Wellington band The Blue Onesies have just released their third EP, Soft Opening. While their name may take a bit of getting used to, their brand of psychedelic indie pop is instantly appealing; recalling local luminaries Mestar and The Bats. The five piece are in Auckland this weekend to celebrate the new release so we put a few questions to founding member Anthony Lander and asked him to take us through some of the tracks from Soft Opening...
How did you get together?
I'd been living in London for a year and had written a number of songs. When I arrived back in Wellington I asked Alex Barker to help me record them, just guitar and voice. While we were recording them, he kept coming up with cool lead guitar parts and we'd record them onto the tracks. We'd inevitably say "this would sound great with drums and bass guitar added." So at that point we decided to make it a band, and The Blue Onesies evolved out of this.
The names is quite unusual, what's the story there?
We needed a name for a gig. We'd started calling ourselves Shitty Shitty Bang Bang, which is just an awful name. Anything was better than that. After a night at the pub we ended up with The Blue Onesies, and now when we play in Wanganui lots of people come to the gig dressed in onesies.
Have you always aimed for a particular sound or has this evolved over the years?
It's always been very guitar-based. We're all big fans of droney psychedelic guitar noise music, but we're all suckers for a good melody, and so I guess those elements have always been there from day one.
You have just released your third EP, Soft Opening, tell us about the writing and recording of this one..
A song is fairly basic when it's brought to the practice room. Usually just a loose chord structure and some words in some sort of melody. We play through it and then if we like it, we'll keep playing through it, adding to it. Often the song is very different when it finally gets recorded. We recorded the album with Warwick Donald in his warehouse apartment in Newtown. He's very chilled out, and is really great to work with. That was back in April. We're starting to get a pattern of how we operate. Record around Easter, release around October. It gives a lot of time to mess around with new ideas.
How does it compare with your previous releases?
It's a bit longer. There's more songs about space than there was on the previous ones. Not by much. It reckon it's the best record I've ever been involved with, but I say that every record.
Take us through some of the tracks...
'Dust' - Sometimes you can see dust swirling around in the sunlight. I was lying on my bed one afternoon and I saw this above me by the window. It looked a bit like looking up at stars moving around in space.
'Jimpop' - A beautiful pop song by JM, who we also call Jim. It reminds me a bit of the Bats and I like that.
'Hey Spider' - My girlfriend was in Australia for a couple of months, and while she was away I was lonely. I noticed a spider in the bathroom and started comparing our situations, which ended up as a song. The swing feel of this song harks back to the Jim Rogers' Party Shack record. We gave the song our version of a Sgt. Pepper ending.
Are you doing anything special to celebrate the release?
Logan Valentine made a lovely video for the first track, Dust, which can be viewed on Youtube. We're also playing a record release show in Auckland on Saturday, October 5th at Whammy, with Yolanda and Deer Park.
Future plans for the band?
Near future, we're playing down in Christchurch just before christmas, and perhaps a Wellington show at some stage before the year is out.
