Perth four-piece The Siren Tower will launch their new single, ‘Sovereigns’, locally at Badlands Bar.
Lead singer Grant McCulloch isn’t phased by the performance. “I’ll get excited on the night,” he says.
“There seem to be more and more logistical concerns every time we do this.”
While all members of the band have day jobs, they’ve been doing the music thing for a while. The Siren Tower formed in 2012 after its members finished up with their respective metal bands. “Perth had a f#$%ing amazing nu-metal scene, back in the day,” Grant says.
The group's drummer Brody Simpson, who has “gone on to become an Instagram sensation”, was the best in town and Grant still praises himself for knowing it then. In an early jam, the two musicians were throwing riffs and beats around when they realised they'd been playing metal for a long, long time and were ready for something new.
So Grant brought in “this whole other thing” he’d been working on; a collection of acoustic songs with strong Australian overtones that would later become ‘A History Of Houses’, the band’s first album. “It [wasn’t] very cool anymore [playing metal], but it’s something that I grew up with and I just loved,” Grant says.
“We started playing around with [the music] and straight up, it was just different; it didn’t sound like anything that was on the radio, and that was what we loved about it.”
The Siren Tower's songs deal with real-world issues. Recent single ‘Invalia’ is about asylum seekers in an Australian detention facility, imagined by Grant who has no interest in “holding a mirror” to himself in his songwriting.
The singer says he is influenced by acts like Paul Kelly and Cold Chisel, building songs around strong narratives and characters. “It’s like reading a book with music,” Grant says. “There’s so much more to it than ‘Baby, baby, I wanna see you on the dancefloor at 2am’ [or] whatever’s on the f$%^ing radio.”
The band’s lack of radio play hasn’t affected the growth of its dedicated fan base. “When people connect to [The] Siren Tower, it’s because they knew someone like one of the characters in the songs or because they’ve been through what one of the characters has been through,” Grant says.
“There’s a much deeper connection.”
Over the years, the band has “begrudgingly” evolved according to Grant. Their first album was the culmination of a two-year intensive writing process. But The Siren Tower members struggle to meet up more than a couple times a month these days.
Fans may have to wait a little longer for another full-length offering, but Grant is eager to see how the band members' divergent paths will bring new experiences to the table. “[The] Siren Tower is the thing that we all keep coming back to, the thing that our other passions kind of satellite [sic],” he says.
“The projects are too cool, as far as I’m concerned, to not keep creating and putting it out there… I’m happy to be in this band, for the rest of my days, if I have to.”
The Siren Tower launch new single 'Sovereigns' at Badlands Bar (Perth) 24 March.
