.

SV: Those songs in the second half – anyone who’s ever been depressed in any way would be able to relate to them. I find it moving, I think it works very well.

SJ: Oh thanks. I’m a big proponent of listening to sad music, even when I’m not that depressed, I love sad music. In my life and stuff that’s happened to me as I was growing up, it’s always been a thing watching movies or listening to soundtracks with sad music, but also as a teenager and realizing those bands who made sad music was what really moved me. It gave me this voice I feel like as a kid I didn’t really have emotionally living in an all-male household. I’m not saying they weren’t emotional people. We had a death in the family, and they all cried, and I was always the kid didn’t. I found that aspect of music and art was where I wanted to strive to make people feel. So, I really wanna do some sad music and the band sort of does sad music, but I want to do a big fucking pile of sad music!

SV: I’d heard all of these songs played live except for the piano poetry thing, which is also very cool. I always find myself listening to it all the way through. The first half is more immediate, but the second half, once you get into it, draws you in a lot deeper.

SJ: I feel like it’s such a vinyl album. The second half might be a bit of a challenge in its own right, but I feel like it’s such a vinyl album because you can just turn it over, and maybe that side doesn’t get touched as much, but it’s something that is special or private for someone that has purchased our music. You put the first half on at a party, the second half you probably couldn’t. I showed it to my friends when we finished recording and it’s actually quite personal, and I’d rather them just discover it without showing it to them. Let other people discover it and make their own mind up.

SV: Yeah, that makes sense. It’s the kind of thing that people who take music seriously are going to listen to it, and once you get down to it, you start listening to the lyrics and trying to piece together what it’s all about. There’s a lot more to delve into in that second half, than there is first half. It’s funny, it’s great, but it’s all very self-explanatory. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

SJ: With the imbalance theme, lyrically the first half is less dense, but I’d say it’s more heavily driven by the arrangements of the music. I reckon if a young band in Adelaide or anywhere tried to play some of the songs on the album, I reckon they find it difficult to replicate the first half songs, but the second half are quite straight forward. I can even play Elephant in the Gloom on the guitar, and I can’t play guitar!

SJ: There are all these facets of imbalance on both sides of the album, and even some unintentional ones. How it was recorded, the people who recorded it – two different people. The initial recordings were done by Jarrad Payne, and the rest were done by Tom Barnes, who mixed it, and then Jarrad Payne mastered it. They work together well but they’re two very different people as well in their own rights, and how they look at sound engineering it’s unintentional stuff that accidentally adds to the whole imbalance.

SV: It’s really interesting that the two halves were recorded by different sound engineers. The vibe and the style of the music is very different, but the sound of the record is very consistent.

SJ: Actually, Jarrad did Epitaph, Organ Grinder and Elephant in the Gloom. So, he recorded 3 songs for us and then Tom did the rest. But Tom, being the engineer that he is and working closely with Jarrad and also working in the same studio, he brought his own mikes in and did his own thing, he somehow did replicate and tweaked the songs that Jarrad did and now they all sound quite linear which is great. He didn’t actually do much, they’re both pretty proficient sound engineers. They did a good job with what they had. Credit where credit’s due to both of them, and the work that they did. They’re very supportive people, and they’re some of my favourite people I’ve worked with in our recordings.

SV: It sounds fantastic. It’s very clean, but it doesn’t sound over produced.

SJ: That’s what we’re worrying about, actually.

SV: The first time I heard the first single.

SJ: Zbilanc.

SV: I’m not even gonna try and say that I’m sorry! I heard that I thought, wow, this is very clean compared to your first few records.

SJ: That’s what I thought as well. There’s always a compression factor. I was doing sound engineering recently. I didn’t finish the course, I’m a drop out yet again, but I did sound engineering at TAFE and I did realise that there’s a lot to be said about compression – like Tom Barnes will talk about it when he’s doing the mix –  it’s a hard thing to explain to people who aren’t sound engineers, but I hate mastering, it’s my least favourite thing that anyone can do to music. and I think the reason is because when you master things there’s part of it that digitally compresses things, so it comes out sounding really loud when you play it. If you didn’t get it mastered it’d be like those really old recordings where you have to crank it right up. He reckons when you crank it right up, you still hear something better than when you’ve got it compressed it. Do you kind of get what I mean?

SV: Yeah, I’ve done some mastering in the past.

SJ: I’m ultimately happy though. With Songs About Insects and For Lease I felt like we were striving for something and then this is the end result of it. With those two albums I feel like we’re scrapbooking, getting to the end result.

SV: I can see that, but this one is a much more cohesive record than those two. Even though Songs About Insects did have a theme, the songs weren’t exactly linked like these. This one does seem like it has a theme – you’ve got that Boarding Announcement; it comes on a little bit like a concept album. I’m probably imagining this, is that a reprise of the chorus chords of Big Rev Kev?

SJ: That first song, with that bit where the guys were all humming that’s actually following Organ Grinder. And then Like Plants Grow, follows Dianne.

SV: The imbalance theme, did that come first? Was that your theme when you recorded the first session, or did that come later?

SJ: I started writing this album after we finished Songs About Insects. I started writing loose songs about a year later, so about 2017 and the idea that I initially has was that I started writing these sad songs about personal things was and asking myself “What can I do with this” and I had this idea that maybe the whole album could be about share house living. But no. Maybe one day. I didn’t want to do that then. I kept thinking, thinking and I had the idea for the imbalance when I realized we could mirror an album – a vinyl mirror between two sides and you could have a broad option. We can show that yes, we can do sad stuff and we can do crazy stuff and broaden our horizons a bit. I saw the Maltese word for imbalance, and I thought that this is a really cool looking word.

SV: How did you find that?

SJ: Sounds so lame but I found it on Google. And it took me ages and ages to find out how to pronounce it though, because it doesn’t sound it on Google. So, it sounds Italian. It sounds you know, dark, but Maltese is a dying language is very small language and I was in Melbourne living there and this guy I was living with had friends who were all Maltese, living in a share house in Brunswick near us. So, I went there, and funnily enough he said to me afterwards you look like you could be related to them – it’s weird, they did look like my cousins. They’re really nice people and I showed it to this girl, and she looked at it and straight away said “Oh it’s that word” She then said it (Zbilanc) and I was like wait, what? Because it doesn’t sound anything the way it looks. And I realised recently if you actually look at the word you can actually see it – you know how it says Zbilanc, you look at the BILANC, it has the C at the end with the accent. So the Z is “Itas” and the last bit is exactly how it looks with the accent. “itas-bilun-shay” So she showed me – it’s just Maltese. Anyway, I found the word and then after that I had a big lull, and I went and moved away and I didn’t do any music for a long time and then the French thing saved us I think and like really pushed us back into into gear. Me and Angus and Django realized that we wanted to continue, and we found someone who wanted to help us, and we found the bass player we have now, Flik, she’s been playing with us on and off for years, she filled in for George as well.

SV: She’s a bloody fine bass player.

SJ: Yeah, she’s good. And I’ve written most the lyrics to the brand-new album now, but we’ve really started like writing some stuff we want to maybe do the next album by the end of this year or so. We’re not going to do the six-year break on it anymore, it’s ridiculous!

SV: Did I hear somewhere that Angus might be going back to America? Naomi Keyte said something about that at her single launch a while back.

SJ: He’s supposed to be heading back straight after this Friday, but he’s pushed it forward so now he’ll come to Robe with us for a music festival. I think he’s gonna leave about May, and then I think he’s coming back if we win the grant that we’re working on to do the next album. He’ll come back to Adelaide and maybe try to bring Nick him to do the next album. The next album might be Nick, Angus, Flik, me and Django. Which would be cool, if it works out!

SV: You went to France. Have you been to any other places?

SJ: We’ve been to Sydney, Melbourne a few times. Country Victoria with Castlemaine and we’ve been to Yorke Peninsula, but France is the only other place. I went to Berlin by myself, but this next tour is basically locked in, now we’re going to go back there next year. I don’t think we’re gonna be doing the same festival this time. We might be, but we are definitely going to France, and we’ve got the Hot Pants Touring guy helping us and he’s saying he could probably organize some more shows in different countries for us as well. We’re hoping that we can do some. More countries. That would be great. I love it over there!

SV: What about the rest of Australia?

SJ: It’s funny how after years and years slugging it out, you finally get a sort of base following in Australia and then you go over to France and then there’s this bigger base than you ever imagined. There are young people and older people, middle aged people, all different ages who know who you are and they like your music. And here in Australia, we’ve slugged it out for ages, and I feel like in Australia maybe that it’s becoming a thing where people have turned their backs a bit on rock music. It’s a real big shame because I think maybe the flavour of music has changed. People that would have been punters that would come to shows in back in the 90s, those people now go to HQ or Rocket, and they don’t care about rock music anymore. It was nice when we were in France, we played these shows, and we did get a mix of different age groups who loved it and they were not just people in music scene. I love Australia but it’s taking such a long time to get anywhere!

Hey Harriett have been playing around Adelaide for about 6 years now. They’re one of the more interesting and engaging bands on the scene, and a large part of this is down to band mum Georgy Rochow (lead singer/guitar/keys/song writer). As a lyricist she is brutally honest, writing about mental health issues among other darker subjects that encapsulate the human experience. She’s also a talented songwriter and crack rhythm guitarist. Sonic Vandals sat down with Georgy to talk about the band, sexism in the music industry, living with OCD and negotiating Covid as a musician.

Sonic Vandals: It’s interesting that there’s two of us sitting here with their OCD/Anxiety issues. It’s perhaps amazing that we both made it here.

Georgy Rochow: It makes it easier sometimes though, I meet people who’ve never experienced pain and I just don’t know what to talk to them about.

SV: I admire the fact that you do so much different stuff. A lot of people use their issues, and I’ve used it, I’ve hidden behind OCD/anxiety for years.

GR: I read a post recently – I follow quite a few accounts that are really helpful, and it was a little picture that had OCD in the middle and it had all these tangents coming off like a mind map, it was about how it’s very rarely a standalone illness. For me, I’ve definitely got OCD tied in with anxiety and depression, they’re my three. But for others it can be even eating disorders, which are actually often associated as well. I had no idea, I feel like I’m learning every day something new. I forget about it so much and I hold myself to a standard of everyone else around me and I forget that actually I do have something underlying that makes things a lot harder and I’m working sometimes twice as hard as my mates just to get out of bed. I just forget about it because I guess I just got on with life for so long and suffered and didn’t really realize there was a reason why. 

SV: Yeah, it’s interesting that from what I’ve read on your blog, your OCD symptoms are similar, but not exactly the same as mine. But it also fluctuates as well. I don’t know why, but I had quite a few years when it was just really, really bad. When I was in my late teens and early 20s and then-

GR: Yeah, same actually. 

SV: It sort of died out for a while, and then at the end of my 20s it suddenly came back again. 

GR: That’s so interesting because I’ve found yeah 19 through to 24 was, I didn’t think I’d survive that chunk of time. And then it kind of got better without me doing much, I was seeing a counselor, but I still hadn’t been diagnosed with OCD at that point and then it got better for a while. Then it came back last year, even worse, in different ways, different triggers. Now I had to work so hard to move out of that, but it’s interesting how it comes in cycles. 

SV: And then sometimes I haven’t been able to work out what triggered it. I don’t know how you can get so completely closed off from everything around you. And you do have to fight to get out. Every bloody day. 

GR: Yeah, I’ve just come out of a really dark patch where I was very much pissed off. I was really angry that everything was so hard and that I just had to keep going. So I’m getting pretty tired of trying. My ex moved out and that was hard, but then it was kind of better. And then I got told I had a gut parasite and actually started treating my health a bit more and then suddenly I had a bit more energy and it was a lot easier, but I just so sick of it being hard, you know. If it’s not my mental illness, then my body is not very happy these days. I think it’s all related it, would have to be. The fact that I don’t sleep well ever, and I’m always switched on and stressed even when I think I’m calm. The only time I feel really good I think is after Yoga class again. It doesn’t last that long! (laughs) There was a point where when I was doing my yoga teacher training, I was the most well I’d been physically and emotionally, and then a friend died and that was really traumatic. But I was still doing really well, and then I had the burns accident ended up in hospital, lost my physical health, lost my mental health, 10 million steps backwards. Still haven’t recovered. Still can’t even do a downward dog for five breaths without my wrists hurting. I was so fit!

SV: You’re considerably younger than me. I’d say probably about 25 years younger than me.

GR: Something like that. 

SV: And it’s not going to get any easier Five years ago I tripped over while I was running and smashed my knee and I can’t do it any more I can, but I can’t do much. I can run once a week and that’s it. It’s the same knee that’s playing up after last night (injured in a Raccoon City pit) so I really should just behave myself. 

GR: So hard to behave though. 

SV: Yeah, well, you gotta let off steam sometimes. 

SV: If I didn’t listen to music, I’d go completely mad. Music for you must be some kind of an outlet because you wouldn’t keep doing it otherwise. 

GR: It keeps me sane. I don’t really know what else to do in life well.  But I think that’s the thing I struggle with is the only time I actually feel really present and the person I’m supposed to be on the inside is when I’m on a stage. Then covid hit here, and I wasn’t on stage anymore. I lost my whole identity overnight. I’m still getting it back, and there’s not that many opportunities kicking around. I don’t get to play that often anymore, so I had to rebuild what it means for me to be a creator. It has been really tough, so I don’t feel comfortable in everyday life. I’m starting to learn to. Normal human conversations are not, they’re something I’m still working on.

SV: You are a natural performer as well – it comes across through the joy of Hey Harriett performances, and that’s one of the things I love about the band. 

GR: Yeah, it’s actually really interesting that. I guess I was always supposed to be a performer, but I was, and I still am quiet. Shy is not the right word, but I think I have such a low self-esteem. When I was younger, I was like the little fat tomboy kid and there was always a lot going on in my family life and I never was given opportunities to shine, or for other people to see my potential and be proud of me for what I was doing. It’s only recently that I’ve started accepting that I am a good performer and people actually do like my music and things like that. I’m 28. It’s pretty sad that it’s taken this long to get to that point. 

GR: Everyone has their own timing and I have to remember that. It’s hard sometimes when you see the young kids coming through and they have so much support from the industry now too, which is amazing. That wasn’t there when I was coming through.

SV: Does sexism still play a part?

GR: It doesn’t happen as much anymore. It used to happen quite a bit with sound techs, or venue managers or whatever, not talking to me, but talking to the boys in my band. I’m a strong fucking woman, I tell all these boys what to do, I’m they’re leader. 

SV: It’s your band and it’s pretty damned obvious. 

GR: You know what I mean? It doesn’t really happen much anymore. I have a bit of fun with it now. 

SV: There’s still plenty of sexism around. 

GR: 100%. And then it kind of flip flopped a bit the other way and we walked a fine line for ages. When it was Hey Harriett in the formation of me and just the boys, we weren’t considered a female act really even though I write all the music, I’m the band leader and I organize everything. In some ways it’s even more empowering for a woman to work with only other men. Because there were times at the beginning where the egos of some of the other bandmates that, unintentionally tried to take over a bit, just because that was their natural state. To be like “I want to do it this way and I wanna do it that way” – I had to learn how to stand up for myself and my music and my vision and tell them to back the fuck down. I had felt like I was fighting to say we are a fucking female act. Eventually we got a few gigs with Girls Rock and things like that, and it started shifting a bit but there was a while there where we were getting treated like a boy band in terms of support from people putting on all female lineups and things like that. Here’s me swimming in this ocean of men (laughs) but I’m a fucking woman, you know. 

SV: And it’s all your point of view too, and that’s your vision. It’s clearly your band. That was obvious from probably the 1st 10 seconds I saw you on stage.

GR: Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey. I’ve seen a lot of stuff. It’s cool to see how it’s changed, and I feel we’re in a whole new world now with COVID and post COVID. Well, we’re still kind of in COVID. I enjoy being on stage more now. I think because it’s fleeting. You never know when your next gig is going to be.

SV: Yeah, that is true. They have been very few and far between recently. I think I went to 50 shows last year. I don’t think I’m going to get to that many this year. 

GR: We’re pretty lucky, a lot of ours fell before lockdowns. We’d play a gig and then three days later we’re having a lock down like, sick! 

SV: Did any of yours get cancelled? 

GR: Our biggest one got cancelled which was supporting Montaigne. I was gutted. That was the start of COVID, the very start of it hitting Adelaide. I was thinking “please just hold out” and then it was the day before and they cancelled it. It felt finally like all the hard work was coming to something and we’re rising a bit. And then it was pulled out from underneath us. It was a shocking time. 

GR: It’s frustrating and the state government have all these little pocket grants and stuff that was so hard to apply for. I applied for a few and didn’t get any so I went through that stress and anxiety of applying.to just get rejected. There was no support for the arts really through that time. 

SV: I am interested in the band history because I only found out about Hey Harriett last year. How did it come about? 

GR: I started as a solo artist in about 2011. Yeah, I reckon it was 2011 when I first started performing, a long time ago. I was in year 11 at school and started playing at the top pub in Willunga in my hometown. I kept doing that and eventually got up the courage to start playing the city, things like open mic nights, including one that was incredibly sexist, I was on very late and only got one song! (laughs) But I was determined to kind of keep going and forge my way forward. I was used to being around men – I have two older brothers and grew up in a country town. So I was used to the less than ideal comments or attitudes towards female musicians in a weird, sad way, so it didn’t hit me too hard at first. I started writing songs with an acoustic guitar singer, songwriter vibe and I was enjoying that because the songs were really pretty, and I could express myself through words easily.

I was writing about my life in a kind of diary format, and I really enjoyed that. Then I started writing songs that were a bit edgier, and I think probably because I was growing up and didn’t want to be seen as…I got sick of being nice (laughs) and the songs sounded hollow solo. I started looking for a while for other artists to jump on board, other musicians, but couldn’t really find the right people for quite a while because I had no foot in the music scene. Because I grew up in a country town, I didn’t really know anyone. I slowly person by person built up some sort of contacts but I hadn’t really found my people yet, and then I moved to the city and that kind of helped because I could go out a bit more and go to shows. And then I went to WOMAD one year. I had just started studying at Adelaide Uni. 

That was my first semester studying music at Adelaide and I went to WOMAD, and I met Mitchell (Skinner, original Hey Harriett drummer) there. I met him at WOMAD through a mutual friend and then on Monday he just happened to be in my class at Uni. It turned out we were studying the same degree or slightly adjacent – he was doing sonic arts and I was doing pop music, so we shared a lot of classes. Then my friend said, ”You know, Mitch is a drummer?” So, I started chatting to him about how I really wanted a drummer. And then I poached Bryn from Bromham, so I think I’d already started filling in in Bromham at that point and it started falling into place. 

GR: The original line up has changed a bit over the years. When Heather joined on bass that was the first time I started working with another woman in the band, which was really cool. John’s harmonies were amazing and really quirky, but we lost that when he left. Heather’s voice – she’s seeing everything I’m hearing, which was amazing. We went on tour and stuff like that. And then Heather left and now we’ve got Annie and then Amy joined on drums. Mitchell kept wanting to leave in his van. He had this dream of driving off into the sunset, and he finally did. I made my peace with that, it was so emotional because he was the last core member, the original. He lasted a few months and then he’s telling me “I’m coming home” but I’ve already got a replacement (laughs). We always struggled as a band because we were quirky people who valued things like home life and being in the outdoors over going to sink beers and staying out late at gigs. We found that really draining and stressful, so the networking wasn’t really there, and we didn’t fit the description of what a successful band in Adelaide looks like to some of the organisations that define that.

GR: It’s interesting now because we’ve got Alex Black, Amy, and Annie who are all people who are so in the music scene, in their various bands. They just love it, and they find it so easy, well maybe not easy, but it’s a big part of their identity and personality and it takes pressure off me cause now I can say “I live in Aldinga and I’m an hour away from the city and I’m not coming into this show. ‘Hey Alex, do you want to go? And can you take some Instagram stories to the band?’ And can you talk to people, and can you carry some of that load that I can’t because it’s too much for me?” 

SV: There’s always an element of cliquiness in any music scene, and I can see it now.

GR: I hate it, yeah. 

SV: There certainly seem to be bands, and I don’t know if they are more popular, but they seem to get more shows than others.

GR:  It’s very cliquey and disheartening.  I’ve struggled with that the whole time we’ve been together because, we didn’t fit the mold. We’re doing our own thing which I love. I wouldn’t know how to change us to be what people are looking for because it wouldn’t feel authentic. Being authentic is a big part of me as a creator. And I do see some other bands and I look at them and think ‘your songs are catchy, and you’ve got everything together, on paper you look so amazing, but I have no emotional connection to what you’re doing.’ It’s that hard line of: do you market yourself in order to get ahead? Or are you doing it because it’s a true expression of your soul. We opted for the ‘we’re probably never going to be famous, but we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing’ option because I didn’t see another way. If I started writing songs I didn’t believe in, then I’d feel so shit on the inside (laughs).

SV: And that definitely comes through, there isn’t another band like Hey Harriet in the scene. 

GR: Yeah, I’m a bit strange (laughs). 

SV: Your sound is completely different. I don’t know if I’d say strange, maybe different. 

GR: Eccentric. 

SV: I like different, different is good. 

GR: I like that one. Eccentric. Or eclectic. That’s the word I was looking for. An eclectic group of people is what we call ourselves. 

SV: There are other bands like Seabass, St Morris Sinners, The Vains and others as well that make you feel something. 

GR: And they’re the gigs I’ll go to cause they make me feel a lot of things on the inside, you know? 

SV: And if you don’t feel anything, what’s the point?

GR: I don’t know if it’s just because I was sensitive, but I would go to some shows, and I’d feel so out of place and so anxious and like I don’t fit in here. Even though I’m in this band and we’ve got heaps people who love listening to our music and we’re playing these cool shows. But I’d be thinking, “oh, I’m not cool enough to be here” and I thought it was me overthinking things with my overthinking brain. And then I’d start talking to other people and it turns out I’m not the only muso that feels that way. I guess there’s certain groups of people I just still feel so out of place around in the music scene, which is sad. I don’t think it needs to be that way, but it’s almost like they’ve put up a front and yeah. 

SV: Hey Harriett has a really good vibe. Your shows are a positive place to be and even if the music is a bit dark, it’s a catharsis thing. There’s an exchange of energy as well, it’s not all one way. It’s not just you getting up there doing it for you.

GR: I think that’s a big part of it. That sense of community is really important to me, and I’ve had multiple random people I’ve never met, audience members come up afterwards and say something or they’ll send me an Instagram message. My favorite thing to do when I get home from a gig is to lie in bed and go back through and watch the stories and stuff. And I’ve gotten some of the most heartfelt messages on those nights. I’ll feel quite down the next day after a gig because of the drop in in adrenaline, some of the nicest things that have been said are along the lines of “I’ve never felt so comfortable in an audience before” or “I haven’t had so much fun at a gig in a long time.” And it’s like, I think that stems from the fact that I can feel so uncomfortable and so unloved by the bands that I’ve been to see in specific places that I would never want that feeling to be instilled in any audience member that comes to one of our shows. I want everyone to feel comfortable and welcome and happy. Or not just happy, permission to be sad at a show as well, but just feel like you’re allowed to be there. I hate going to gigs, where you pay your money to get in and then the bands are just in their own world and they’re being selfish, and they’re not considering their audience. They’re not talking to you; they just play their music and then shout things into the microphone and sink beers. And they don’t care about you as a member of the community that you’re trying to create. I’m not there to serve myself, I’m there to serve the people. And then through doing that I’ll get so much back from the people. Often the message is so well timed – it’ll be when I’m feeling the most down about a show being like, no one could dance at that one – for example the two UniBar gigs we played. The second one I left feeling like I was on Cloud 9. The one before that I was over thinking everything when I got home – maybe no one liked our set and all this kind of stuff. Someone sent me a message and it was just the nicest message.

SV: That was still a good show. 

GR: But it’s different cause you can’t get that energy back from the audience when they’re sitting down and far away (laughs).

SV: It was weird. It’s the only time I’ve sat down at a Hey Harriett show.

GR: We’re not meant to be seated at.

SV: I went to that one with my wife and we were just sitting there going OK…

GR: Yeah, it’s weird sitting for sure. 

SV: It was a good show. I love Cove Street. They were really good. I’d never seen them before. Twice Lichen were good too. There was a good vibe to that show.

GR: Yeah, and again both those bands were so lovely to talk to as well. We try to avoid getting ourselves into lineups with bands that we don’t I guess like. We want our vibe to suit – we want to play with nice people.  I think it’s not that hard to be a nice human, you know I think if your base level is walking through life, not trying to cause harm to anyone. I know shit happens, you have a bad day or whatever, but just don’t be a dickhead. It’s so nice I’ve somehow found myself in this web of really interesting bands and really interesting humans and everyone is so nice, which is great. Probably because I just fully reject the other parts of the scene. I walk into a room sometimes and be like “Nope going home.” 

SV: The first time that we saw Hey Harriet was at that Girls Rock fundraiser last year with Oscar the Wilde, Stabbitha and Pelvis and my daughter walked in there, you guys started playing and she felt safe and at home. And the queer vibes help as well. 

GR: That always helps, yeah? 

SV: She often feels like she’s being possibly being attacked for being queer as well. There’s certainly still plenty of homophobia out there.

GR: Yeah, it’s hard sometimes. I forget how many different parts of my life have the potential to be hard. Suddenly I was in a two year long relationship with a woman and some places we would be holding hands and I would feel uncomfortable, and wonder why do I feel uncomfortable? I was shocked to realize that when I was born, the year I was born, it was still illegal to be gay in Tasmania. I think that was the year that it got changed. I was alive when it was still illegal. 

SV: So we’re talking about 25 years ago? 

GR: 1993. That was the last state to change. I only found that out recently and that shocked me. Perhaps that’s why I have this kind of underlying sense of insecurity. 

SV: Yeah, well, so there are still people out there who are completely homophobic. It’s really fucking scary.

GR: It’s terrifying. Even just walking through the city at night I would often just be less affectionate cause if they’re not homophobic, there’s often some people out there who fetishize it as well, give you weird looks. Then I had the opposite of that. OK, obviously I’m interested in women, that’s just who I am type of thing, I went down that path and then realized well, actually I’m also interested in men. And then there’s the whole thing of some of the people in the queer community, gay community, think that you’re just dipping your toe in and then you get a bit of flak from them as well. That was the recent thing that I went through. I was kind of seeing this guy. It didn’t work out, but I was mourning that community thinking I know that some of my friends are now going to discard me because I’m not gay enough for them, you know? And that’s another side of it as well. That’s hard. 

SV: Yeah, there’s definitely plenty of biphobia isn’t there? 

GR: There’s just too many people judging other humans for what they want to do with their lives! (laughs) 

SV: Exactly, you love who you love, that’s all there is to it, and that’s all they should be to it. 

GR: Yeah, exactly yeah, but it’s so hard to juggle. We’re lucky in a lot of senses. There are places in the world that if I wanted to travel with a female partner like we would have to lie, you know. Say we were sisters or something because it would be very unsafe, physically unsafe. In Australia most of the time, we’re pretty lucky. I guess lucky is not the right word. Pretty safe, but it’s sad that there are people out there who care about things that shouldn’t be cared about! I think it should just be whatever you want to do. Whatever makes you happy. 

SV: Tell me about the live album you made at the Crown and Anchor. 

GR: That was fun. 

SV: That’s such a good recording. I know it’s not perfect, but it’s obviously live. 

GR: For a live recording too. That was a really fun project. 

SV: There’s no overdubs on that, right? 

GR: There was something. We had to go back and fix something. Maybe not overdubs, but we did a few takes of things and then Lachie (Bruce, sound engineer) would pick the best take. I think there are a couple where we did have to edit something in from another take to fix a bum note or something. 

SV: Just like Jimmy Page did with all the old Led Zeppelin live recordings in the 1970s. 

GR: Yeah, it was really fun to just do it all together because we’re finding, the recordings that we had done in the studio I think sounded quite a bit different and the energy wasn’t captured. So then to do the live recording, part of that was trying to capture some of that energy. It would have been cool if we could have had an audience in there

SV: I’m also curious about the way you write your songs. What inspires you to write and where do the ideas come from? 

GR: Pretty much exclusively from lived experience. I find it really hard to write outside of that. 

I feel like you get possessed by the music or something. There’s been times, the best songs I’ve written are the ones where I just sit down and press record and they come out almost fully formed and it’s crazy. To think that you could be carrying that around inside you and not know until a specific moment and then you sit down, and you feel like you’re just the vessel that it comes through. That’s just such a weird experience. ‘Hearts in the Ocean’ I wrote super hungover sitting on a jetty just with my phone and sang the whole song out, edited it a bit. I love driving – when I’m driving, I’ll put voice memos on, and I’ll start humming a bassline or a rhythm. And then suddenly I’ve created a song there and I’ll get so agitated cause I need to go home and play it. So often I don’t choose the time to write a song, the song chooses me. And it’s always very inconvenient timing. 

SV: The arrangements are all yours as well? 

GR: Yeah, most I’d say. I write all the songs and then band members have freedom to create their own guitar parts or own basslines or whatever. And then I’ll hear it and be like “I was actually kind of imagining something a little bit more like this”. Mostly I try to give them freedom in creativity, so I guess I’m writing the form of the song with lyrics, the melody and I have in my mind an idea of what energy it’s going to have, what it’s going to sound like, and then I hand it over to them and go “read my mind!”