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Special Patrol.
After our chat at a nearby hotel, Special Patrol’s frontman Myles Mayo and keyboardist Kate Bailey join the rest of the group (drummer Rob Jordan, guitarist Damien Holland and bassist Ben Opie) at Broadcast Studios in the city’s south-western corner for a loose rehearsal of most of the songs that will eventually make up their first full-length album. Little is said by the party of five as they play, but musically the chemistry speaks volumes.The overall vibe is friendly and uplifting – surprising perhaps, considering Mayo’s lyrical penchant for the less than happy side of life.
It seems that, even with a tentative March release date, no one can say for certain what paths the mood of these songs will eventually take, and that’s Special Patrol’s greatest virtue.
“We’ve had this discussion before,” Mayo reminds me of an earlier interview, “and we worked out that as much as the landscapes of the songs may come across as quite depressing because there’s a lot of minor keys in them, most of the actual sentiment is encouraging.” Bailey agrees, adding, “Myles has a good way of putting a slight twist on an expression that already exists, which means you listen to it and think, ‘Hang on, I think that’s what he said?’ And it wasn’t, and that makes you think about it that little bit more.”
With two exceptional EPs, ‘Chin Up Cynical Tim’ (2002) and ‘Special Patrol’ (2003), already out there, now there’s also the inclusion of In Your Head to both Triple M and Triple J’s regular rotation lists and the band’s addition to Adelaide’s Big Day Out line-up.
“It’s really good and exciting,” says Mayo of the radio attention, “because it’s helping us with our CD sales and also we’re getting a lot more interstate shows because of that exposure. Triple M plays it three times a day and Triple J are just about to play a new single, but they’ve been regularly playing In Your Head for the last five months.”
This also has its benefits when considered for support spots, with recent opening duties both here and in Victoria including Things Of Stone And Wood, Turin Brakes, The Whitlams, Pete Murray and The Church.
“It’s interesting to see people other than those we already know come along to our shows,” notes Bailey,” and that’s a good thing because even though we’ve had a really good and loyal fan base here for a long time, realistically you need to get new people to listen to you. And it’s quite challenging in a good way to play to people who don’t really know us at all and see what their response is.
“The Melbourne thing has been good; we first went across a long time ago and played at The Espy and then got invited back again, so we’re now going over about once a month. Again, that’s a good test because you don’t have any friends or parents there to support you, so the response is pretty important.”
With a number of east coast shows and Canberra’s Indiefest already booked ahead, the conversation turns to the Big Day Out. “We’re playing pretty early so it’s a bit hard for us to tell what it will be like,” considers Mayo, “but there’s actually a couple of other good bands that are playing around that time so let’s just hope there are a few people there to watch us. Obviously it’s exciting for us that we’re playing at the Big Day Out. We think that we’ve developed a step further and our live performance have also come a long way since our guitarist [Holland] has joined the band, and he’s been working a lot in the studio to help move forward there too.”
Which brings us back to the album. “It’s our longest project ever,” Bailey affirms. “Like, it’s still short I suppose in terms of recording time but we’re lucky that we’ve got the chance to work with a producer [Brett Taylor] for this length of time and really think through things a lot more than we have done before. It’s really exciting.”
Mayo adds: “There’s three songs from the first EP [The Coast, Paint Your Name and Chin Up Cynical Tim] that we’re re-recording for the album, but none from the second. The rest will be new songs that you’ve not heard before or have maybe heard at gigs or whatever. Out of those three songs, at least two of them are quite an important part of our live set so we thought after this many years let’s just do this. There’ll be moments on the album that will be a lot more rockier than we’ve ever been before then there’ll be moments where we’re even more mellow than we’ve been.”
“And I think there’s been some surprises for us too,” Bailey adds. “There’s been at least two songs during the demo process we thought we’d just put down and see what happens and they’ve ended up being really good songs. Like one that will definitely be introduced into our live set [Your Feet Were Made], and another called Enough Already which has become a really beautifully haunting but upbeat sort of song, and we didn’t expect that at all. Enough Already was just going to be a piano, vocal and simple guitar piece and it ended up having a pulsating bass and being really catchy.”
There you go. If you’re going to the BDO, budget enough money for lunch and get there early for Special Patrol on the Green Stage. As for their debut album: remember, you read about it here first!
Steve Jones
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Special Patrol play the Big Day Out Green Stage at 12.45pm on Fri 30 Jan and Glenelg Surf Lifesaving Club on Sat 17 Jan with Error and Is This Art?
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