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Pharaohs.
 Last night Dan Crannitch transformed right in front of my eyes from a perfect gentleman into a bona fide rock monster. In a venue better suited to a mild office party than a gutsy showcase performance, the three young lads from Pharaohs turned it up, their makeshift stage barely containing them as they climbed the seats, stairs and fixtures while launching their debut CD-EP, 'The Forest For The Trees'. Those of us insane enough to be front-row punters were damn-near attacked by Crannitch's vicious guitar onslaught, fearful as he and his band proved to us why they've been blessed with so much word-of-mouth buzz.
Yesterday morning, however, sipping a soy latte in an upstairs cafe and wistfully watching the passing crowds out of a small window, Dan Crannitch was just another ordinary guy (with extraordinary hair). But it's no surprise that he can put on such a fine show - excitement practically drips from his pores. After all, no sooner have Pharaohs released their first CD-EP, than they've gone and recorded a 7", due for release not one month later.
"We wanted to get the EP out, because we recorded it so long ago," he says, referring here to the month of May (it's now only September), "but we've got fresh songs that we want people to hear and we wanted a more raw recording that we could send overseas with the EP. We're going to send the EP with the 7" to college stations overseas. The two songs that are on the 7" will end up being on the album, except on the album they might be a bit more polished or a bit different. But this is just a taste to keep people interested."
Keeping people interested shouldn't be too much of a challenge: they're certainly doing well so far, and the future looks rather bright. "We'll definitely have an album before we go overseas. The way we're going, we should be able to record an album in the first four months of next year, as long as we keep coming up with the songs. Then, hopefully this time next year, we'll apply for a grant and try and get something happening overseas. And a friend of ours did a filmclip that came up beautifully. He just did some photos of us, and used a computer, and did this whole story to Keelhaul and it's just really, really good. So we've got a bit of a bundle that we can send to people overseas.
"I'm not really intimidated by [crowds] - I could easily get up on stage in front of 10,000 people, to be honest. I don't want to sound like I've got a massive ego or anything, but I can get into the mindframe of getting up in front of a lot of people. It's purely just a mental thing. I really enjoy it."
It all seems rather surreal given the band's humble beginnings: after the break-up of Crannitch's former band, Tusk, which had played around Adelaide for a mere six months, he enlisted the services of bassist Joel Amos - "I just kind of knew him, and I said, 'Do you want to give this a shot?' At first he was a little bit rusty, but he came up good, he plays really hard, and he's got stage presence..." - and his brother, Joel Crannitch.
"My brother, he's never been shown a thing. He joined Tusk when he was 12. We were looking for a drummer and my sister's boyfriend at the time got him a drumkit. He always used to play bongos all the time, and we got him behind a kit, and he was just fucking phenomenal. We couldn't believe it. He'd never played the drums before, he starts doing all these rolls. Over the last couple of years he's gotten so much better, to the point where I'd put him up against any drummer. The way he plays drums, I'll come up with a melody, then he'll take it to a whole new level. And he can play guitar like hell, he sits in his room playing guitar and singing... In a few years, if my and Joel Amos' well of creativity runs dry, we know that we've got this creative mainspring. He's going to be phenomenal.
"What I think, if people like us and find us dynamic and exciting, it's just because we're writing music for people who don't have any attention span. Just ram it down their throats, keep it interesting.
Ben Revi
 | Pharaohs launch Broken Arm/Panic Stations at Fowler's Live on Fri 14 Oct with No Through Road, My Sister The Cop, Sweet Raxx and Hit The Jackpot. |
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