Five Rooms

Five Rooms

Screamfeeder - FIVE ROOMS

May 2022, Modern Morning. MOD006

Our 8th album, recorded in lockdown, in July 2021 by Anna Laverty at Airlock Studios, Brisbane. Produced by Anna Laverty. Assisted by Emily Hopley. Mixed by Beau Sorenson at Best House, Berkeley, and Travis Harrison at Serious Business Music, Brooklyn, August – November 2021. Mastered by Joe Carra at Crystal Mastering, Melbourne.

All music written and performed by Screamfeeder, all lyrics by Tim and Kellie in 2020 – 2021.

COVER Art by Jack Tierney at Listen To The Graphics. Kellie came up with the album title.

Watch

Lyrics

Day Crew

Samantha came in and said I didn’t get paid
Something got delayed
I wasn’t meant to be hanging out with the day crew
It just ended up that way

And it feels like I’ve been waiting forever
It’s been some crazy long afternoon
It feels like I’ve been waiting forever
Living my whole life in these five rooms

Samantha looked up and said don’t get me started
I thought there was nothing to fear
Back in the beginning it was kind of unusual
Then it got heavy and weird

It feels like I’ve been waiting forever
For my heartbeat to resume
It feels like I’ve been waiting forever
Holding my breath in these five rooms

It feels like I’ve been waiting forever
It’s been some crazy long afternoon
It feels like I’ve been waiting forever
Living my whole life in these five rooms

It feels like I’ve been waiting forever
For my heartbeat to resume
It feels like I’ve been waiting forever
In these five rooms

Don’t Get Me Started

Fascinate me, assassinate me
Desperate highs, cable ties

Assassinate me, saturate me
Give me time, give it a name
Or give it away

Whatever we had can’t wash away
Set adrift in the night it comes back to you
And it will multiply
Catch your eye it’s just a reflection
Welcome to the safety of bending away
We just need to look away
If you can’t sleep for what you’ve done
If you don’t blink when you look into the sun
Then I think there’s something wrong

Catch your eye, it’s just a reflection
Welcome to the safety of bending away
We just need to look away

Assassinate me, fascinate me, give me time
We just need to look away
Fascinate me, saturate me, give it a name
We just need to look away

No Past Tense

No past tense!
Can’t we talk about a future song?
We’ve been raking up the past too long
And it’s kinda getting boring
We know we can talk about it

No past tense!
I need some value from the present more
Than every little thing I did before
I’m purposely ignoring
’Cos they’re never gonna change us

I need to change somehow
They’re never gonna change us

Late To the Party

Always late to the party
Dragging that chain
Watch the rewrites fade

Games and accusations
Tedious at best
Is it worth the frustration?

Yet, always someone with a story
They’ll try to sell ya
Up the river, or maybe it’s down?

Someone’s gotta tell ya
They’ve done it better
Resent the implication
Never let it rest

Control the situation
Always make them guess
Fall into to silence
Size up the tension

Shy away from the attention
Shy away from the attention
Shy away from the attention
Shy away from the attention

Everybody listens and everybody knows
Because everyone is watching
Everybody stares because everybody’s judging Because everybody cares

Everything is Temporary

Why do you have to say
Everything that comes to your brain?
Not everybody needs to hear it
Not everybody needs to know it
Why do you have to explain
Everything from day to day?
This unending commentary
Is it even necessary?

Why do you leave
If everything should stay the same?
The only thing you believe
Is that everything is temporary

I feel strange, I don’t know how to explain
Don’t explain, you won’t change
The changes that we see happen so randomly
You won’t change me

What did they see? What did they leave?
What did they mean?

I feel strange and I don’t know how to explain
Don’t explain, you won’t change
The changes that we see happen so randomly
You won’t change me

What did they see? What did they leave?
What did they mean?

Don’t know how to explain
Don’t explain
I feel strange
You won’t change
Don’t know how to explain
You won’t change me
I feel strange

Deirdre

Deirdre, Deirdre
This is getting hard to do
You’re not the same person that you were
When I first laid eyes on you
Deirdre, Deirdre
This is getting hard to guess
How it started out so beautiful
And ended up in such a mess
Deirdre, Deirdre
It started out so beautiful
And ended up in such a mess
We made lots of promises
They’re so hard to keep
One by one we tore them into little pieces
Lots of stupid promises
Enough to make you weep
One by one we held them up
And tore them into little pieces

Deirdre, Deirdre
This is getting hard to take
I pass by my reflection
And I feel like such a fake
Deirdre, Deirdre
I failed you so thoroughly
Now it’s getting hard to understand
Why you’re hanging around with me
Deirdre, Deirdre
It’s getting hard to understand
Why you’re hanging around with me

Outers

Thought of you as I walked to school
Came out of the blue
Hadn’t thought of you much at all
For a month or two

Didn’t breathe, didn’t want to leave
This second stuck on pause
Filled with fear
So scared I’d hear
The sound of closing doors

Can’t we go back to the way things were?
Pretend that we didn’t get burned
Can’t we go find all the things we lost
Or left too late to learn?

You hadn’t called much at all
I didn’t know what to do
I didn’t cry, I didn’t fight
For a month or two

Can’t we go back there and start again?
I’ll try not to forget
How will we know we’ve already been
As close as we will get?

Campfire

I was in the forest
I couldn’t find my campfire
I was in the forest
I couldn’t find my campfire
I thought I was sleeping safely in my tent
Something came and found me
I don’t know where I went
I was in the forest
I couldn’t find my campfire

I was in the ocean
I couldn’t find the surface
I was in the ocean
I couldn’t find the surface
I was out of courage, almost out of breath
It ain’t so funny being out of your depth
I was in the ocean
I couldn’t find the surface

I looked down and noticed
I wasn’t holding your hand
I looked down and noticed
I wasn’t holding your hand
I felt kinda frightened out there all alone
I thought you said I wouldn’t make it on my own
I looked down and noticed
I wasn’t holding your hand

Break it Clean

And they said it could never be done
Forty hours into the sun
And my heart is a loaded gun
Around the houses, the pouring rain
I will run to beat the pain
Never return or be the same
Never return or be the same

Around the houses, the burning pain
Break my shoulders to carry the blame
No one will speak my name again
Empty my feelings like a machine
Just a contender that never has been
Burn it dead, break it clean
Burn it dead, break it clean

Empty my feelings like a machine
Just a contender that never has been
Burn it dead, break it clean
Empty my feelings like a machine
Just a pretender that never would be
Burn it dead, break it clean
Burn it dead, break it clean

And they said it could never be done
Forty hours into the sun
And my heart is loaded gun
Break it clean

How We Pay

I saw you before you went away forever
I saw you before you went away
I saw you before you went away forever
Now you’re gone
And I’m not feeling any better

I’m starting to feel that you were maybe never mine
Starting to feel that maybe you were never
I’m starting to feel that you were maybe never mine
I can’t believe that I could ever be that blind
Can’t believe that I could ever be that blind
I can’t believe

What if we never got
What if we never got to say goodbye?

How did I not think how we’d get by without you?
How did I not think how we’d get by?
How did I not think how we’d get by without you?
How we’d pay, and all the different ways we’d pay?
How we’d pay

How we’d pay, and all the different ways we’d pay
How we’d pay and how would we afford it
How we’d pay and all the different ways we’d pay
How we’d say we should have fought it

State to State

Who are we to do this to each other?
Who are we to throw ’round our weight?
Who are we to fail and fail and fail
At getting it straight?
Who are we to deal out the punishments?
Who are we to come on so mean?
What’s with the malicious intent?
Can’t we keep it a little bit clean?

I moved from coast to coast to be with you
You told me I was weak
You told me I was desperate too
If you wanted me to suffer I’d prefer a fist
Who are we to do this to each other?
How can we recover after doing all this?
Who are we to do this to each other?
And how can we be friends after this?

I drove from state to state just to get close
Told you all the things I’m insecure about the most
You said I should be tougher, said I should grow up
Who are we to do this to each other?
You’ve gotta be kidding me if you think it’s gonna stop

Who are we to do this to each other?
How can we recover after doing all this?
Who are we to do this to each other?
How can we be friends after this?

Try to Find Us

They can try to find us
I won’t be standing in their way
They can try to fight us
Won’t be listening to what they say
They can try deny us
There is nothing left for you here
They can try define us
The only thing that they’ve left is fear

Who taught the hand that holds the gun?
Constructs will only come undone
What is the lesson, what is the lesson?
Are you the system or the sum?

They can try to find us
I won’t be standing in their way
They can try deny us
Won’t be listening to what they say

Who holds the hand that coddles the son?
Are they the bullet or the gun?
What is the lesson, what is the lesson?
Everything’s starting to come undone
What is the lesson, what is the lesson?

Everything’s starting to come undone
Are they the bullet or the gun?

Start Again From Here

Start Again From Here

Start Again From Here

Modern Morning | MOD002 | June 12th 2020

Start Again From Here // The Space That’s Left (remix)

Our “re-discovered” song, from 2003, on a clear vinyl 7? single. Also features Tim and Darek’s remix of album track “The Space That’s Left”.

Buy Single

Start Again From Here 7″ Single

$15.00

Our “re-discovered” song, from 2003, on a clear vinyl 7″ single.

Also features Tim and Darek’s remix of album track “The Space That’s Left”.

Limited to 150 copies. Full colour cover and insert, in line with the album art.
Free postage if you’re buying an album as well.

Pressed in Finland – despite the high price this was our cheapest option for a short run of singles.

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Additional information

Postage

Buying on its own, Buying with a vinyl album

Live at The Metro

Live at The Metro

Self – Released September 21, 2019

November 1995, Dean had just joined the band and things were taking off. We’d played Brisbane’s LIVID Festival mid-afternoon, before hopping on a plane to Sydney for this show.

We were a little tired and a little drunk.

We played songs from our then current album Fill Yourself With Music as well as a few from Burn out Your Name. We also played a couple of new songs, including Bridge Over Nothing, from the forthcoming Kitten Licks; it got played twice – for the first times ever – that day.

This is a desk recording. Audio quality: B, performance: B+.

Recorded live at The Metro in Sydney on November 25th 1995, for an Aus Music Month gig. Live sound by Jon Gardner.

Buy at Bandcamp

Patterns Form

Patterns Form

patterns form

singles and more: 1992 to 2017

Released on Record Store Day – Saturday 21 April 2018

All our singles, and more – remastered and finally together on vinyl

Available through FOUR | FOUR on double gatefold vinyl, CD, streaming and download

Patterns Form vinyl

$48.00

Double vinyl edition – 24 songs. Includes download.

Download link will be available after purchase. Please get in touch if you need help.

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Patterns Form CD

$22.00

23 track CD, including 24 track download.

Lost In The Snow was omitted from the cd, as it ran over 80 mins.

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All 24 songs have been remastered for vinyl from the original mixes, taken straight from 1/2 inch tape, by Bryce Moorhead at Zero Interference.
With a renewed focus on dynamics and tonal range this is literally the best the tracks have ever sounded.

The tapes have been in storage since the albums’ recording sessions, and they were sent to Studios 301 in Sydney to be baked to optimise the digitisation process. Songs which appeared on Rocks On The Soul and Take You Apart were mastered directly from the original first generation studio mixes – as they weren’t recorded to tape.

Explore the sides:

Side 1

Side 1

Side 2

Side 2

Side 3

Side 3

Side 4

Side 4

Spirit level is an oxymoron.

Watching Screamfeeder for twenty-odd years is enough to give any sentient being back issues.

There is, of course, their band’s topography. Heights and diminutions existing adjacently, often on stages that could harm either variation of physicality, once a song’s pulse began.

We’d watch the two performers at the front of the stage with the tilt of the curious, until a song’s insistence took us, and then we’d look with the tilt of one appraising art, in its lustre, power and mystery.

A bass player who thrusts and parries like a fencer but with an instrument the comparative size of a battering ram jousts alongside her compatriot whose sleek, tense muscularity causes his guitar to look more like a similarly tubular tendon.

And when your patron’s gaze makes sense of what is operational in front of you, there is a puckish gentleman working in between and amongst straightening but stretching this music, as if the canvas is a wave.

There is and never was anything level about this band, but so much spirit.

Spirit that slaps itself on the cheeks and shouts at walls, that grabs the shoulders of its dear friends and cries in the armpits of their t-shirts. Spirit is what dwells in us that can be exalted or crushed right?

The same part of us we claw at the flesh of our guts to access in times of oppression, and pain.

Screamfeeder is, I now realize too, an oxymoron. For what that is screaming can be fed? (I did not realise the pun of the name until years after the first meet.) Desperate to be heard over the strangled riffs and rattling cage of drums on the earlier records was the anguish and then sudden tenderness of the singing.

As if a bound prisoner was using their charm for pleas of clemency before again recognising the brutality of their oppressor. The desperation that was difficult to listen to without a sharp intake of recognition, but relieved with riffs and melodies that were balms and bandages.

Smiles breaking through sobs. Thunder that was shot through with the sweet peals of joy. Of relief.

“I can’t see a pattern forming” was the incantation. “Hi Cs” was the song. If I got the lyrics wrong, well it wasn’t the first time. I hadn’t seen my acquaintances in years and there I was, with my head cocked and lips apart like a shrew in a flashlight.

The stage was level, spirits askew, a bassline that was as shrewd as a legal argument and drum fills that protested and revelled like the gallery for the defence. “I can’t see a pattern forming”. Fuck me. I never could.

I couldn’t foresee that after periods where the band were not performing they would cleave together, cleave apart, making vital, yearning music.

And when apart, get other wonderful combos together, be perennially supportive and encouraging of others attempting to eke out an opportunity to play, and live as they exist as a band – ethically, passionately ..spiritually.

And when this geometric anomaly of a band are together, whether existing on Ice Patrol, Above The Dove, Alone In A Crowd or as that lonesome figure that resigns “I Don’t Know What To Do Any More” they are the power-pop group who dunno clichés even when they stepped around ’em , but are led by their spirit, which will, at times, not know what the fuck to do, but these three humans respond to that enigmatic little mess within the lot of us – the one that boils, bubbles and sparks. Never still. Never broken.

Trust these people. And now, follow the lead: 1,2,3,4,5..

Tim Rogers

Sometimes time makes us take the beautiful things around us for granted.

That mountain view that was once so stunning becomes de rigueur, the beach vista that used to take your breath away becomes part of the daily shuffle if you’re lucky enough to live there, even the best qualities of the ones we love become shrouded with the onset of familiarity.

So it is with bands. I’ve been lucky enough to have followed the ongoing Screamfeeder saga since the early days following their inception, so I’ll recount to you the story of my relationship with them because it’s the only one I know.

I followed my heart to Brisbane from my hometown of Melbourne in 1992, leaving behind the southern capital’s thriving music scene – where it seemed there was a great band playing every night at every pub, and there were a lot of pubs – to live in the still newly post-Joh Brisbane, then a somewhat sleepy city exhibiting more hallmarks of a large country town than a thriving metropolis.

But as a fervent live music lover Screamfeeder (and their contemporaries like Custard, Budd, Midget et al) soon became my salvation. The Brisbane scene was bubbling away and would soon burst into bloom with the advent of acts like Powderfinger and Regurgitator and their ilk, but for now a raft of largely-unknown but routinely excellent bands were dominating the Valley and surrounds.

I wasn’t yet around in 1991 when Screamfeeder morphed almost by accident from the ashes of Townsville band The Madmen. Upon their demise that band’s Tim Steward (guitar/vocals) and Tony Blades (drums) were joined by friend and film-clip maker Kellie Lloyd (bass) to rush finish the album Flour that they’d been working on, which would eventually became Screamfeeder’s debut in 1992. But they sure hit the ground running and were soon a staple of this burgeoning live scene, from the outset their music edgy and gritty but bursting with boundless pop smarts and melodies that would etch into your brain.

Many sonic touchstones were thrown around in the early days and they fared endless comparisons to bands like The Who, The Jam and The Replacements – all quite relevant or prescient – but to me their early marriage of intensity and melody always evoked post-hardcore legends Hüsker Dü, a view shared by many.

My first Screamfeeder purchase was 1993 single Fingers & Toes – whose b-side cover of Elvis Costello’s Oliver’s Army perplexed at the time, but makes perfect sense now – followed quickly by the Burn Out Your Name album from whence it came, and a relationship was off and running. From here things happened quickly, with their first four albums tumbling out in a frantic four-year burst, their music morphing subtly but significantly over the journey but always in an entirely organic manner.

Somewhere between the slacker aesthetic of 1995’s Fill Yourself With Music and the flurry of radio singles found on the following year’s Kitten Licks Blades was replaced behind the kit by the inimitable Dean Shwereb and the “classic Screamfeeder line-up” came into being, ushering in a whole new era for the band.

In this post-Nirvana landscape it seemed the trio had the world at their feet, indeed I saw them play so many nights in so many rooms and they never failed to bring that indefinable it. The chemistry between the three was clear and constant: Tim always seemed to be gently steering the ship, but it appeared a democracy rather than a dictatorship and mutiny never looked on the cards. That glorious amalgam of riffs, feedback, snaking basslines and intertwining vocals was distinctive and intoxicating, and the disparate songwriting styles of Tim and Kellie always complemented each other perfectly.

In 1999 the Home Age covers collection proved a revelation, exposing their influences to include not just staples like Weller, Bowie and The Beatles but also more obscure artists like Come and Neutral Milk Hotel (and even Sesame St).

When they played an instore at the much-missed record store Skinnys where I was working for 2000’s Rocks On The Soul – that album’s release delayed years due to legal ructions with a US label that sadly stalled them from building upon Kitten Lick’s momentum – I got to meet them properly for the first time, the group as friendly and unassuming as any you could imagine.

Although at the following year’s Big Day Out when Tim doused his guitar with lighter fluid before setting it alight and smashing it to smithereens he seemed the epitome of rock’n’roll, affability replaced with genuine fire and brimstone.

This didn’t stop me approaching Tim for a chat between bands at a Paddington house party a couple of years later and finding out that his band were without a label, and soon enough the small indie imprint I ran with friends was releasing Screamfeeder’s sterling 2003 opus Take You Apart, an honour and privilege which still makes me pinch myself to this day. By this time Darek Mudge had expanded the line-up on guitar – he still adds heft occasionally to this day – his presence filling out the sound and allowing a pleasing versatility to envelope proceedings.

Following that burst things began to slow down: they were still around but shows were fewer and farther between, with life seeming to intrude on band plans. I remember seeing them smash out a fine set at the 2007 Pig City celebration during the period when Steph Hughes (Dick Diver, Boomgates) was filling in for Dean on drums, their presence a prerequisite at a festival ostensibly celebrating Brisbane’s rich rock’n’roll heritage.

In 2011 I recall conducting a lengthy interview with Tim on 4ZZZ when the rights to their back catalogue reverted and they digitally released the 40-track b-sides collection Cargo Embargo (there’s gold in them there hills).

That same year I penned an impassioned cover story in the Time Off street press publication for what was mooted as potentially the final ever Screamfeeder gig – Dean was heading overseas again, and the future was uncertain – and was present when the ‘Feeder, Violent Soho and Tape/Off tore Fortitude Valley venue Woodlands a new one in a bittersweet display of Brisbane bonhomie.

Of course it was Bob Mould who drew them out of retirement two years later: who else was going to support the veteran as he revisited his Hüsker Dü and Sugar catalogues throiughout Australia? It was like the full turning of the circle, and seemed entirely appropriate. By this stage Tim and Kellie both had other productive projects at their disposal, but Dean was back in town and the chemistry was intact and they all just seemed to have so much fun when they played together, their songs still rife with that timeless appeal.

From here it was no surprise that new music eventuated in the form of 2017’s Pop Guilt, nor was it a shock that the album’s songs were alive and vital and up there with anything they’d concocted over the entire journey. Upon its release they played a career-retrospective instore at my new record shop, which I got to witness vicariously through the fresh eyes of one of my old Melbourne mates from before my move northwards, who was blown away by both the performance and depth of the catalogue on offer (thus in a weird way completing my own full circle).

Anyway, that’s just my Screamfeeder story, but as the great Paul Kelly is prone to say, “let the part tell the whole”. I’m proud to have been a fan, proud to be a friend, and proud to have been there for just a part of the amazing musical adventure that was and is Screamfeeder.

It didn’t matter whether you saw them sharing a stage with outfits like Pavement, Swervedriver, Sonic Youth, Rollins Band, Ride, Sleater-Kinney or The Breeders, or on any of the massive festival stages they rocked – or indeed on any of their sojourns to America, Europe, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand or basically any stage in Australia known to host rock bands – they were always resolutely their own band, and always a defiantly Brisbane institution. They did things their own way and constantly stayed true to themselves, and everyone involved was richer for the magic that inevitably ensued.

They don’t just represent the old guard of Brisbane’s amazing music scene but they’re our standard bearers, a rock-hewn bridge between disparate eras that’s been trodden by generations of ensuing bands who’ve looked up to Screamfeeder for guidance both musical and spiritual, a beacon of kinship and integrity.

I hope you enjoy Patterns Form for both the great music it contains and the lifetime of toil and inspiration that it represents, and let us never take this wonderful band for granted,

Steve Bell