Review Fix chats with Real//Talks’ Alexander Thomas about the band’s new self-titled EP, as well as their creative process, goals for the future and what makes their live work so special.
The first collection of tunes from their upcoming album, “Cairns,†the band is a nifty folk group with a huge cast of talented musicians and an equally boisterous sound,
Review Fix: How did the band come together?
Alexander Thomas: We started playing music together around mid 2012, we were just a bunch of friends who had just finished school and spent the summer jamming, then all of a sudden it wasn’t summer anymore and we hustled our way onto the stage a couple of times and so it goes.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Thomas: It’s definitely been different each time we’ve approached songwriting. It usually starts with myself and a guitar and we’ll slowly add layers like a parfait, or an onion. The lyrics so far have always come last, I like to read a lot and my words are usually just musing on girls and those books. I really like sad songs and sad books.
Review Fix: Considering that, how was “Cairns” written? Is there a story behind it?
Thomas: Well it’s a little bit silly, but it’s just about a girl moving away and just how shitty little things get you down. But, I was reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-5” around the time and it’s pretty hard not to get caught up in Vonnegut’s world. That’s just the lyrics anyway, the actual sound I think was a combination of ideas Stewart (drums) and I had of having a song with no real time signature until the chorus, that just follows the story of the vocals.
Review Fix: How would you like the song to be remembered?
Thomas: I’m not quite sure how to answer that I suppose, in a good way? It’d be nice if this was a song people could relate to themselves, just the way bands like the talking heads just speak directly to the working-class of the world.
Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?
Thomas: Haha, our live shows are definitely a lot better than our studio work as we’ve spent a lot of time jamming and playing shows over the past year and studio time is really something that takes alot of time and money. I think we’ve definitely become better studio musicians but our live show is really where we pull it all together and definitely where the seven-piece comes to play. We just go wild, running through the crowd and drinking far too much. It’s a lot of fun rocking up to a new venue as a mismatched patchwork of people, we definitely turn heads.
Review Fix: What things are holding the band back from attaining the success you’d like to achieve? How do you expect to battle past it/them?
Thomas: I think a lot of the things that hold us back at the moment is the limited access to streams of getting our music out to people in Australia, radio at the moment is a very monopolistic market and I think it’s only a matter of time before things change but for now we’re just gonna keep firing until someone notices us, getting our music out there and keeping it as independent as possible.
Review Fix: What are your hopes for the band?
Thomas: Well the last thing we want is success, god that would be awful. I hope none of this ends up there.
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