Fresh out the kitchen, Melbourne's Sophisticated Dingo have delivered upon early expectations of brash and gnarly garage rock, with the release of debut EP, 'Tastes Just Like The Real Thing'.
Bristling with attitude, the record offers an insight into a musicianship that is continuing to thrive off the back of successes that followed previous single releases: 'Yuppies' and ‘Head Talk'.
Lew from Sophisticated Dingo walks us through the EP, track by track. "'Tastes Just Like The Real Thing' is a collection of songs that we have spent a lot of time with," he says.
"Through writing, recording and playing live, each of these songs has its own story of how it came to be on our debut EP."
Beth
This song sat in musical purgatory for about six months. The only part of the song that existed was the hooky-guitar turnaround. Even though there was nothing else for it to blend with, I loved that guitar part so much that I would always play around on it. I guess that's why it never fell by the wayside.Eventually other ideas came to be and in classic Dingaz fashion, it was pieced together in order to be performed live. It ended up telling a story about adapting to new environments as you move through different stages in life. I think the writing process somewhat represents the meaning of the song and its themes of growth, in that it took so long to come together.
Yuppies
'Yuppies' was developed into as much of a 'concept song' as we have ever made. It first came about with a joke about the idea of 'yuppies', I think we'd heard it thrown around a bit at the time. Bits and pieces of music would follow as we'd continue talking about the idea.I remember being in the middle of a day teaching guitar at the school I used to work at. I wrote down an idea for the verse riff before going to collect a student for their lesson. Throughout the poor student's lesson I would try and slip in a quick jam on the idea here and there (I was usually a much better teacher, I swear).
It was a fairly unconventional way to write a song compared to how we have in the past, but once we threw different ideas together it became more fluent to play. From then on playing it live has always been a blast.
Head Talk
The bulk of this was written while trying to fight off sleep after a night out. I remember wanting to just go to sleep, but another part of me knew it was worth staying awake until there was a complete set of lyrics and structure to the song. From then we played it as it stood, for months on end.Before we recorded the EP we worked on the outro, especially Jimmy's vox. I think the "I hear what you're saying" line he came up with was really strong and capped off the process for putting that song together.
Erin
By far the most effortless song to sit on the EP. The whole song came to be in one day of very casual jamming at home. I played it to Jimmy and he slotted right in with some harmonies and cruisy drums that fit in an instant. We played it live a bunch of times and thought it was really nice.Honestly we never gave it too much attention, while at the same time also caring a lot for the song. I think that balance makes it a very enjoyable tune for us both. I really like the intro to the song on the EP too. It's just a room microphone recording of us playing through the chord changes in the studio between takes. I think it has a real warmth to it.
Girls Who Don't Care
This one has been around for a long while. There was a lot of passion thrown into it, right from the beginning. We were just starting to play gigs so naturally there was a lot of excitement flying around between Jimmy and I. We had pulled this song together reasonably quickly and were practising it as if we were on-stage from the first run-through.Once the song was ready to go we had just been booked for our first show ever at The Tote. I remember the feeling of simultaneously playing on that stage and performing this song for the first time was incredible. The song was raw and we were pretty green, so it probably sounded rough as guts. But there is always a unique energy to performing a song for the first time.
I would love to go back and see how it all went down.
Dreaming
Jimmy and I started jamming and writing together long before we ever came close to playing a show. The earliest sessions we'd spend together were very casual and infrequent. We had a ball playing together and musing about how great it would be to play some gigs eventually.'Dreaming' was one of the first songs we connected on as we played together in the loft above the garage at my parent's place. I think this song drove us to push forward and write more. It's been important to us from the start and it's great that through every twist and turn that original energy is still present in this song whenever we play it.
Sophisticated Dingo Tour Dates
Thu 27 Sep - The Old Bar (Melbourne)Fri 5 Oct - Exeter Hotel (Adelaide)
Sat 6 Oct - The Music Man (Bendigo)
Wed 10 Oct - Rad Bar (Wollongong)
Sat 13 Oct - The Lennox Hotel (Lennox Head)
Thu 18 Oct - The Marlborough Hotel (Sydney)
