2020 was a busy year for indie rockers The Great Emu War Casualties, who released ten songs, as they continued to craft into beautiful shape their art-rock, alt-pop sounds.
Now they've gone and dropped their newest EP, the five-tracker 'Vanity Project' where they've teamed with producer Alex Newport (Death Cab For Cutie, Bloc Party, The Mars Volta) for a collection of lush, lucid, radiant and utterly delicious cuts of indie goodness your local butcher would be proud to sell.With 'Vanity Project', the trio of Joe Jackson (vocals, guitar), Saskia Clapton (bass, keys) and Bibek Tamang (drums) deserve the serious attention of any music nerd worth their salt; they're bound for major festival stages in the coming years.
"I'm really proud of what we've managed to make," Joe says. "It was made in not ideal circumstances during Melbourne's 2020 lockdown, so everything was recorded straight into laptops and the vocals were recorded in a wardrobe.
"I think the only drum kit we could get our hands on was totally broken too."
Adds Saskia: "Actually we've recorded the majority of our material at home anyway, so recording during lockdown wasn't that weird.
"It was more disappointing because we'd finally amped ourselves up to go into the studio and then ended up just doing the same thing as always, lol.
"But it meant that we were able to work with Alex (Newport) and kept us busy while we were trapped in our tiny-ass apartment, so silver-linings."
I'm A Yes Man
Joe: "The crux of this track lyrically came from when we stumbled upon four police officers who were questioning a lone woman in her car just after curfew time."It seemed like this woman just desperately needed some alone time, but she was technically 'breaking the rules', so we didn't really know how to feel about the situation."
Saskia: "This is surprisingly a Joe track (I say surprisingly 'cos he hates the rock & roll and yet here he wrote this rock banger. . . Well, 'rock' by our standards anyway."
Flies In My Eyes
Joe: "The song itself is really more about the music than the lyrics, which are a sort of repetitive, hooky performance about the monotony of an everyday life where the beauty in the mundane is becoming harder to find and the longing for something new is never realised."Saskia: "I originally did the music bed for this but was always a bit meh on the idea although I liked the riff. Bibek added that awesome tom thing and Joe came back with this awesome falsetto vocal, and I was like yay for band members."
Sad Seaweed People
Joe: "A few years back, I worked in an insurance office for three of the worst months of my life."On my first day, the CEO of the company handed me a book which was a fictional story about people in an office learning to see things from each other's point of view, which was essentially like if the seven habits of highly effective people had come into your secondary school assembly to rap about how homework is cool.
"The opening line is lifted directly from the book. Whenever we play it live, I try to dedicate it to everyone who will be at work tomorrow. Everyone is always at work tomorrow."
Saskia: "Joe was playing these nice atmospheric chords with his fancy pedals, so I immediately ruined it by putting that bassline in and voila.
"This is actually an old track that we'd done before we had a drummer, but we decided to redo it because Bibek's drums were just too good. Cat's vocals are also so great in this."
spacebatangeldragon
Joe: "The lyrics are about making the best of what you have while simultaneously refusing to be grateful for being given f... all."We can jump through hoops, go out of our way, go the extra mile and work the extra hours, but the line should be drawn long before anyone thanks you for the opportunity."
Saskia: "The title may seem bizarre, but it's the name of the antagonist from the book 'The Iron Giant' written by Ted Hughes (!) who tried to invade Australia; or something.
"Sadly the 'Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon' didn't make it into the film, but that's probably for the best because it's quite an insane storyline.
"Anyway, this was originally another random music bed of mine but it was soooo different, it was just this boring, laidback funk thing.
"Joe was listening to 'American Guilt' by UMO and he was like 'how about this?' and it came back with this big, rock riff and I was like, 'yea boiiii!'"
TIAGAHNIMSM
Joe: "It's about thought bubbles and big ideas, but also about personal identity and how that can get lost in large ideological fights that take place over the Internet."It's about how Mark and the Facebook Boys know everything I've said to my best friends over the past few years, about how they don't care at all, and about how it doesn't matter that they don't care because that doesn't mean it's not theirs and they'll still try and sell me video cameras because I talked to Neil about filming."
Saskia: "This is another old one; in fact, it's the first song we ever did! I always wanted to do it properly and think Alex has done it more than justice."
The Great Emu War Casualties play Old Bar (Melbourne) 25 March.
