Melbourne indie-rock pranksters The Fauves have become something they didn't expect: a birthday party band.
The last show the band played was the 60th birthday bash of their manager, Paul Curtis. Despite only playing the one birthday, vocalist/ guitarist Andrew Cox says the band regularly receive requests to play parties."It's quite true that as you move into middle age, you do start getting a lot of requests to play at people's 50th birthday," he says.
"A lot of people reckon you can rock around to their house with a couple of amps and a drum kit, and just set up and play at their party for them when it's not that simple," he laughs, "but that's us now: birthday party band."
Their next gig will not just be any old birthday party: the band will be celebrating their 35th anniversary.
The Fauves are celebrating with pair of gigs in Sydney and Melbourne where they will perform two of their albums in full: 1996's 'Future Spa' and 1998's 'Lazy Highways'.
"For a band like us who is pretty obscure, you kind of just need to grasp on to any excuse for a gig," Andrew says. "It might be vaguely attractive to a few punters."
The pair of albums – their third and fourth, respectively – saw the band reach a level of popularity they hadn't seen before, or since, according to Andrew.
"We put out two records before that on Polydor to very low sales," he says. "They'd probably come to the terrifying realisation that they'd wasted their money on us. In terms of being on a big record label, it was our last real shot."
Struggling to appease their label with more obvious singles, the band noticed that a particular new song seemed to be getting attention at their live shows: 'Dogs Are The Best People'. "Clearly, if there's any song [of ours] that anyone's ever heard, it's that one," he says.
"Before we recorded 'Future Spa', [the label] wanted us to record a couple of tracks as potential singles and they weren't keen on that one. I still have somewhere quite a harsh critique of the song from the record company.
"We'd already started playing it live, and for a band that was used to people staring at us nonplussed, suddenly there was this song that people had never heard and started bouncing around in the crowd.
"We had an inkling that maybe we had written a song that a few people might like, so we stuck to our guns and said we should record this song. As I say, everything is very relative in terms of popularity, and for us it was a big song, so that was some vindication, I suppose," Andrew laughs.
'Dogs Are The Best People' reached #20 in the 1996 triple j Hottest 100, while 'Future Spa' was nominated for the Best Alternative Album at the ARIA Awards. However, that success led to more pressure from their label for their follow-up.
"We'd made some inroads, but the next one had to be bigger," Andrew says. "The songs we had for 'Lazy Highways' were a bit quieter and mellower, and they were like, 'No, we need grunge! We need loud guitars!' And we'd moved into a different area, so that criticism all came up again.
"It did ok, but no better than 'Future Spa'. After 'Lazy Highways' had come out and we'd toured and everything, that was when [the label] told us we were free to depart – or more to the point, they showed us the door."
Such dispiriting experiences with record labels would be enough to make anyone swear off music forever, but despite them, Andrew is grateful for the experience.
"It did give us a lot of opportunities. We got less and less popular, but probably made better and better music and enjoyed ourselves more. Any time that we can be together after 35 years is some kind of achievement, I guess."
Alongside these two upcoming gigs, the band have also rereleased two early EPs together as they were originally intended in the form of what was meant to be their debut album, 'Faematronic'.
They're also getting ready to head to Bali to record their next album, their thirteenth. "Consequently, with these shows and recording the new album, we'll be working harder in 2023 than we have in years," Andrew laughs.
"It's really straining the memory banks. Now it's just a matter of honing them and building up our physical stamina so we can last 30 songs [onstage]. Fortunately, we'll have an intermission because at our age we'll probably need it."
The Fauves 2023 Tour Dates
Fri 13 Oct - The Corner Hotel (Melbourne)Sat 14 Oct - Crowbar Sydney
