1,200. That's how far Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have come in the space of just 12 months. But first, let's back up a bit.
A year ago, Western Australia's Psychedelic Porn Crumpets played to a crowd of just 50 people in London. This year, on their current UK tour, they played to more than 1,250 people packing out London's Electric Ballroom.
“Pretty much all the UK shows were sold-out except for maybe one of them, which is unbelievable really because we played like a year ago to 50 people,” singer-songwriter and guitarist, Jack McEwan says.
“Step forward a year and we're playing to 1,250 people at Electric Ballroom, which is nuts. I think it has a lot to do with the Australian bands that are coming out at the moment, it's really good. It's almost like a genre in itself: Australian music.”
With the increased exposure and success comes the increased pressure for Psychedelic Porn Crumpets – who have a reputation as a fun-time, party band – to take things a little more seriously than they have in the past. “We kind of have a running joke that we're the world's most serious, non-serious band,” Jack laughs.
“[The band] started out as us getting drunk then having fun and that was your weekend. Then all of a sudden we're doing our first Australian tour and someone's saying 'put the beers down, you guys are useless'.
“It's like 'Architects are here at this show, make a good impression; Royal Blood are here, make a good impression', so you're swapping the pre-match, performance enhancing beers or whatever. So that's what we're doing, trying to get that live show more professional.
“It's not any less fun or anything. . . we're still hammering pints before the show but we're not blotto so we know what we're doing. It's definitely taking a swing into the professional realm, which is still interesting.”
Having made claim to the lands of Europe, the UK and the United States, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets return victorious to our shores for a run of shows including Falls Festival and Spilt Milk, where Jack says he hopes to show their Aussie fans what they've been up to overseas.
“Falls Festival is huge, we went last year and it's always a good time down in Fremantle but we've never done a touring festival before,” he says.
“It'll be really interesting because sometimes when you hang out with a band you don't get to see them until you bump into them at [the next] festival again, so it will be good to actually make some friends with [other] bands, have some beers and see how their playing styles are.
“Spilt Milk should be good as well. I'm looking forward to getting on the big stage. We're the tightest we've ever been at the moment and the most in tune with our live sets, so it will be good to go back to Australia and hopefully people will see that evolution that we feel that we've taken.”
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets' current single is 'Mundungus', with Jack saying the next album is all but ready to be recorded, mixed and mastered before its release next year.
“I had a bunch of songs at home I was working on before we went away and it's so hard to record on the road, so I've left myself a big period around Christmas and January to be at home in Perth and smash out the majority of that record,” he reports.
“It's all there, all the ideas are fully formed so I want to go home, do the final tweak then spend some time mixing and mastering.”
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets Australia Dates 2019/2020
Sat 23 Nov - Spilt Milk Festival (Canberra)Sat 30 Nov - Spilt Milk Festival (Ballarat)
28 Dec-1 Jan - Falls Festival (Lorne)
29 Dec-31 Dec - Falls Festival (Marion Bay)
31 Dec-2 Jan - Falls Festival (Byron Bay)
3 Jan-4 Jan - Falls Festival (Fremantle)
