California beach goths The Growlers have resolved their legal troubles and left them in the past, leaving the path ahead clear for getting back to the business of being a band.
Last year, The Growlers found themselves in a lawsuit with Noise Group, the company that helped curate the band's own Beach Goth Festival, over the event's name. Noise Group claimed the band infringed on the company's copyright, forcing The Growlers to rename the 2017 edition as Growlers Six.
For band leader Brooks Nielsen, he's taken the situation in his stride. “I think part of it was a learning experience,” he says.
“Band people are stunted – you're in this little bubble of the world and everything is carefree, then at some point you have little incidents that make you grow up and this is one of them.
“You can't trust people in this industry, it's cut-throat and there's rats, and we had to learn that for ourselves. It sucked, but at the same time we have stuff to focus on – make art, keep performing and entertaining. If anything, it just made us a little bit stronger, smarter and we're not dwelling on it. We're just moving on.”
The Growlers released their most recent album, 'Casual Acquaintances', in July of this year, a collection of demos, work-in-progress and other selected cuts from the writing and recording sessions for their previous album 'City Club' in 2016.
The fuzz-laden, DIY 'Casual Acquaintances' is widely viewed as a return to form for The Growlers after the clean, tight production of Julia Casablancas (The Strokes) that guided 'City Club'.
“Nothing's changed in how Matt [Taylor, guitarist] and I come across making songs, tucking away in the mountains, cutting ourselves off and writing as many songs as we can,” Brooks says.
“Then we demo them and bring them over to somebody, so we brought them to Julian and the way you hear them on 'Casual Acquaintances' is the way that Julian heard them for 'City Club'. Some of them he put into a computer and he added to, some of them we tried to recreate live.
“At the end of the day the discussion was 'hey, we have 40, 50, 60 songs' – depending on what record - 'for every record we press'. We were holding them like 'what do we do with this' and I was like 'let's release some of it and see what happens'.
"We have all these songs but no way to put them out; we think they're strong enough, so let's not change them and put them out the way they got demoed. People look in and they can see a glimpse of what the songs are before we go into the studio.”
With the lawsuit in the rear-view mirror and a swathe of new material to showcase, Brooks says he and the rest of The Growlers are looking forward to being back onstage, especially for their upcoming Australia tour in January.
“We really like it over there and I think the idea was to be going back [to Australia] even more so, but we got carried away with finding stuff to do here, getting sued, putting on a festival, putting out a record, touring and all the personal-life stuff.”
The Growlers Australia Tour 2019
Thu 10 Jan - Miami Marketta (Gold Coast)Fri 11 Jan - The Valley Drive In (Brisbane)
Sat 12 Jan - Villa Noosa (Sunshine Coast)
Sat 12 Jan - Byron Bay Brewery
Wed 16 Jan - Forum Melbourne
Fri 18 Jan - The Metro Theatre (Sydney)
Sat 19 Jan - Narrabeen RSL (Sydney) – SOLD OUT
Sun 20 Jan - The Gov (Adelaide)
