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Art Of Fighting.
 "It's the biggest one that we've done as a headlining act," says Art Of Fighting's Peggy Frew of their current national tour in support of their stunning second album, last year's 'Second Storey'. Melodically relaxed, yet sonically and emotionally complex, it's an album that improves with every listen.
Art Of Fighting can count a number of quality acts to play support on their tour. Frew is looking forward to playing with Holly Throsby ("If she's anything like she is on record, she should be brilliant," she enthuses) and old friends Sodastream. The Redsunband, who Art Of Fighting played with at Homebake last year, is also joining in on interstate shows. The band's Adelaide show is with local indie-popsters Paper Tiger and No Through Road, who Frew is also looking forward to seeing. "It's really cool to be doing such a big tour with bands we really like," she says.
The band were also about to play the St Jerome's Festival in Melbourne with The Dears, Architecture In Helsinki, Eskimo Joe, and Clare Bowditch, among others. "We like to be able to do a proper soundcheck," says Frew of playing such festivals. "It's always fun, but we just don't usually play that well. It's just that we don't have enough time to get our sounds right. I just guess we're not that good at flying by the seat of our pants. I always enjoy festivals but we just never play our best shows at them. They're always fun to be at though."
AOF is also releasing a single for their tour, 'Come Round & Show Me'. The b-sides include Down Different Roads, which featured in a short film, 'Heartworm', and an older composition, You Are Now So Distant Tonight. "Ollie [Browne] writes lots of songs all the time, and writes little bits of pieces, and just records them in various places. I think he'd gone through some old recordings that he found," says Frew. "We just wanted to record something to put on the single as a b-side. Our drummer Marty [Browne] has this great little studio he's set up in his backyard, and so we went in there. It was really fun, just all done in an afternoon. I hope we'll do more stuff like that. I was a bit worried about how it might go, with having a member of the band behind the desk, in terms of the power balance," she laughs, "but it worked really well. We all know each other so well, we communicate really efficiently now."
As for after the national tour, there are plans for a Japanese tour next month, and tentative plans for a European tour later in the year. Frew hopes they will start work on a new album quicker than they did after 2001's 'Wires'. It seems circumstances got in the way, one of them being the birth of her one year old daughter. However, she's optimistic when asked how much longer she thinks the band will go on for.
"I hope we've got a few more albums in us yet," says Frew. "I never would have thought that we would take so long to come up with our second album. We're all really hoping that the third one will come much sooner, but you just don't know what's going to happen. You want to have your music out there."
So is Frew happy with where she is? "Yeah, it's great!" she enthuses. "It's really fun to have the band. There's been times when the band was kind of the main thing in my life. It's still a really big part, but it's not the main thing anymore. I think I'm a lot happier now. It's just more fun, and less worrying."
Frew does worry a little though, that their lead singer shoulders a little more responsibility than the rest of the band. "I think Ollie definitely bears the brunt of expectations for songs, because he's the one that comes up with the initial cores of pretty much all the songs. Once the band's playing on it, the responsibility is shared. It becomes really quite collaborative. But yeah I guess in terms of stress he probably feels that. And I don't envy him, I think it would be really scary to have to have that pressure to produce something. But he handles it well. He's a trooper."
Eddie Chan
 | Art Of Fighting play at Jive on Thurs 17 March with Paper Tiger and No Through Road. |
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