CLIENT LIAISON
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CLIENT LIAISON

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Alright, first question: do you have a crossover hit in you?

 

Harvey: Good question.

Monte: That’s a hard question.

Harvey: We can play you some stuff? Harvey opens up a Macbook, replete with rainbow Apple decal on the rear, and plays snippets from four unreleased tracks, including a song titled ‘Foreign Affair’.

Harvey: That’s what we have going at the moment.

 

That . first one does have a bit of a Mark Ronson vibe. Any of those songs in the current setlist?

Monte: We’ve been playing ‘Canberra Won’t Be Calling Tonight’ quite a bit. We’ve been playing ‘Hotel Stay’ quite a bit, and that’s unreleased.

Will ‘Hotel Stay’ find its way onto the album?

Monte: Yeah, we’ve probably got five songs that we’re finishing off right now. We’re more excited to write new material. Some of that stuff is very old.

Harvey: Just tying up loose ends.

Monte: A lot of that stuff was written before the EP, we picked the tracks to finish for the EP and now we’re   finishing what was left over. We’re interested in the next batch of songs after this tour, because we have a bit of time.

 

Each track on the EP was pretty much a single.

Harvey: We always find this quite confusing; because we do a video for each song it dresses it as a single. It’s not; we just like making video clips. We’re not saying each time “This is single-worthy”. It’s a bit annoying trying to get that across.

 

 

Does it even matter?

Monte: It just helps getting people to listen. We like those songs and those film clips, but for our next batch of songs we just want to write them, not make any promises they’ll be released, or have film clips, be singles, be album tracks. We don’t know. We just want to make a big collection of songs.

Harvey: Then do the video clips.

Monte: Not the other way around.

 

You’re still, in a way, establishing yourselves in the lead up to the album, but you’ve already had great success with your live show and the EP. Back when you made ‘End Of The Earth’ in 2012, did you think it would ever go this far?

Monte: We knew it had potential, but we couldn’t imagine it. All I could picture was playing in front of a few friends. You just think about the next step: ‘I’d like to play that venue’.

Harvey: It’s all been incremental, in small steps. Though we’re proud of our songs and how they’ve resonated, we haven’t had one that’s had a million, or half a million, hits on YouTube or Soundcloud.

Monte: Every song has helped the cause.

Harvey: There was Golden Plains, then selling out our first headline show. Then supporting a big act. It’s all baby steps, not like “Here’s the hit, here’s the world tour.”

Does it feel like it’s happened quickly?

Harvey: It’s two years, but it hasn’t felt quick. We’ve been playing music our whole lives.

Monte: You just remember the last step and look at the next one.

Harvey: We don’t have any trouble reminding ourselves we’re small fry.

 

It’s nearly two years to the day since your Golden Plains appearance. How do you look back on it?

Harvey: That’s the most quantifiable step up that we’ve ever had. When we came back, we had a headline show at The Toff, and I thought no-one was going to come. We’d never put on our own show, just cutting our teeth at smaller venues. Then it was one of the quickest shows to sell-out ever at The Toff.

Monte: But then we didn’t release anything for a while. It was fun to play on that stage. It takes a while to get your team and your strategy together. Behind the scenes, that takes a while. When our manager came on, he pushed us to do a new song every three months.

 

TOUR DATES

March 4, 5 – Black Beat Lodge, Fortitude Valley QLD
March 6 – Jimmy’s Den, Northbridge WA
March 7 – Pirie Street Social Club, SA
March 13, 14 – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW
March 18 – 170 Russell, Melbourne VIC