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No Through Road.
 When songwriter Matt Banham was approached for by local label A Perfect Gentleman for copies of his older work, he hit a little snag. "I don't actually have any proper copies of them left," he reveals. "I did an album ['Of Nothing In Particular', 2001], and an EP ['101 Ways To Kill Myself', 2002], and just released them as CD-Rs, made these little covers for them and stuff. But I just sold them all, and gave them away, and didn't remember to keep any for myself. So I had to actually find some friends that had them and burn a copy."
Both releases have now been sequenced together, along with another seven tracks, to be released as 'Learning To Write Hate Songs'. Among the tracks is Dallas Crane, previously only available as a download from the No Through Road website. The song was a reaction to the Dallas Crane single No Through Road, and resulted in a Triple J story in which the artists mock-threatened each other. They've since met and had a laugh about it.
Some songwriters are apprehensive about hearing their older material, so it's not a surprise to hear Banham say that he's moved on. At the same time, though, he's happy to have the material come out again. "I still play a few songs from back then," he says. "I was just too angsty, I think, back then. Too angry. I used to write songs about how girls had pissed me off. I kinda feel bad about that now. I don't really blame people for me being sad anymore."
So who does he blames for his sadness these days? "Oh, myself," he answers. "I think I still write about the same things, but I've got a bit more perspective on them. Like, back then I'd only been in a couple of relationships and they both sort of ended badly, because the people I was with had messed me around, or cheated, or whatever, so I just didn't like the idea of relationships," he says with a laugh. "But I've been in a couple since that haven't really done bad things to me. I started to realise that people break up because they just do; nobody's really going out of their way to mess with me, it's just sort of happened. I'm still friends with most of my ex-girlfriends, so it's all fine. The songs that I write about now, I tend to think more about myself and how I feel in whatever situation I'm in."
But the CD is not what Banham is most excited about right now. For the last few years, No Through Road was simply a pseudonym for Banham's lo-fi exploits, like other one-man artists such as Smog and The Microphones. However, from now on going to see No Through Road live doesn't mean one man on an acoustic guitar. Banham has put together a formidable band featuring well known members of Adelaide's music scene.
"It's more of a live thing, but it's going pretty well," he says enthusiastically. "I'm sort of starting to work on a new CD now so they're going to be on it quite a bit, but it'll still mostly be me doing it and getting people to come in. It's so much more fun playing with other people. I wanted to start a band for a long time, but I had this idea in my head of what I wanted it to be. So I just had to wait for the right people to come along, and so there are a couple of people that I'd always had in mind. I'm pretty excited about people finally getting to hear it."
It'll be a four or five piece band, bringing in experience from bands like Straight To Video and The Laybacks. Ianto Ware is also in the band, along with Matt's Little Brother, Steve, on drums.
"And I think it'll be better, because playing by yourself gets boring, and also I think it gets a bit boring to watch. Hopefully we can play a few times as a band before people go 'Oh, I've seen it'. I kind of want it to be like The Strokes of something, where I only sing. I don't want to play any instruments. I wanted to get a few people so I don't have to do anything."
Eddie Chan
 | The No Through Road band launch 'Learning To Write Hate Songs' as part of Melvofest at the Jade Monkey on Sat 12 March. |
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