CLAMM are a Naarm based punk band, blending together post punk, pub rock and a smattering of punky, noisy influence. Today they’ve released a new single, “And I Try” from the forthcoming album Serious Acts.
Introducing some darker, brooding elements into the fold, “And I Try” brings in some pulsing synths, further defining CLAMM as more than just another punk band. CLAMM’s frontman Jack Summer speaks to their songwriting process, how they usually write and what has evolved for this new single.
“How it normally works is that we’ll either write together in a rehearsal room, it’s very much something that has often been the case— that we’re often working out of small rehearsal rooms.”
“I guess our songs come from a very live setting. Not so much playing to other people, but I think we will just be doing stuff in the room and something happens that we’re attached to, or that we want to repeat.”
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Jack continues, explaining sometimes he’ll go through periods of time where he’s inspired and will have ideas on his own to bring to the group. He’s always careful not to overcook these, as he wants to leave room for the identity of CLAMM’s other members to make their mark on the song. He’s weary of boxing them into his ideas.
“Sometimes I’ll do some really awful sounding demos into a shitty little interface.” he says with a grin. “I’ll do a riff, or some vocals, or a combination of those, and I’ll go ‘Oh, this is something I want to bring to the others’, but for now it can stay a shitty little demo.”
Jack explains further that while the moment of inception for a song will often happen for him, he’ll record the idea but not explore it further. He doesn’t want to take away the moment of magic from his band members. He wants to experience it with Stella and Miles, bass and drums respectively.
“It would feel kind of selfish to me to go down that path on my own.” he says. “Sometimes I have to follow the song on my own, but I’ll never really consider a drum part, nor will I say to Miles ‘What if you did this?’ because it’s his speciality. Same with Stella, I might write a bass line that I’m kind of attached to, but most of the time I try not to do that, because I want it to be a collaboration. I want all of us to add what we have to give, which is a lot, y’know?”
From here, CLAMM jam ideas, though for “And I Try”, there was the aforementioned synthesizer, Jack having made sequences on an Arturia MicroBrute.
“It’s the angriest little synthesizer.” Jack says with a chuckle.
CLAMM used this sound for a few new songs, explaining there’s a few different suns to their last record, while staying pretty true to their attachment to being a live band. CLAMM had tested out some news songs live, making sure they worked. Some of them were still being written and jammed before they booked a few days getting the primary rhythm tracks down for the songs, before an additional few more days of overdubs.
“We’re attached to trying to keep the energy of the song.” says Jack, referring to the band’s decision to record the foundation live. “There’s so much being done with clicks and amp simulators, which is cool, it’s amazing. But there’s nothing overly complicated going on for us, and when you’re just a loud band, who’s making intense music, it’s hard to do anything but record it in the room y’know?”
CLAMM initially recorded the album at Head Gap in late 2023, and Jack takes a moment to reflect on the studio that was. CLAMM, along with others, have very fond memories of the studio. From here, they did three or four days at Rolling Stock Recording Rooms in Collingwood, all engineered by Nao Anzai at both studios.
“He’s incredible and has an incredible ear, and he was able to try and record it with the energy that we were playing it with.”
“We sent it off to a guy called Seth Manchester, who is in Rhode Island in the US, and has done some mixing for some albums that we really love. Some great bands. We were lucky enough to work with him [and] do remote mixing over three days.”
CLAMM were focused on making sure the finished mixes sounded as intense as it felt to play the songs, a unique approach to mixing. We discuss for a moment the intensity of recording with a meagre set up, Jack referencing records with a single microphone to capture the intensity of a band.
CLAMM went the other end of the spectrum, sending a lot of DIs and additional files to Seth for mixing, allowing him to push and pull the recordings as much as he wanted to.
Jack speak further to the mish-mash of influences within the band, combining new influences, new pedals and new sounds. While they might be new to CLAMM, these are influences that’ve bounced around for a while.
The advent of new sounds and influences is exciting, and while this may serve as a challenge for new bands to pull off live, Jack reminds us that they’ve been playing these new songs live for a while.
CLAMM are excited to breathe some new life into the brashness of their live show with some softer songs, giving the audience a reprieve from the punk energy before diving back into intensity.
To finish up, Jack shares one last piece of wisdom; he explains how he’s been performing live with the MicroBrute.
“It was a sequencer that I’d set up, so all I had to do was hold down one key. But I had to play guitar!” he explains. “It’s an old trick that all the organ players, where you get a wedge under the key to hold it down, so I’d just do that live.”
“It was pretty ridiculous,” he recalls. “Because I’d be setting up this whole thing just to wedge a single key down for two songs.”
Serious Acts is out May 30th via Meat Machine Records. You can keep up with CLAMM here.
