After a relatively quiet year on the touring front, The Temper Trap are rewarding loyal fans with one, last leg of performances to promote 2016 record, ‘Thick As Thieves’.
The band are thrilled to round off 2017 on Australian stages, describing the past 12 months as “pretty chill, with a handful of shows here and there”.
“We had a one-off show at Guineas Day, the day before the Caulfield Cup, and another around a month before that. Otherwise, we had a little run in South Africa and a longer, European tour in February. But things have slowed down since then,” explains pianist and guitarist, Joseph Green.
While some may expect The Temper Trap’s most recent record to take the spotlight, Joseph assures the gigs will be an amalgamation of all three albums, looping in crowd favourites from ‘Conditions’ with their 2012, self-titled album classics.
And even amid a lengthy eight-year career, the band has proven to be in no creative rut. Despite living in different cities, and now raising families, they’re still finding time to write music.
“We’ve been working on three new songs and it’s quite likely we’re going reveal them. We’re getting together to rehearse next week, which is when we’ll figure out whether the new ones make the cut.”
The band is admirably drawing strength from experience, in terms of their songwriting process; Joseph says most songs were once born by regular band practice and jamming, while now tracks are stemming from simple, musical ideas. “We’ve got a good group in the sense that anything really goes in terms of creative workflow.
“Sometimes, somebody will have a complete song, say on acoustic guitar, and we’ll work from there. Other times, we’ll start from a riff that somebody wrote. There’s not really any rules.”
He’s unsure where the three unreleased (but recorded) songs will lead, tossing up whether to include them in an EP or to instead save them for another studio album.
A four-year time period stretched between the release of ‘Thick As Thieves’ and ‘The Temper Trap’, but he insists that while plans may still be up the air, he doesn’t expect to keep fans waiting for long.
“We did take a long time between the second and the third album; it wasn’t planned, that’s just the way it turned out.
“I don’t think we’d like to do that again. We actually knew 100 per cent that we were going to release another album after the second, we’d started writing it straight away.”
Although their upcoming tour is still in the planning phases, the band has maintained a calm and quiet confidence – a ‘sweet disposition’. “We already have the skeletons of sets that we’ve been performing over the past couple of years.
“Expect a mixture of everything, as much as we can include from three albums. Old favourites, plus a few news ones and even a few we haven’t played for ages.”
Joseph’s personal picks? “I really like, on the second album, ‘The Trouble With Pain’. It’s very dark and I love Dougy’s lyrics, and it has a very hypnotic vibe to it.
"My favourites also tend to be the ones that are most fun to play live; songs like ‘Resurrection’, ‘The Science Of Fear’, ‘Drum Song’ are brilliant, because they go down well in front of a crowd.”
The Temper Trap will be touring Australia in late November. “We’re just excited to be playing live; put us on stage and we’re happy.”
The Temper Trap Shows
Sat 18 Nov - Reflections (Fremantle)Wed 22 Nov - Metro Theatre (Sydney)
Thu 23 Nov - Croxton Bandroom (Melbourne)
Fri 24 Nov - Melbourne Recital Hall
Sat 25 Nov - Fat Controller (Adelaide)
Sun 26 Nov - Queenscliff Music Festival
