Western Australian band The Panics have teamed with South Australian director Shane McNeil to produce a musical and cinematic tribute to Australia’s coastline.
Entitled ‘Girt By Sea’, the film is a montage of original footage that captures the raw beauty of the Australian coast, accompanied by a soundtrack composed and performed by The Panics. “We had this nice experience of working with a filmmaker who was making it up as we went along and the film turned out really good,” says The Panics' vocalist and guitarist, Jae Laffer.
“Shane would be working on a ten-minute sequence of say whaling footage and we’d come up with something that was dramatic and go off on a tangent.
“What I’m saying is that it was a really enjoyable experience for our band because it’s not like songwriting. We can come up with bits of music and atmospheres really quickly and easily, so for us it was something we could jump into and get a lot done really quickly.”
The film will screen as part of the Adelaide Guitar Festival in August with The Panics providing the soundtrack live on stage. Like many Australians, Jae grew up close to the coast and feels an innate connection to the ocean and its seemingly endless seascapes. “The coast means a lot of things and it’s not really attached to one location,” he explains.
“When I think of Perth, the southwest or the whole state, it’s just this vast, endless kind of land and if there’s anything I miss about WA it’s the smell, the light and the way the coast gets to all your senses at once. I can almost transport myself back to those places if I close my eyes.”
From the untamed chaos of behemoth waves pounding unrelenting cliff faces and man battling mother nature, to the innocent fun of family holidays at the beach and foaming surf, ‘Girt By Sea’ encapsulates what Jae sees as an integral part of the greater Australian story. “It’s all these unique, crazy and strange environments,” he says.
“Western culture also came and made these weird scenes all over the place; then there’s the culture that goes back thousands of years. It’s not a cliché to say so many people that happen to exist here do live around the coastal areas.
“So much of the Australian story has happened with that in the backdrop and so much was documented over the years, even before film. There’s so much of the Australian story that was created on the coast and I think the filmmaker did a good job of choosing nice backdrops that covered a bunch of the different areas of the coast.”
On top of their recent film accomplishments, The Panics have also completed work on their latest studio album. While the band is yet to sign off on a title, Jae happily reports fans can expect to hear the new material in the next few months. “We’ve only a couple of weeks ago been able to say ‘that’s enough’ and it sounds fantastic,” he says.
“The songs on it are feeling really confident, urgent and relentless from start to finish in energy; it feels like a great statement from the group. Something will be playing around July then in August we’ll put the record out, so you’ll start hearing about it soon. It gives a lot of energy and momentum to what we’re doing at the [Adelaide] Guitar Festival.
"It’s great timing because the first songs off the record will be staring to filter out into the landscape and the band are feeling good about playing together, playing new stuff and showing off what we’ve done, like this soundtrack.”
‘Girt By Sea’, accompanied by The Panics live, will screen at Her Majesty’s Theatre 13 August as part of the Adelaide Guitar Festival.
