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The Panics.
They're embarking on their biggest tour ever, and while for
some that might sound grueling, for The Panics it's a chance
to see more of the country, according to singer/guitarist/keyboardist
Jae Laffer. "Whenever we can, we try to spend an extra couple
of days in places we like, like the Blue Mountains," he explains.
"We just enjoy driving around to as many places as we can. It's
good fun driving around with your mates in the country."
And the band, whose second album 'Sleeps Like A Curse' has been receiving well-earned praise as a Triple J Album Of The Week, will be playing to their largest audiences yet. "Yeah, that stuff is pretty priceless," acknowledges Laffer. "I mean, you can spend months and months recording and writing. It takes about a year to get a record together, and it'd be a real bummer if you didn't even get on the radio or people didn't get to hear it at all. So it's always a real privilege if you find yourself getting flogged on radio and get your picture in the paper. We're lucky, and it's good, 'cause you do a lot of hard work and you just want people to hear it."
While a little less immediate than first record 'House On A Street In A Town I'm From', the newest album is a more expansive affair, flowing together as a whole, rather than as a collection of songs. "Yeah, I reckon we just experimented more, we were enjoying ourselves in the studio, and it went really easily," says Laffer, of the recording process. "We had a lot of time to decorate the record with string sections and stuff like that, and we just enjoy recording, we just plug away on little ideas until we think it sounds good. We don't think about it too much when we're coming up with ideas for the album, or for songs. You just hop into a room and see what happens, and hopefully it comes out feeling like a good record."
I suggest that, while still retaining that distinctive Panics air, 'Sleeps Like A Curse' is quite different from their previous sound. "I guess it is," admits Laffer, "but it's still just us: five guys playing guitars and pianos. And if it sounded like the last one, it'd be kind of concerning, because we want to make lots of records. You want to grow, and the next one won't sound like this. It's all part of a process to create your best piece of work, which hopefully is still in the future for us."
While originally from Perth, their label littleBIGMAN has a UK connection in its co-owner, Gaz Whelan (co-founder of The Happy Mondays), hence The Panics have spent a fair amount of time in England. "Well, we've lived there twice over the last two years," explains Laffer. "We've spent a couple of months there, each English summer, and we just feel comfortable there. We're working on building an audience there, and it's just a great place to tuck ourselves away and write music. It's a nice, intense kind of place. It's free of distraction, and they're very passionate about their music there in northern England. We thrive on that. It's a great place to go."
In fact, there's even talk of eventually relocating the band. "There something about our music which seems to sit well with our English friends," Laffer explains. "So it makes sense to pursue it if we're getting that kind of response."
In the meantime, Australian fans can expect to see a covers record emerging in the next few months. "We've just decided that anytime we're the slightest bit bored, or have a couple of weeks off, we'll record some covers," says Laffer. "We did a bunch back in Perth, we did some Bob Dylan and Rolling Stones stuff. It just sounded really good. It's a really fun thing to do, and we thought we'd just plug away at that for the rest of the year, and if people are interested in that, we might make a record of it, in between albums. We love listening to the old music. We found this old Japanese mandolin, and we did this Stones track, and it kind of sounds like The Pogues. It's got a really energetic, folky mandolin thing going on, just really rockin'. It's great to have those smoky, boozy nights where you just press record and scream for a while. It's just good fun."
Eddie Chan
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The Panics play at the Adelaide UniBar on Fri 26 Aug.
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