Episode 291: Milk Toast Boys feat. Cameron Winter from Geese

Before we get started, we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we produce this podcast. The Warrungery, Wojvarang people of the Kulin Nation, and pay our respects to their elders past and present. Hello Todd. Hey, how's it going? Good thanks Todd, welcome to another episode of What a Great Punk. Thank you. This, this is, we've done nearly 300 now. What kind of episode is this? Uh, oh, I don't know. 280, 290 something. 290 something. Yeah, we're 290 something. We're coming up to episode 300, which was my segue into saying that the 300 episode of the podcast will be live. Live in Melbourne. Melbourne. And we are doing it at Lulee's Tavern, which is in Abbotsford on the 29th of July, which is, um, you know, about a month away now. It's a Saturday, it's a Saturday Avo. Saturday Avo. Yeah, we've got some great guests, who we got. Who we got, we've got Catchy. Shout out. Uh, and Easy Bitch. Shout out. On the first pod, so an absolute dynamic duo in those two. And then we're going to do the Patreon Live as well, so it's a double episode. It's a two hour show with probably a 15 minute intermission. Yep. The second half will be accompanied by, um, long time friend O'Pod. I think she was on one of the first episodes. What's two? An episode two, Jenna Owen. Jenna Owen. Shoutouts. And, and even, well, even longer friend O'Pod, Frank Sweet, our drummer, you've been in about a thousand episodes of the pod. Um, so it's going to be a fucking fantastic double episode. Yeah. Um, so come down. Tickets are on sale this Wednesday. Yeah. Well, it's going to be like, it's not, it's kind of a smallish venue, so, um, it'll sell out. It's early if you're in Melbourne and we're going to give the tickets, um, people on the Patreon are going to get first dips on those tickets, so if you really want to jump on the Patreon, um, and speaking of the Patreon, we've got some new Patreon and so on. We do. We do. Yeah. After that, we're going to get into the episode we recorded with Cameron from New York City band Geese. What an easy, cool guy. I love chatting here. He's a fucking legend. Absolutely. It's a really, really, really easy, easy, flowing chat. Fun. Um, yeah. Fully. Well, welcome to the Patreon tier, Jacoba Hendricks, a tier, tier, Jerka. Well, you're a bloody tier, Jerka. Thanks for signing up. Welcome to the Patreon, Steve Paul. Steve Ball. Um, fucking the bald eagle. Welcome to the Patreon, Rianna and Spencer. Rianna and Spencer. Why don't you spend some time sitting around listening to this pod? You've got a lot of episodes to catch up on. Welcome to the Patreon, Liam. Liam. Right. Just, um, just make up with Noel already. And get away from the back together. We've all had enough. Welcome to the Patreon, Tom Johnstone. Tom Jones, baby. Oh, you, uh, what is he singing? Sex bomb. Sex bomb. You're my sex bomb. And, baby, you can turn me on. Fantastic. Welcome to the Patreon. I'm from a sex bomb, and baby, you can turn me on. Fantastic. Impression that. Brendan Frost. Frost A. Uh, stick a carrot on your nose. What? Oh, God. Stick a carrot on your nose and some fucking charcoal cult pieces of coal for your eyes. Get on your Frost A. I thought Frost A was going to be good enough. Frost A. Jackson Rata. Stalk in a rut. Rata. Rata. Welcome to the Patreon Josh Tucker. Josh Tucker motherfucker. I wrote that to Josh actually when Josh signed up. And he said, I knew you were going to say that. Yeah, I saw that message coming through. That's so funny. I think that was from Josh Tucker, wasn't it? Yeah, Josh Tucker. I knew this would be the wrong thing. Welcome to the Patreon Caleb Bailey. Caleb Bailey. Don't bail now, mate. Just stick around. Just got here. Yeah, he's got here. Reverse Cowgirl. Fuck. Oh. Be gentle. Be gentle. Oh, okay. I was going to say be gentle because it's a kind of dangerous position. Reverse Cowgirl. Yeah. It is. Yeah. It is. Yeah. It's a real banana snapper that one. Oh. There's one more. Dasler 5. It's either Dasler 5 or Das Less. Oh. Dasler 5. What's your favorite Bazelerman film? It's just a Bazelerman rhyme. Dasler 5. Dasler 5. Dasler. Do you? Dasler 5. Dasler 5. Dasler 5. Dasler 5. Dasler 5. Dasler 5. Dasler 5. Dasler 5. Don't question it. Just go along with it or out of everyone. Okay. Get the tickets. They're at Wednesday or earlier if you're on the Patreon. Let's roll the intro music. All right. This is Cameron from Gays. Catchy smile. You got that catchy smile. Stop a while. Come back with that catchy smile. Come back baby. We'll fly away. Come back. We'll just fly away. Together baby. But don't tell your Nana. Do we have someone else from the band coming in? You know, is it? Probably not. The band harbors a strong bias against Australians. Unfortunately. Really? It's the most open-minded of the group. What's the bias of that? I don't know. They haven't gotten over your legacy as island of criminals back in the day. Oh yeah. America is so much better. Yeah. No crime here. Yeah. No legacy of colonial crime. Yeah. That'll just about wrapped up. I think. Good PR campaign. Just makes some cool movies. Everyone forgets about it. Yeah. By the way, I'm Jamie. Lovely to meet you, Cameron. Yeah. I'm Todd. Nice to meet you. Hi, I'm Cameron. I saw a thing yesterday that Todd's girlfriend posted on social media about Sydney wanting to rebrand some of its suburbs, like new names for some of the Sydney suburbs. And there's a place called Surrey Hills in Sydney. I don't know. Have you been to Sydney before? I've never been to Australia. Okay. It's a kind of cool, cool spot. Anyway, they're talking about rebranding it to the Hollywood quarter. What? Yeah. That's so crazy. One of the suggested names, the Hollywood quarter. First of all, there's so much going on there. Why has the suburb been called quarter? I don't get that. For starters. I don't know. Surrey Hills is just way cooler. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Like an apology. Oh, no. No, sorry. Like SU. Oh. I say like that. You know, that deserves a rebranding, you know. Sorry. Yeah. No, that's fair enough. Yeah. Hollywood is a bit brighter than Surrey. It kind of is a bit jazzy. Yeah. That's right. What's going on with you, Cameron? Oh, hell. Not much, you know. I'm playing with my clay. Where are you right now? I'm in my room. I'm in my room. Which suburb are you in? It's quarter. Oh. I'm in Park Slope. Park Slope. It's technically in Brooklyn. Okay. But it's kind of a glorified suburb. But it's got a lot of strollers around here. It's pretty intensely gentrified. Okay. Which means there's really great baggles. But there's not a lot of culture. Oh, yeah. So it's just about right for a milk toast kind of guy like me. Oh, yeah. You're getting up there too. The $1 pizza place has been a staple of the, you know, the economy for a while. And they're jumping up to $1.50 in both places at this point. Are you kidding? Oh. Okay. That is pretty rough. You got to get like coins, coin change. Oh, you can't just use a bill. Yeah. That's annoying. That is annoying. The $1 pizza thing in America is really, I mean, in New York specifically, it's really incredible. The thing of the past now seems rough. Yeah. At least rough. I kind of live in quite a, well, I live in an extremely gentrified area in Melbourne. And it's quite a, it's quite a, like a, you know, a well to do area. It's better well to do gather. And it's an interesting experience and great for a milk toast guy like myself as well. Right. What's, I don't know the, I'm sure there's a great variety of Australian cities, but I don't, I don't, I have pretty much the most American idea of Australia. I don't know what the politics are like with, what kind of city is Melbourne versus Sydney versus. Yeah. I don't know what the politics are like with what kind of city is Melbourne versus Sydney versus. Yeah. you know, right, Bendigo or wherever. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it would be quite, I opening then a place to come to, I think, 'cause yeah, when you don't really have crazy, like crazy clear expectations of what it's like, it's always a nice sort of surprise, I think. - You'd be surprised. We've got skyscrapers. - No. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Buses. - We're scraping the shadows. - Subway kind of things. - What? - Trams. Football. - Trams? - Trams, man. - Yeah, I mean, in Melbourne. - Melbourne's got the trams, yeah. - Who's here also? I'm sorry, what does AU Promotions do? Is this like a, like the big brother label? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Hello, AU Promotions. Thank you for making sure. - I know. - What about it, isn't it? - Yeah. - I know. - The AU Promotions, like Tile with no video on is quite a full load up for booting. - They should change their name in Zoom to just the eyes emoji. - Yeah. Or like a CCTV camera. - Yeah, that would be good. - What time is it in Australia? - 8, 11 a.m. - Oh, in the morning? - Yeah, I did. - We get up early for you. - Yeah. - That's sweet. - Thanks. - I sat in the shower for 10 minutes this morning just to come to. - Oh, nice. I haven't showered in weeks. - Haven't you? Jamie sits in the shower. What do you think about that? - Sits in the shower? - Yeah, every time. - I know it's wasteful. - Who hurt you? - What happened? - Yeah, that's a good, that's the appropriate question. - No, that's fine. Usually the shower floor is just a little too hard for my taste. I don't have quite the junk in the trunk to pad myself down there. - Oh, yeah, hurts the bones of your bum. - Yeah. So what have you been doing today? - Today, I actually went on a rare family vacation up to the Great Barrington in Massachusetts. I've never been to, but it's very quaint. Let's say, and no, it was a crazy week. Well, we had to postpone the first part because I had to go down to Florida, the great state of Florida, to watch my grandma die, which was rough. - Okay, and then we went on our family vacation as scheduled promptly. - I see. - Afterwards. - Okay, oh wow, that's quite a week. - It was a strange one. I played a lot of Zelda, you know? - I'll do. - Cool, I just started that a couple of nights ago. I'm loving it. - It's great, great game. - Oh great, how far through that game are you? - I'm like, kind of far. I'm doing like the third of the four big things it was supposed to do. - Oh, true, okay. So yeah, you've been playing it a while. - Yeah, yeah. - It took me an hour to get from the first shrine to the second shrine last time. An hour. - One that's high up. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Fucking two seconds, you were struggling or 'cause you were distracted by all the world, you know? - Oh, a little bit of both, right? It's like, it's quite overwhelming when you start playing Zelda again, you know? Oh, this is so, it doesn't really, it doesn't spoon feed you. - No. - You gotta work it out. Which is what's part of the joy of it. - I watched Tab do that exact same bit and she'd gone the wrong way. And for ages, we were like, I think you just climb up here and it's just like, there was a way, easy way to do it. - Yeah, but you have to have the other way. - Courage to go back. - Yeah, you do have to have the courage to go back. - I have a very, I'm not very bright. So when I have to do the puzzles in those games, I love the fact that it gives you so much freedom because I can just force it through like the first way that I think of that doesn't work. I can just keep doing it and just be like, you know, abuse all the tricks and stuff like that. And so I finally get it. And that tends to suit me best. - Yeah, so you just kind of get in there and like button mash. - Yeah, I'm just like, come on, why isn't it fucking work? - Yeah, you kind of think there's definitely going to be a proper way and I'm not doing it like that, but you can still get through, which is cool. - Yeah. - Okay, so all right, so you went to Florida and you went with your grandma when she passed. - Yeah, right beforehand, it was strange. I had never, no one in my family, I've been very, you know, never really had to do. I've been very, what's the word shelter from tragedy for my whole childhood. Like, nothing really that bad has happened to me or anyone in my family. And you know, my grandma was 88 years old. She born in 1935, she's born in 1935 and fucking Germany, right before it was Nazi Germany as a Jew, you had to get the fuck out. She had a crazy life, her dad was a dentist, who made a lot of money, sold everything to get out, then had to be a janitor for the rest of his life at a high school. - And it was, she's very no nonsense woman and she had a lot of fight. She smoked her whole life, even though she had cancer and leakin' out of every fucking poor by the time she was 70, something, and she died at 88. So she lived a whole life, but I got to see like, the sort of strength leave her on the day before she died. Very strange, I've never seen that. She was very active one night. Then the night before she died, she was like, she could only, we were like talking to her, even though she might not hear us, it was very surreal. - Yeah. - It was, you know, some of the, some of the think about during the family vacation where we were eating lots of real sticks and stuff. - Yeah, totally. I mean, that's, yeah, that's a lot. That's a big experience. Huge experience. So yeah, very sorry to hear about that. - Yeah, how are you feeling? - I feel okay, it's alright, I feel very lucky that we got to say goodbye in whatever way. Not a lot of people get to do that. - That's true. - Yeah, I mean, they can be a lot of, like you could've been on tour or something, and not be able to make it back, oh, yeah. So that's nice. - Do you literally go back today from the vacation? - Yeah, this morning, I've just been, I've just been doing the errands since then. We gotta prepare for this, we gotta show tomorrow. - Is that right? - Yeah. - Whereabouts? - It's a free show, it's gonna be weird. It's like a free show in Hudson Yards, which is a very well-to-do area of Manhattan. It's a very uncool place. But it's gonna be just at like seven p.m., in like the daylight, and it's on like the Wells Fargo stage. It's like the least cool thing to show you possibly play. It's like, it's pretty much a sell-out move, but that's a lot of desperate times. - You gotta fucking make money. - That angular posts punk don't quite pay, like it used to people. - Yeah, fully. - And you gotta take your opportunities, whether that be the Dorito stage, the Wells Fargo stage. - That's right. - The Enron Imperium, you know, you'll play that. - Well, yeah. - That sounds fun, is it like an outdoor thing? - Yeah, should be. - What about the bands playing? - We got to pick an opener, but then all the bands we were gonna have to open, like, can't hold a week later. Probably 'cause they're, you know, they have more integrity than us and saw that the evil corporation was sponsoring it and we're like, "Yeah, we can't do that." - Yeah. - We're gonna have fraud children perform under a different name, and then they dropped out. We're trying to have like a, water from your eyes to it, but they couldn't. - Oh, that's a cool band name. - Yeah. - Oh, they're awesome. - I'm looking them up. - They're on Matador now, they just put out a record of it. - Oh, that's sick. - Oh, yeah. - But, no, I think we're gonna have, I feel terrible. I don't remember the name of the opener we picked, but she seems cool. It's like a, I mean, yeah. - Cool. - A shoe guys project. - Okay, see. - How does the, how does the scene feel to you in New York at the moment? Like, do you, are you surrounded by a million bands that you know and are buddies with, or do you feel kind of isolated from it, or how does it work for you? - Both at the same time, really. I mean, part of it is, I'm up in Park Slope. I don't know what the cool kids are doing, man. I'm just up here, you know, in my ivory tower, not kind of connected to the geographical heart of the scene. The other part is like, when we meet bands in New York, we tend to get along. Like, we're friends with, I don't know how many of these know, but it's like, native son, we love, Gustaf, we love, band Godcaster. We love, what if we're guys again, they're a broken band? - Shut up. - You know, we know like, Ben Stellar, Chanel Beads, like bands like that. There are a lot of them. They're all sort of doing their own thing. There's not really like, like, meet me in the bathroom ask scene right now or anything like that. - Yeah. - I mean, what could really, let's jump to. You definitely have name checked, a bunch of people that you're friendly with. So sort of points to the fact that there is a bit of a scene going on, you know, if you guys all know each other. That sounds good. Chanel Beads also is such a good band name. - They're great. Yeah, they're awesome. They opened for us in February and their set was great. - Cool. - There are a bunch of like, A bunch of likes. label scouts there. So they should be getting somewhere. But it's like, yeah, there are a lot of bands. It's just they're not really, I mean, we talked about this recently somewhere, but it was like everything's so split up now, you know, everyone gets their own little scene delivered to them by like an algorithm, you know, on their phone. Yeah. Everything's so tailored to your own interests. You can form your own echo chamber or like inspirational, you know, world around yourself. Everyone's sort of in a different spot, you know, no one's really taking much inspiration from each other because that's like, it's like you're just doing what they're doing that, you know. That kind of fucking sucks, doesn't it? It's okay. I mean, it's it's not like, I just think I think scenes still exist. I just don't know if they're tied to locations anymore as much as ideas because everything's so fucking you could hear any band. I could hear the newest, you know, Persian, fucking, you know, jangle pop, you know, song and like, oh, I make music like that now and now I'm a part of that scene. We're like an ocean away. Yeah. It's not like you're not limited to your immediate surroundings anymore. You know, you know, yeah, I guess that that doesn't suck that bad. I guess what I was more saying is the idea that everyone's existing in their own little bubble of commercialization and marketing that's perfectly tailored to them. And so there is a sort of closing off in that way where, yeah, maybe you don't share interests as, oh yeah, you know, you mean like which covers? Yeah, it's like, it's that thing of being boxed into your own little consumer hole. Yeah. Which is a little bit sad, Eric, because yeah, it stops people connecting ultimately. Yeah, well, I guess that's, that's a social media does generally. It's just, you know, makes connections easier on some levels and then sort of severers all the ways of connecting with each other. Yeah, who knows. But, you know, but to add to that, the scene thing, that's why I sort of really, really cringe when like a article or something, it's just like credits geese is being like the leaders of a new New York scene or something like that, because it's not true like at all. And it's just these fucking like clickbaity headlines from these, you know, whatever websites that are really trying to like use the old way of thinking or the old rules about scenes and music, like on this new sort of error, it doesn't, it doesn't really make sense for. And of course, when someone sees like like geese being the fucking, you know, leader of the scene, like, we haven't played nearly as many shows as most of the bands I just listed off that we know. Yeah, so I don't, I don't like it when that happens. And I don't really have any control over it. Can I imagine that would be a bit frustrating? True, like New York is such a internationally like recognized city and like place for music. So it's sort of, I guess it is a really, really like clickbait opportunity for an artist or, I mean, a publisher or someone writing an article to kind of just latch onto it's like an easy, easy headline or angle. What's the Australian music scene like? It's great. There's been so much great live music here. Yeah, there's been a lot recently and some great internationals coming through as well. So it's been a very exciting city to live in musically, I would say. And I don't even really fucking like going to live gigs that much, you know what I mean? Like the quality of them has been fantastic that I've been to recently. So it's pretty exciting. And I don't know so much about Sydney anymore. We're from Sydney or at least we live there for a long time and formed our band there as well. And yeah, we haven't been spending enough time there to know. But I think Sydney took a pretty hard bashing over about a 10 year period from the government and it kind of shut down a lot of venues and a lot of the live music scene in general. So it's like recovering slowly, but it did pop an absolute fucking it bashing. That's rough. It's so tough to support those businesses while being safe or it was I guess during that whole period. And some places did way better than others. Some places really fucked it up. Like when we were on tour for projector, we played a show in Nashville. One of the most likely attended shows of the tour is depressing affair. It was like is like this place called the high watt, I think. And it was this legendary venue. Like everyone's like, oh, you play the high watt holy shit. You know, it was posters from like Radiohead's first American tour and like all these big ass bands that like rolled through here and it was great. And then but the staff was so upset. And so I was like, you know why they're upset. So one of the radio show we play the next day was like, the high watt's going to close in two weeks. It's going to fucking shut. And then they're going to turn it into a parking lot. Like a Disney villain move, they're going to level the place and turn it into a parking lot. And you're like one of the last shows to ever play there. And all the wet leg was playing the same night and everyone was like, oh, right. It was rough. You know, it was depressing. It was like just, oh, slow-crushing. Have you guys done a lot of touring around the States? Not a ton. We haven't done a lot of touring period. We've really only been on one proper tour of the States in the rest of Europe. But we play like a round, I guess. We play like a lot of New York shows comparatively, obviously. Play some college shows. Yeah. Okay. Cool. What was going on in Europe? Do you we doing your own tours over there playing, supporting other bands? I mean, Europe is fucking weird, man. It's so different from the US. I had not really traveled at all prior to like about a year and change ago, you know, doing the band stuff. I was just sort of shut in. But I mean, one thing that taught me about America, first of all, is just how fucking big it is and how different all the rest of it is from New York where I live. New York is such a weird city in the States. It's the only one of its kind. All the other ones are similar in certain ways, but nothing is like New York. It's a best like a great way, not like a New York state of mind type thing. Just more like it's just an odd one out like it's a more European feeling country or a city. And then Europe, you know, was the cultural whiplash from going from one country to another so quickly is harder than in the States. You know, in the States, you can really separate it into like three or four general ways are going to get treated based on what like whether you're in the northwest of the south of the, you know, southwest or wherever. Yeah. Yeah. But Europe, it's like you go over from France to Luxembourg and suddenly everyone's way nicer. There's all of a sudden thing. It's just like, what's going on? Everyone's figure with a different accent. The laws are different. It's bizarre how quickly you can jump from country to country, isn't it? Because dude, it's a similar experience for us in Australia. It's we're on this massive continent. So that's a very alien experience for us as well to be able to like go on a two hour train and be in a different country or whatever it's crazy. You can just sleep like this one time. I mean, probably happened a lot of times, but I remember just waking, Jamie wakes up from a nap in the two event and he's just like slept through a whole country just driving through. But did you just miss Belgium? Yeah. But the show is good over there. Yeah. The shows were mostly great, mostly great. German shows were super, well, it was weird like just as the culture and laws and whatever everything changes when you go from country to country. The interesting geese also fluctuates wildly because the Germans have not quite gotten a super interested yet. So we played a lot of shows in Germany like five on the last tour. And they were all very, very lightly attended in like dingy clubs with like, you know, the classic 45 year old peace fans are like, you sound like the doors. You know, I had bad bugs. I had bad bugs. I had bad bugs all that I had a horrible reaction to bad bugs. And I did just as I was leaving Belgium. And then, you know, Germany was just, it was just they were popping up everywhere. It was rough. That sucks. How did you get rid of them? You know, I, it was war of attrition. I just sort of waited. I'd get out of there. I sort of, I used a really hot washing machine. Yeah. But it It was, it was ass. And then we got to France and we played like the best most crazy geeky show. It was like fucking like super, we had to do like extra tickets and all that. And the frick you're like, oh my God, so great blue, you know, all that crazy sound. Just like, hmm, ah, go to London, the London show was awesome. - Oh, see, you know. - Some weird countries were into it like we, we sold out in Luxembourg and that was, yeah. - Sick. Yeah, I've only just learned about Luxembourg. I didn't really know anything about it. And I really didn't and, ah, - Looks fucking stunning. - Mm-hmm. Right, it looks stunning. - It's a great, it's a cool place. - Are you mates with shame? By chance, this is just a random question but I thought maybe you might have come across those guys. - Yeah, yeah. We went to their show at Irving Plaza. - The other day. - Brilliant. - Oh no. - How was? - It was cool. No, they're cool guys. I think they were deep into the tour. - Yeah. - And we're sort of sleepwalking. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - We've been having a little bit of afterwards. - No. - They last time they were in there, I think, I think they like us 'cause when they come to New York, we get them weed. - Yeah, no. - Occasionally. - No, rather like that. - Part of the drummer gets the weed. - That's very kind to you guys. - Oh yeah, we know how wordy. - Yeah, shame, shame a great. We've had Steam and Ed on this part a couple of times now actually. - The new albums does. - Yeah. - And Black Country New Road. - Yeah, mates with them? - Yeah, kind of. It's like we sort of, we wink at each other and we're so often, you know, we've varied them. - I'm very actually, one of my favorite parts about being in a band with any sort of clout with whatsoever is just the fact that other bands that I really love. - Yeah. - Pay any attention to us at all and it sort of feels like a mutual reciprocal sort of artistic collaborative, wonderful thing. - Yeah, yeah, that's a nice thing. - Yeah. And we met Black Country at a festival in Europe. It's called Root to Rock in France and it was a big goal festival. I mean, watch each other's sets. It was one of the first, I think it was a month. - No, I'm probably wrong. But there were that eyes like obviously it was the first time I'd seen them without. You're front man. - Right. I was like, you know, we were really worried 'cause we loved Black Country New Road, you know, we're one of those chronically online and fucking, you know, bands that just like, scours all those forums and read it and shit like that. And so Black Country New Road, you know, it's huge on those and we love them for a long time. - Sick. - And we were like sort of nervous walking up to them, you know, we were just like, "Hey, could I call you a cigarette?" - I was just like, you know, I really like your album. - They're like, "Oh, where are you guys?" They're like, "We're geese." And they're like, "Oh yeah, they're tour manager's son who's close with the band, knew us for some reason and had shown them our music for fun." - Oh, perfect. - But we were embarrassed 'cause at this point, we didn't like Projector anymore. So we're just like, "Oh, that sucks, that sucks, you know." - Yeah. - But we're just like, but they saw our set and they were super complimentary. And we shot the shit backstage for a little while. And then when we released cowboy news, they gave it all this support, totally unprompted, which is amazing. They like put it on their TikTok. They put it on their cowboy news. Last time I checked is on their Spotify playlist for like favorite songs for our time testing, which was amazing to see. I was like, "That's so giddy." I still haven't really reached out and thanked them, you know, like actually like, "Oh, thanks for the support 'cause I almost feel awkward doing that." - That's really cool though, hey. - It's awesome, no, and like just today, we released a single and Lewis, I think put it on his story, you know, stuff like that. - Oh, sick, okay, so that's so nice. And the single today is, "I see myself, right?" - Yeah, yeah. - Congratulations on the new music. It's really, really cool. - Thanks, man, I really appreciate it. - Was it recorded in New York? - Yeah, it was recorded in Diamond Mine, it's a little studio in Long Island City. - Okay. - It was like, it was perfect for our purposes. 'Cause we didn't, I think honestly, anything too fancy I've realized when we record with this band kind of just bogs us down a little bit. We kind of need like the fast and dirty, like good gear, but like, it doesn't totally matter to us, at least not for this record, you know. But James and Lauren was, I forget exactly how it came about, but Lauren Humphrey engineered and he works at James Ford on a lot of the Arctic Monkey stuff. And they invested, they do big records usually, far bigger than this one. And the amount of time that they invested into this, not just for the actual production of it, but the post-production was amazing. And they were super, great collaborators. - They must have really loved it, that's fantastic. - I hope they did, I hope so. - Yeah, and so how long would you say that you guys spent working on the record? - Fuck, I mean, we started writing songs for it in the summer of 2020, like in Ernest, we started. And that's where Crusades and Domodo came from. Those are the only two from like that year that made it on. So we just wrote, we wrote a lot of fucking songs when we couldn't tour, and we were sort of waiting for the projector thing to start. And we, it was just mid-pandemic. - Yeah. - So we just had a lot of time to write bad songs and you know, pick the good ones. - Yeah, yeah. - And yeah, so the writing was like a year and a half and then we recorded it beginning of last year. January 2022. - Yep. - And we mixed it till about May and it was done. - Yeah. - Takes a long time mixing albums, I can't know if it does. It's a work of training thing as well. - It takes a long time mixing this album, honestly. - Right. - It was a fucking nightmare. - There's a lot going on in some of the songs. I can imagine it was quite a bit of back and forth to get like certain, I mean, there's a lot of parts, but like in certain sections, like a little break out and it's like crazy little guitar things going on everywhere and it's, yeah. It's really cool, but I can imagine mixing was quite a big project. - Yeah, especially 'cause, you know, James was doing it back home in the UK and I was on tour and had to mix it with him over like Zoom. So I had to get up, I had to get it up crazy fucking early because he had like commitments, you know, later. - Oh, I had to get up like five in the morning and get on Zoom on tour. - Yeah, like some friends house. - And just put on my headphones and just give him mixed notes. - You know, that's quite stressful. - That's rough, yeah. - It was okay, it was worth it. - Yeah, definitely worth it. - It's a good attitude. - You passed the test. - You deserve to be in a band. (laughing) - Dude, dude, honestly, you say that as a joke, but that's something I really stressed about, especially because of just how unjustifiably rapid the rise of the band's profile was. Like, we were throughout high school, we were fucking such losers who just no one listened to us, you know, this whole thing and all the, you know, good stuff that, you know, we just, I mean, we just saw other bands, we had other high school bands that we were friends with that just like even today continue to struggle and stuff like that. Like, we just really got so fucking fortunate with the position that we're in and I just don't want to be my biggest nightmare as being seen as being like, ungrateful for that or like, unworthy of that. 'Cause I really want to take it like, I really want to take it to a place that's like, artistically, you know, worth people's time and money and energy, you know, getting picked for this. - God bless you, man. - I understand that. I mean, I would say you definitely come across, you don't come across like as though you're taking it for granted or like, you know, anything like that. I think you're definitely very genuine. So yeah, you passed the test. - It's real, yeah, you passed the test, well done. - You know what I'm Australian banding that I, that is might be my favorite band on Earth right now. - Okay. - Tropical fuck storm. That band is awesome. - Yes, it's good as well. - Yeah, we can get them on the pod. - We actually do. - It's crazy that we haven't had them on the podcast. - What, what did happen? Like, did you guys just all of a sudden one day you kind of blow up or like, what? Tell us the story. - Well, we had recorded, it was early 2020, like January of 2020. And we recorded a projector and we put out look whereup. armate to the way back as a single. And it got found by who is who would be who become our manager. And he like DMed us and was like, Hey, do you have a whole album? Also you could send me. And so I scrambled, I was like, give me a week. And I hadn't really mixed the rest of the album yet. So I was like, fuck, I got to mix this album in a week and do finals at the same time or whatever I was doing at school. And so I got it together really fast. And I put it on SoundCloud. And he sent it to our lawyer who then sent it to labels. See, the labels liked it. It's the it's the lawyers to the labels thing, which is so it's that's the way it fucking happens. I know. No, it's it's it's weird how it happens like that because we had assumed like we were so terrible at building like a fan base or any interest or playing shows or doing anything to promote ourselves. And we're just like, well, we can't do it. So we're just going to. And then just the fucking, I don't know, it just it just sort of happened. All of a sudden, luckily we had a project to put forward. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're you're songs were sent up to a bunch of labels. Someone got interested. And then and then what? And then then we had to we had to finish school while taking record label calls, which was so funny. I mean, at this point, everything was on Zoom. So we missed out on a lot of free dinners. But it was like, it was cool. It was, I mean, it started with smaller labels. And then the big ones started knocking or bigger, so you had a proper like thing where there's like a bit of a beating. Yeah. It was so exciting. I was, I was like 18 and I was so fucking over the moon. Can you imagine? I was like, yeah, even now I'm just, I'm just 21 and I look back at 18 and be like, wow, I was a fucking idiot. So dumb. I was playing animal crossing on my Zoom, you know, meetings that are the zoom not with the labels, but like on school at school, I totally checked out like immediately. And I was like, I was like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I got a job. I got a job. You have no idea how fucking, you know, it's amazing how quickly I lose perspective with that because I had a dishwasher washing job in like 10th grade. And I was like, money was so mysterious to me because I was like, how do people buy houses? How do people pay mortgages? Like how do people do all this stuff? Like I'm making dog shit money, like working in the hardest I ever had in my life at the SHAS diner job. Yeah. Yeah. And then I got like a dog walking job the next summer. And I was like, God, like this is amazing. Like this is the best job I've ever had. Like I get to be outside. I get to hang out with dogs. Like I get paid decently. I get tips. Like this is so like, what could I ever do to deserve this? And then I got literally my dream job to being in a band. Yeah. And you know, it's I don't know. I fast forward like a few years and I still find a new and creative ways to hate my life, you know, for just randomly. And I don't know what causes that. I should be so happy all the time. I finally got into this place. I don't really care. Yeah. I think it's that's like the that's the curse of humanity really like when nothing's ever actually enough for the ego really like you can never really fill it. None of your hopes, dreams of desires will ever bring the final stage of happiness that you're sort of endlessly looking for your entire life. Yeah. And like the matter of what success you have as a band or whatever, you're always at like the bottom of the next. Exactly. We used to play with this band. We used to play some shows in Montclair and New Jersey and there was a band called Tulavera. It was pretty big over there, you know. And we were like these little kids who they like allowed on their bail. It was very nice of them, honestly. Let me just like we played there and we played the one show that actually had any attendance in our, you know, pretty label life. And we're just like over the moon. We're like, God, I wish I hope that someday we can rise to the heights of this band Tulavera. And you know, even like on a, you know, quantitative level like like get like a thousand Spotify listeners like a month like that'd be so crazy. We're so eager for that. And now if like the Spotify listenership just below 100,000, I'm like at a commission like what the fuck like your shitty band fuck. Yeah sucks. The goalposts move. Yeah, it's wacky. It's a wacky, it's a wacky, wacky laugh. And so the record is out like, imminently. Friday, 23rd, is that when it's out? That's right. Sick. How do you feel? I'm super excited. I mean, I'm really, I'm, I don't know, I have mixed emotions really. It's like, I've been looking forward to this for a long time though. Definitely. Like since we got, since when I was talking about like we got any label attention, like I wasn't even thinking about projector back then. I was thinking about what the next step could be. Now the possibilities were starting to open up. Yeah. And so I've been really looking forward to this moment for years. Great. Because I feel like this is where it starts almost. Yeah. I know that feeling when it's, when it's the body of work that you're sitting on that really actually feels like it represents you. And you're very proud of it. And it's been a surprising experience for you in some ways. And it's been a really gratifying experience. Then you're really get behind the music, you know, don't you know, it's, it's really weird when you're like playing live or touring or promoting something that you no longer kind of in love with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we in playing it over and over again, you kind of find ways to love it again or or yelled it to something more kind of what you are now into. Totally. Totally. But and it is your job. And it's like it's not that hard a job. Like just fucking do it as the other part of it. You know, it's like, oh, well, yeah, like your old songs anymore. You have to be in a pool. Yeah. Yeah. These people are paying money to see you actually like those songs. So like, what are you going on? Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a funny one. It's a very good point. We're not. It's not open heart surgery. It's just singing a singing a silly little song on a silly little stage. And you're silly little shoes. What are you going to do anything? Do you guys like have any sort of band traditions or whatever? Like you're going to go out for dinner and get spaghetti bolognese. What do you get burgers? Yeah. Cheeseburgers. What's the plan for record release day? Heavy drinking. I don't know. We're going to probably, I don't know. No real band tradition at this point. You can start one. Yeah. Yeah. You got to do something. You got to do something together. You got to go to dinner, made of the bar, go to the park. We're not all 21 yet. We can't go to bars. That is so crazy. That's whack. The US baby. That's why we, you know, with conquered alcoholism. No, it's only one of us now who's under 21. Okay. Poor, poor. Maybe that can be any tradition. Everyone but Dominic goes out. Yeah. That's actually a common occurrence. That was a bit of a homebody. God bless them. Well, Cameron. Yes. We'll let you go. We'll let you go, man. Yeah. It's been a lovely, it's been a lovely chat, and thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. It was a really lovely, candid conversation, don't you think? Yeah, we appreciate it. No, thanks a lot for having me. You guys asked some nice questions. I love talking about myself, so, and thanks for getting up early also. Thank you. Total pleasure, dude. Total pleasure, and please hit us, I'm sure you'll be in Australia in the next year or two. I hope so. I'd love to visit. Yeah, so, yeah, please hit us up when you're here and we'll introduce you to a nice Australian Lager. A Lager? Yeah. Wow. So that's my promise to you. All the best for this week, and thanks for coming on. I hope you guys well. Yeah, I hope so too. Thanks, guys. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Go ahead and see him in. That's not yet. Bye-bye.