SPIDERBAIT Ship to shore
After four years of steadily developing a reputation as the hottest ticket on their local live scene, broader recognition is finally coming the way of Melbourne’s Spiderbait. WILLIAM BOWE reports…
Having done it the hard way from the word go, financing their own records and receiving a bewildering lack of JJJ support, Spiderbait now have the promotional muscle of PolyGram behind them and as much recognition from the youth radio network as they can stand.
But, as the uniformly surname-less three-piece’s bass player Janet told X-Press Magazine last week, Spiderbait would appear to be the only indie band in the country who don’t hold some sort of grudge against the national broadcaster.
“Melbourne pretty much has great radio stations here, two amazing ones, and most people who support the local music scene here follow them. I just figured our lack of recognition elsewhere was from playing in Melbourne the longest. It didn’t ever dawn on me that it might have anything to do with radio play, but it probably has. But… nah, I couldn’t give a shit.”
It is tempting to attribute their easy-going attitude to such life-and-death matters to their small-town background. Although they are now firmly established in Melbourne, Spiderbait originally hail from the far more remote environs of Finley, NSW (“Sydney’s eight hours away, but Melbourne’s only four,” Janet explains).
Janet lists Finley’s distinguishing features as “space, clean air, nice people, no stress”, so it was only natural that they should develop a taste for hard-core punk at a fairly early age. Despite Janet’s claim that bandmates Kram and Whitt “used to play together in their backyard, but I avoided them because they were just silly boys”, their shared interests soon brought them together and, when each member engaged in a university inspired relocation to Melbourne, they had the opportunity to more seriously realise their musical ambitions.
SHIP TO SHORE
Spiderbait rapidly made a name for themselves in the Melbourne hard-core scene before growing out of their musical straightjacket, incorporating traces of everything from jazz to reggae in their guitar dominated approach.
Their diversity has reached a new peak with their new album. The Unfinished Spanish Galleon of Finley Lake, which has earned universal critical acclaim since its release earlier this month and dramatically broken the JJJ airplay drought in the process. But before all else, X-Press Magazine interviewing guidelines require me to ask what the hell the title is supposed to refer to.
“It’s this ship thing, this … we’re not quite sure what it was. It was this First-Fleet-replica-come-floating-restaurant-come-town-beautification thing. It was incredibly crappily made, and it’s now sort of like this death trap for people who go on it. It’s permanently anchored in this lake that’s about four feet deep with weeds in it, but we love it all the same. And the bizarre thing is, they actually finished it just when we finished the record, so it’s actually the finished Spanish galleon of Finley Lake.
“We figure that we did mention in an interview that it was a failed town beautification scheme, and I think the town was a little upset, so they probably finished it to spite us. But I’m under the impression that it’s a First Fleet boat, but I could be wrong. No one’s ever questioned it; they’ve just driven past it and gone, ‘Oh yeah, there it is’.”
Contrary to the impression given by the title, the album itself is Spiderbait’s most complete and satisfying release to date, covering ground from the two-chord punk apocalypse of Jesus to the languid, Triffids-like Mediterranean feel of Spanish Galleon. In between are splashes of everything from country to 60s television theme music, if only very brief ones.
“Hearing a different range of styles completely changed the way we approach playing music. You get a little bored playing one genre all the time, so we moved on. Not that we don’t love that style of music with a passion, but you can’t play it for 10 years. Well, some people have, but we’ve completely changed in the amount of interest we take in seeking out more and more obscure music like techno, rap, jazz, swing—it was nothing really straight, nothing really obvious that we should be listening to, which is kind of pleasing when I look back on it now.
“But when we began, I think we were pretty much totally immersed in the hard-core scene, which was all we had contact with. At the time that was kind of obscure music for us, coming from where we came from. I couldn’t believe half the punk stuff and half the hard-core stuff we were hearing. But now some of the techno stuff is just incredible, the hard-core stuff. Seriously, some of that techno stuff is not far off hard-core metal music at the moment. The sounds and intensity of it are not that far off what we play; it’s just bizarre.”
RIPPER ‘77
Despite their cutting-edge musical tastes, Spiderbait maintain a distinctly Luddite streak, as demonstrated by their insistence that their record companies lose money putting their every release out on vinyl.
“Between the three of us we have a pure love of vinyl, and I personally try to avoid CDs at all costs if I can. Which means you’re kind of limited to the old Ripper ’77 classics, but what the hell, they were great songs, weren’t they?
“We’ve got to go overseas to get records pressed; we had to do ours in the US, unfortunately. Sad but true. But I think there’ll be a backlash against all that sort of rubbish. We’ll do our best to keep it alive, too. We just love the sound of them, the artwork, everything.”
This interview originally appeared in Issue 453 of X-Press Magazine, published on Thursday, October 19, 1995. Share your memories of this and other classic X-Press content by joining the Rewind Facebook group. Rewind: 40 Years of X-Press Magazine by Bob Gordon is on sale now in hardcover and softcover.
