Melbourne alternative rockers Littlefoot take their next, big step as a band with the release of their debut full-length album.
Long overdue and even longer in the making, the self-titled record has been a labour of love for the members of Littlefoot since their inception, tinged with the sadness of loss as well as the glory of redemption.“It's a long story, it goes quite a few years back really,” guitarist and vocalist Ryan Bolitho begins.
“When we first started as a band, it was four mates from the outer eastern suburbs and we were happy just playing the same pubs around the city while we were cutting our teeth.
"Then the bass player had a bit of tragedy in his life and he couldn't commit to the band anymore, so after playing with him for a couple of years he ended up leaving and we recruited one of our fans from the show, Chris [Martin] on bass.”
With Chris on-board in a permanent capacity, Littlefoot began work on what was intended to be their first album. But due to a series of unforeseen circumstances instead became their 'God Killed My TV' introductory EP released in 2016.
“After a year or so of writing new material we started recording 'God Killed My TV', and that was actually the start of the album recording,” Ryan says.
“The drummer, Dylan, ended up going overseas for a couple of months so things got put on hold. When he got back the lead guitarist was going over to Europe for a few months, so then the album got put on hold again.
"They came back, we played some shows and then our engineer Tim Johnson had a baby so things got put on hold again. There were a lot of bumps along the way to get there.”
With life getting in their way, it seemed Littlefoot would never finish writing and recording a full-length record let alone releasing it. Yet through sheer force of will and unrelenting ardour, not only is the album finished but it will be launched in grand style at a home-town show at The Tote in May.
“The Tote's an awesome venue,” Ryan says. “It's an iconic place we like hanging out at, so it's going to be awesome to have all our friends and family down there.”
The most distinctive characteristic of Littlefoot's debut album is the steep rate of development in technicality and complexity of composition and production from their earlier work.
Where once they played a rough mix of raw, garage punk, Littlefoot have deliberately moved towards a far tighter audio aesthetic reminiscent of mid-late '90s alternative rock and best exemplified by their latest single 'Crumb'.
“'Crumb' was one of our early songs,” Ryan says, “it might actually be one of the oldest songs we wrote together, but for the album we decided to rewrite it. We scrapped the whole chorus and restructured it, so if you did hear the old version of it, it's a hell of a lot different.”
Ryan further explains that much of the band's shift in sound has come about due to a similar shift in their motivations and sensibilities as songwriters. “A lot of the motivation behind the early stuff we did was a lot of teenage angst,” he says.
“I write all the lyrics and I'll bring to the band a couple of riffs and we'll work on them. A lot of the songs are just a lot of teenage angst, bad relationships and that kind of stuff.
"We've been doing the heavy grunge thing for a bit, so I think we want to try and make the music a bit more – I don't want to say pop but – in the poppy alternative area, like 'Crumb'.”
As the band's focus on songwriting and style have matured, so too has Ryan's skill as a vocalist. Untrained and without any formal vocal education, Ryan has sculpted his voice from the rough-hewn screaming of 'God Killed My TV' to achieve a more balanced timbre that better suits the style of music they've come to write and play.
“Vocally, I've never really had any singing lessons or guitar lessons so I just do what I think sounds good in service of the song,” he says.
“On our old stuff I was more comfortable just doing the screaming vocals, which the drummer would always say: 'that's your strong point, stick to that.' So for many years I just did that and after all these years I'm trying to expand on that and try something a little different.”
Littlefoot worked with engineer Tim Johnson who Ryan says provided an even keel to the recording process and contributed significantly to moulding the album to the band's content.
“Tim tracked everything; we did everything with Tim. We were at Bakehouse Studios for a lot of the sessions and then he took us to RMIT because he's the head lecturer there, so he had access to all the top-notch equipment.
“He'd throw out a few ideas to do things differently, so he did everything on it. He let us have free reign of what sound we wanted to go for and once he picked up on the direction we wanted it was just straight on from there.”
With a sound and style that's more accessible to fans of modern alternative rock as well as a clear vision going forward, not to mention a solid debut album to launch, Littlefoot will waste no time in getting another album out. “We're just happy to get the album done, get it out there and we've just started working on the follow-up album,” Ryan says.
“It's not so much that it's important to get another album out quickly, it's just that we've got a lot of material that we've been sitting on for a long time because we just haven't been able to get in the studio all together, so we want to keep pumping it out.”
