|
|
 |
Regurgitator.
 "My three year old daughter has been making up these really great lyrics and songs, so I work them and end up with the strangest songlines. They're great, kind of naive and Jonathan Richman-like, so that's something I've been getting into. I really admire how the Shins do that [cut-up] thing where their new lyrics are just really strange. It's almost psychedelic how the words don't go with each other."
Having shared sentences in the Australian music press for a good long time, one would imagine that the words 'eclectic' and 'Regurgitator' know each other pretty well. In fact, if this was a film, this is where we'd cut to the slow-motion montage of eclectic inviting lonely new kid Regurgitator to join in a soccer game, the two swapping school lunches, having sleepovers, eclectic overcoming its jealously when Regurgitator is the first to get a car, Regurgitator crying on eclectic's shoulder after being dumped by its girlfriend etc. But for co-founder, Ben Ely, the band's inclination to draw upon and explore virtually any source or direction can be something of a double-edged sword. "That's why I like playing in it, but it's why I don't like playing in it, too. It's not like were a group of mates who go to the pub on Friday nights and just play rock'n'roll. We're free to do whatever, which can be a bit of a hinderance because people complain that we're all over the shop. But I kind of like that, too. It's really good fun creatively. I think we're looking to do some different kinds of sounds next. At the moment we're writing individually, but we haven't been working on finishing much stuff because the album ['Mish Mash'] came out. And it's a bit hard now to get together and practice every second afternoon or whatever."
Well, I guess I would be, with other founding member Quan Yeomans having recently moved to Hong Kong. Couple that with the Sydney-based Ely's understandable unwillingness to be apart from his two young daughters for any length of time, and you'll understand why the band's upcoming show will be their last here for a while. Hopefully, though, it will match the calibre of their last Adelaide gig. "We had this competition with Channel [V] when we did the last Big Day Out where we'd play some kid's backyard and some guy in Adelaide won it. So we went out to the suburbs and played and it was the best show of the tour! We'd been playing in front of these huge crowds in Sydney and the Gold Coast and Melbourne and it turns out the best gig was a backyard barbecue in Adelaide with a guy and forty of his mates there. The vibe was so good. Everyone was having a really good time and the sound was great. I don't know, it was just really good fun. I guess it was intimate and there wasn't much pressure.
"We played in Darwin a few months ago and I was speaking to Pete [Kostic, drummer] and Quan about maybe re-learning some of our older songs that we haven't played for a while, just to change the set up a bit this time around. Kind of like the Hard-Ons did with their 21st anniversary tour where they learned their entire back catalogue so they could play a different set every night".
Ely seems content with where he is right now both musically and personally; having always had more than one musical project on the go, he is clearly enthusiastic about his latest group. "I've started a metal band with some young guys who are very keen and hungry. It's been great to sort of get back to the roots - trying to make the music faster and heavier and more complicated. It's not odd time signatures or anything, more straight riffs like Motorhead or something.
"I like living in Sydney. It's a bigger than Brisbane and it's easier to slip between the cracks a bit more. When the band was a bit bigger a few years ago, there was a weird feeling that you were always being watched. It wasn't too bad and it's not so bad now. I guess if you were a band the size of Powderfinger it'd be pretty strange. Though I did have a couple of stalkers." Really? "Yeah. There was one girl who'd been in and out of mental homes and had somehow got my number and found out where I lived. I'd look out my window and she'd be there staring at me across the road. It was a bit frightening because she was a bit, er, 'on edge' and used to get a bit aggressive when you had to turn her away. But that doesn't happen anymore, thankfully."
Jeremy Reglar
 | Regurgitator's '#*?!' CD-EP is out now, and they play the Adelaide Unibar on Sat 3 Sept. |
|
|
The latest issue
available now!
|
