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The Loved Ones
 Many older music fans will be familiar with The Loved Ones, the short-lived but fondly remembered Sixties garage band from Melbourne best known for their first hit, The Loved One. Not so four musicians from Philadelphia, who decided it was a pretty darn good name for their band.
"Unfortunately, we found out about them after we had already named and copywritten it, so we kind of blew it on that with Australia," guitarist and vocalist Dave Hause laughs. "We didn't do our homework, but in the 'States we knew no-one was doing it. We named it after an Elvis Costello song and an Evelyn Waugh novel."
Evelyn Waugh seems an unusual source of inspiration for the name of a punk rock band, but Hause shrugs it off because though he admits to a love of literature, there's no shortage of unexpected influences in his art. Among the records he's been listening to lately are The Hold Steady, Tegan & Sarah, Canadian singer-songwriter Christine Evans and Bruce Springsteen, and it's the first and last ones that make the most sense in the context of 'Build And Burn', the band's second album which has just been released. Recorded in Asbury Park, New Jersey, it certainly has the feel of a rock record, while not quite entirely forgetting the musicians' beginning as hardcore kids. The record also sees the band expanding their sound to include a country-rock tinged ballad called I Swear, though Hause insists that it's a perfectly natural progression for The Loved Ones.
"I'm not that surprised by that, you know - I've always been a huge fan of all kinds of music, and I think that you grow and change and unless you do, you become stagnant and boring. I think that sometimes I'm surprised that we've been able to pull some of this stuff off and still feel like it sounds good, but I'm not surprised by the way that it sounds. I mean, I've always had a really broad musical palette and I've never been interested in just playing one kind of music."
It's not just Hause's broad interests that shaped 'Build And Burn', though - the whole band had creative input into this record that made it far more of a collaborative project than 2006's debut album 'Keep Your Heart'.
"Yeah, this record was a lot more of a team effort than 'Keep Your Heart' was," the frontman and construction worker explains. "I think it definitely expanded the sound of the band and I'm thankful for it, I feel really safe writing with these guys in terms of not being precious about the songs. We're very communicative and we have a deep love for each other and we're able to speak very frankly with each other and be very honest, and I think that attitude was cultivated on the record and ended up helping to make a broader sound, and a record that dug deeper lyrically, too."
The band's range of influences and evolving sound have led to a number of labels being thrown at them, from hardcore to pop-punk, but Hause's response to this is to look at the roots of the music. "Ultimately, it's all just rock and roll music, it's all based on rock and roll and that's what I've always been a fan of since I was eight years old. So whether you call it hardcore or punk or rock music or pop or whatever, it's just all rock and roll and I'm as big a fan, or a bigger fan of The Beatles than I am of [ex-bass player Michael Cotterman's former band] Kid Dynamite."
And with all this talk of rock and roll, it's only natural that the discussion should turn to sweat-soaked musicians, rapturous crowds and all the delights of live shows. Though The Loved Ones were invited by both The Bouncing Souls and Against Me! to join them for those bands' respective Australian tours, unfortunately neither offer came at a time when they were free, but Hause assures me that it's on their list of things to do. "Well, we are coming out to Australia on the 'Build & Burn' tour cycle, it might just not be until next year. We really want to come and it just depends how soon we can put it together to get there, but it will definitely be on this record - we won't wait to put another record to get over there because everyone seems really excited about having us come over. So we're trying our best."
Alexis Buxton-Collins
'Build And Burn' is out now through Shock.
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