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Screamfeeder.
A few years ago a nice, well thought-of Brisbane indie-pop trio called Screamfeeder, who had experienced a bit of Triple J airplay and a lot of touring, released an album. That album was ‘Rocks On The Soul,’ an interesting and absorbing piece that rocketed them to star status. After a prolonged absence, the band has returned with their sixth album, ‘Take You Apart’. Singer/guitarist Tim Steward says that with this album, their foremost ambition is to take it out of the country.
"We’re trying to get overseas in March, that’s something that’s on the cards, it’s not confirmed yet, so that’s something that we’ve been working towards - spending lots of hours each day talking to people in various places. [We’re] trying to a) get the record out over there and b) get touring. So that’s our focus at the moment, and we’re also looking at releasing a singles album early this year."
I ponder as to whether it is a good idea to release an album and a compilation together. "They’re two very separate things so they can happen simultaneously if need be," Steward counters. "It’s just that we’ve got about twelve or thirteen singles out now and rather than do a Greatest Hits, which is almost like you’re summing up and closing the door and you’re saying ‘that’s that period,’ or whatever, a singles album is more an ongoing entity. It’s just more of a document, I suppose."
Steward says the logic of the singles album is to expose their new listeners to their back catalogue which they may not be able to find elsewhere. "There were about four albums before ‘Rocks On The Soul’, you see..." Back when Screamfeeder were a struggling indie band? "I guess we’ve always been a struggling indie band, but with us the struggle isn’t so much of a struggle. We just take it as it is, we don’t worry about struggling; it’s fine, and it’s part of the way we function. So it’s not as though we’re complaining, we’re being who we are and we’re very satisfied with our sort-of status."
The new album is a lot simpler than ‘...Soul’, going back to a simpler indie-pop foundation. "I think one of the things we did with ‘Rocks On The Soul’ is we surprised a lot of people, which was maybe a good thing but maybe to a lot of our fans was a little bit strange. So we didn’t try to do it this way, but I think what it’s going to do is get a lot of people back on board with us because a lot of people hear the record and like it straight away and say, ‘We like it better than ‘Rocks On The Soul.’
"That’s one thing, and plus I really want to get overseas with it, I think that’s something we can do, we’ve had a lot of interest from America especially and we want to get this record really happening and then we want to record a new album this year as well."
Like The Beatles, with an album every year at least? "Well maybe not every year but I think we want to get another one out by the end of this year. Yeah, they did like two a year of something, it’s great."
So why the gap between the fifth and sixth albums? "Well, we did a lot of touring, first off, and we swapped record labels, and we did all these things which just end up eating a lot of time without you even realising it. When we put out Ice Patrol, we just thought, ‘Fuck, we’ve got to get a single out!’ because it had been too long. So when we put that out we started working on songs for an album. The songs came together really quickly and once we started planning the album it all came into place really easily."
In order to churn out an album per year it has to be done quite quickly – which Screamfeeder do, at least by most standards. Still, Steward says the album was put down "not overly quickly. It was recorded in about three weeks and it was mixed over about a week and a half. So, it’s pretty much standard for us. I guess, but you know some bands spend a year on an album, and that would be awful, and then again some bands mix an album in three days, I think the Dave McCormack album was mixed in two days or something... I think if you’re going to have to spend a year on an album there’s something wrong, something wrong with the songs – I mean a song is just some words and a couple of guys playing guitars and some drums, pretty much that’s it, so you want to record the people playing it to tape. What more is there to do, you know?"
Ben Revi
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Screamfeeder launch ‘Take You Apart’‘ at the Jade Monkey on Thurs 5 Feb (with Russian Teammate and Hunting Season) and Fri 6 Feb (with The Laybacks).
See Prize Frenzy™ to win free stuff!
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