INTERVIEW: Melbourne rockers Bakers Eddy talk new music, future plans and fashion influences
Melbourne rockers Bakers Eddy have been taking the Aussie rock scene by storm despite having been in lockdown for the majority of the last 18 months.
With their debut album on the way early next year and more plans than you can poke a stick at, we caught up with frontman Ciarann Babbington to discuss new music, fashion influences and future tour plans.
Your debut album Love Boredom Bicycles comes out in March 2022. A few songs have already been released and the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that it feels more sonically diverse than your previously put out. What was it like experimenting with different sounds on this project compared to your previous releases?
At the start of last year, the plan going forward was to release an EP, then lockdown hit and all of the sudden we had all this free time. It gave us this opportunity to sit down and think about what we wanted to do. We had no gigs at the time, it was all pretty stale, all pretty depressing so we thought we give ourselves a little break to hit reset.
We started listening to lots of new music and experimenting with different ideas. I think we wanted to do something that was removed from what we had previously done. It also helped not doing live shows because we were not worrying about what other people were thinking of our music.
A lot of your fans will know that your band moved from your home country of New Zealand to Melbourne a few years back to further pursue your musical career. Was that a difficult choice to make?
Coming over here originally was a no-brainer. While we love the country (in reference to New Zealand), we always envisioned ourselves moving because we saw all the bands that we were playing with at the time, get to a certain level and not be able to go any further with it, especially as a guitar-based band. The obvious choice was to come overseas and give it a go because there were so many more opportunities.
I’m imagining with border restrictions it’s been difficult to go back at any point in the last 2 years. Have you been homesick and how has it been coping with that?
It is tough missing home. Especially last year, all our friends in New Zealand were out and about going to gigs, going to parties and acting like nothing was going on while we were indoors. That was a bit shit, but we are looking forward to going home eventually. Hopefully next year but we can’t see ourselves moving back.
You were actually supposed to be co-headlining Collision Festival in Perth right before the world closed down last year. Just for context, Collision Fest is one of the more popular indie targeted under 18s festivals in Perth. Despite the distance between Perth and the east coast, whenever your band comes up in conversation people are always passionate about your music. How does it feel to have such a strong reaction to your band from a city that’s quite a distance away, particularly at this point when we are virtually another country?
It kind of feels that way hey (laughs), especially when you see everyone going out to gigs in Perth. Like ah cool, I want to be doing that.
I know part of the reason why you postponed the album is because you wanted the opportunity to tour for the release, is there some type of plan to come over to Perth next year?
Yes, we’ve never been to Perth, it’s a bucket list thing for us. With Collision Fest getting cancelled pretty early on, it was so disappointing. We’ve actually attempted to come over three times in the past two and a half years (including an “unannounced tour” in 2019) so we might be cursed or something.
Something else that I’ve noticed about your band is that you all have a really cool fashion style, particularly with the outfits you wear on stage. Are there any particular bands, musicians or other influences you take for your clothing?
I’m a big fan of The Garden. I’m a huge fan of their fashion sense, what they do with clothes is awesome. They take it a bit further than I do but, I’m slowly getting there. I’ve got a few others but I can’t really name them off the top of my head.
I’ve noticed that some media outlets have defined your band as being pop punk. I feel your music is almost too diverse to put into that metaphorical genre box. That being said, pop punk is actually having a massive resurgence at the moment. So, firstly what genre, if any do you think your band fits into?
I think every band struggles to define what genre they are in. I’m happy for people to think we are a Pop Punk band, I don’t have any problems with that. I personally don’t think that we’re a Pop Punk band, but we definitely have elements of Pop Punk in our music, along with elements of Grunge, Indie Rock, etc. We are trying to blend all these influences together to create something else it’s probably more Alternate Rock, Indie, Pop Punk.
Along the lines of this new wave of pop punk, are there any bands or musicians you’ve taken a particular interest in recently?
I’ve been listening to a few local bands like Between You and Me. There’s some good pop punk outside of Australia as well. I really like WILLOW’s new album. It does border on pop punk, so I think that’s awesome.
Sly Withers too. They're your boys, aren’t they?
Yes!
That album is so sick. The production on it is really good and it’s got a lot of energy. That’s one I definitely want to see live.
While Perth isn’t the biggest market for pop punk, similar to your band there’s a lot of honesty and emotion in their music and I think that’s why so many people relate to it. Anyway, from the tracks that are currently released, Love Boredom Bicycles feels like an album about growth, like a coming-of-age story for your early twenties. If you could talk to your younger self, what advice would you give to them?
I would say leading into my twenties, leave New Zealand sooner and buy some better clothes. I’ll tell you one thing before we came over here our fashion sense was absolutely terrible. Also, just write more music. One thing I’m finding through lockdown is the more your write music, if you do it every day, I feel like it’s a muscle that needs to be flexed. It just makes songwriting easier. When I was 23, I found I was struggling with momentum and now I’m finding the more I write, the easier it becomes.
One of my favourite songs of yours is one of the newest singles, Space is Nothing. It’s a fascinating song to me because it feels really different from anything you’ve previously done. I was wondering what the influence behind it was?
Space is Nothing is probably one of my favourite songs on the album, or at least out of the songs that have come out so far. I knew when I was writing that it was going to be a bit different. It’s more of a direct influence of my influences growing up. My favourite band ever is a band called The Mint Chicks. That song (Space is Nothing) is what I’ve been trying to write using inspiration from The Mint Chicks.
In terms of inspiration, for me, it’s a song about long-distance relationships. It’s a thing I’ve touched on a lot in the past. The lyrics of Space is Nothing basically mean we don’t have to be so far apart nowadays. You know, with social media and being able to contact people straight away. It’s a love song first and foremost.
In terms of the whole album cycle for Love Boredom Bicycles, what are some of your biggest hopes, goals and dreams from releasing this record?
Our hope is really to go overseas. Looking at everything that’s going on over there, we are getting kind of jealous. We’ve seeing bands who are doing twelve date tours and we want to be a part of that. I think next year the aim is to go over for Great Escape (a music festival held in Brighton and Hove, England every year in May), tour the album across England and Europe and tour relentlessly in Australia as well. We have a lot of shows to make up for.
That was the thing about postponing as well. It was kind of pointless in our eyes to release an album without playing it live when you’re a band like us, whose priority is to do shows.
Then we want to try and find time to write album two in-between shows.
Just about The Great Escape, my understanding is that the format for that festival is relatively similar to Big Sound (in the sense that it features a lot of small events pinned at giving exposure to up-and-coming musicians). As such, your performance at this festival could dictate how you are preserved by the UK music community and media. Is that something you are nervous about or are you just so excited to go overseas that it’s not worrying?
Honestly, we don’t get too concerned about that stuff. We’ve all been playing in this band for a long time now and we all know how to act on stage. We have trust in ourselves and even if we fuck up a show it’s still going to be a fun show. I don’t really get nervous thinking about what other people will think of us. So no but, being put in front of a new audience is always nerve-wracking. It's something completely unknown and it’s kind of like coming over here (Australia) from New Zealand. We were kind of like fish out of water coming over here so it will be like doing that all over again. We’ve done it before, so we’d be more than happy to do that again.
