Seated at a booth inside Brisbane music venue Black Bear Lodge during soundcheck in early April, Kai James is reflecting on watching the 2022 Australian horror film 'Talk To Me'.
"F...ing terrifying!" he exclaims. "Oh my God! I've never walked out of a film before, but I nearly had to. I don't handle horror well. It was terrifying," he laughs.It was in 2018 that Kai first encountered Danny and Michael Philippou, the filmmaking brothers behind the smash-hit film, when they all starred together in the ABC series 'Deadlock'.
While his former co-stars are portraying demonic possession on cinema screens, Kai is exorcising his own demons as the frontman of Gold Coast indie rockers Girl And Girl. It's a fantastic performance he brings to the stage – wild-eyed, flailing limbs, and a quivering voice. That energy is captured on Girl And Girl's bright and bouncy debut album, 'Call A Doctor', released late last month.
The band have had a fast rise, starting when Kai and his high school friend Jayden Williams picked up guitars. "Me and Jaydos used to hang out quite a lot and we were trying all sorts of different things," Kai says.
"We were skating for awhile and were going to start a band called Bare Hands'. The logo was going to have a pair of bear hands. It was very confusing; you can see why it didn't take off," he laughs.
"We started jamming together in the last year of high school [in 2016], just in the garage. We picked up guitars and started learning Beatles songs – a very standard introduction to guitars. Two years after high school was our first show. All these failed endeavours, and then we moved on to playing music and that seemed to work."
During one of their garage jams, Kai's Aunt Liss walked by with her dog. Liss spent the '90s playing drums in the Brisbane punk scene. On a whim, she joined the boys for a jam.
"She jumped on and then we begged her stay, essentially," Kai laughs. "She pulled it all together. We'd never experienced such routine and structure. It was game changing."
After being joined by bassist Fraser Bell, the buzz around Girl And Girl has only grown. The band met their managers when they played BIGSOUND in 2022, connecting them with legendary Seattle indie label Sub Pop (Beach House, The Postal Service, Rolling Blackouts CF).
'Call A Doctor' opens with the line: 'Our story begins in the East Wing of the Wesley Hospital.' "That's my old local," Kai says. "I used to live in Auchenflower and the Wesley was down the road."
The lyric sets the scene for the rest of the album. References to family, doctors, and mental health recur throughout the record, making it a thematic whole.
Between the lyrical motifs and film poster-influenced album cover, 'Call A Doctor' resembles a musical. There's even a reference to 'The Sound Of Music' on the single 'Hello'. "That comes from growing up on musical theatre," Kai says.
"A lot of [the album] was stuff we had lying around and just rejigging the lyrics. 'Call The Doctor' was probably the most recent [song written] and that set the whole theme once I locked into that idea and thought it was strong enough to carry the whole record.
"The album was musical theatre-ish to emphasise the dramatics of it all. In terms of having a mental breakdown, going to see a doctor is dramatic. I find it easier to write about sensitive topics if you're making it overdramatic and comedic, in a way."
While Kai (or a version of himself) is the lead character across the album, it is on 'Maple Jean And The Anthropocene' where his leading role is spurred into an existential crisis. "'Maple Jean' is a wallaby that I had hit with my car," he says.
"I got out of my car and my first thought was, 'what is the spiritual significance of this?' Then my second thought was, 'oh my god, that's awful! This animal wasn't put on this earth to send me some kind of message. It was just a living being that I hit with my car.'
"That track is all about how self-centred we all are and how we're just destroying the world and only care about ourselves, and anything that happens is all to do with me and the reason this thing is here is to teach me a lesson."
Now that 'Call A Doctor' is out in the world, Girl And Girl will next bring the album to life on stage when they tour it. The band recently played SXSW in the US, returning to the country for a massive tour supporting Royel Otis.
Next, the band will be touring Australia in support of their album, taking their place at the centre of the stage and our attention.
Girl And Girl 2024 Tour Dates
Fri 2 Aug - Mo's Desert Clubhouse (Gold Coast)Sat 3 Aug - The Outpost (Brisbane)
Fri 9 Aug - Great Club (Sydney)
Sat 10 Aug - Howler (Melbourne)
