Rocks on the Soul

In the winter of 2000 we travelled to Melbourne to record our fifth studio album Rocks on the Soul. It had been an unusually long break between records for us; over 4 years – our last, Kitten Licks, having been released in early 1996. This was a crushing defeat, we’d worked hard to set up a 2-year album cycle, and it worked well for us with our “enthusiastic” touring regime. We’d been bogged down in legal restrictions and boring contractual issues with an American label, who delayed the recording a follow up to Kitten Licks. We were impatient, and our Australian label Shock were impatient.

With the waiting we’d also grown despondent – bored of our own new songs, the writing process derailed and flailing. Once the contract was in the bin, the cheque was in the mail, and we finally had the green light to record, our manager did something unusual and lined us up with electronic duo The Pound System, and we didn’t question it, we just agreed. Like a diver struggling upwards on one last breath, the surface was within reach, we were going to make another record.

We arrived at the studio with some scrappy demos and bits of songs. They were a long way from the high-tension energy of the Kitten Licks songs, unusual for us. Dean was ready to quit on the first day: “I can’t play drums any more”, but as we handed total control of the session to Woody and The Rev we felt the weight lift. We were ready to be told what to do, to let someone else find the hooks in our songs and bring them out in the ways they wanted to. The pressure was off and the fun could begin. And it was fun. The songs took weird new directions. They sounded like nothing we’d ever done. The Pound System were spontaneous and creative and ready to deconstruct everything. They pushed us up a notch, out of our comfort zones, and got a record out of us that we couldn’t have done on our own.

We released the album in October and started touring again. It was a turning point for us; we became a four-piece for that tour and have been ever since, with “the new guy” Darek Mudge on guitar. Some of our fans rejected the record, it was jarringly different from anything they’d heard us do. Some of them embraced it and it became their new fave. Most of them just accepted it – they knew we never really made the same album twice and predictability wasn’t something we’d ever given them, on record or on stage.

Hearing the record now, it’s aged far less than some of our others from the 90s. There aren’t too many cringe moments, and almost all the songs make us go “We should play this one again!”. We’re really happy to have it out in a double vinyl format, giving all the songs space to breathe, and including the bonus CD that came with the original release, with the Hi Cs and Triple Hook singles and b sides included.

In the middle of 2000, we finally got the green light to record our fifth album Rocks on the Soul. We travelled to Melbourne and spent three winter weeks in a tiny studio with producer duo The Pound System. It was a great if somewhat confronting session; Dean especially feeling pushed into unfamiliar territory with the extreme editing of parts in the then-new(ish) digital recording domain.

We’d had the songs sitting around for ages and we were more than ready to let someone else take control of how they were played, recorded, and would eventually sound. The album was a sharp change in direction for us, after the noisy energetic Kitten Licks; a lot of fans of the band didn’t get the new sound and feel at all. Understandable, as Tim and Kel discuss in detail, with focus on the opener Stopless (with its Seinfeld reference) and its subdued groove-based feel.

It was our first release which was really a Kellie album, her songs book-ending the record, and standing out as highlights throughout. Themes emerged which she’d go on to explore again and again, the rapidly changing world and our alienation from it, in the “desolate and disconnected” feel of If You Lived Here, the “trying to paint a bleak picture” in Close Again, technology’s increasingly bludgeoning and de-humanising influence, consumer culture, and her probing reflections on her own youth and life choices.

It was a time when music was changing, the 90s were over, it felt like our indie rock enclave was transforming into something different, and we weren’t sure where to go with it. Our world was also changing – a couple of us had mobile phones for the first time ever (and were faced with the task of dividing up colossal phone bills with those who hadn’t made the leap, yet were still happy to send hundreds of texts every day on the others’ Nokia 610s, at 22 cents a pop).

We go deep on every song, exploring the lyrics, music, and what we were trying to achieve. In retrospect we’re still extremely happy with the majority of songs, one or two only end up getting picked apart and allocated to the “maybe not really good enough” pile.

Tim: So Kel, today we’re here discussing our fifth album, Rocks On The Soul. Did you listen to it? I did this morning. What was your first impression?

Kellie: I think this is the album I’ve listened to the most. As a casual listener like I would often put this on to go I wonder what we sound like? and I know this is a very different record to all of the others. And so the thing that I really picked up on today after listening to the other albums as well, this has such different production, and we all knew that, but it’s very obvious. It’s a much quieter record. There’s a lot of ..what’s the word?

Tim: Dynamics?

Kellie: Yeah, there’s a lot more dynamics in this and, and it’s very smooth. Yeah. I was really noticing the smoothness and the quietness, and some of it’s got, like, bass with no distortion,

Tim: I know, and there’s lots of space on the record as well, which is, for us, an unusual step. We can go into detail around it, but it but it was an unusual step making an album that sounded like that.

The last couple of episodes, we talked about the weird little limbo period between Kitten Licks and Rocks On The Soul, where we put out a Hi Cs, Triple Hook and Home Age and then finally, by late 99 early 2000 the whole label and contract bullshit cleared itself up to do with the American label, and we were finally free to go and record our next album in Australia, right? Originally, we were talking to Ken Stringfellow from the Posies about producing, but that ship kind of sailed in the interim, like there was at least a year between that discussion.

Kellie: I think there was probably two or three years even, and it just kind of sailed by and then Shock, or our manager, Joe, I can’t remember who, said to us “Why don’t you do something really different and go to these guys in Melbourne, the Pound System, these two dudes, Woody and the Rev?”

Tim: And we were like “Yeah, whatever. Like, we don’t care. We just want to get our record out”. And it was funny, because by then, half the songs that made it to the record, we’d been kicking around and playing them live for quite a while, a year or two, and half them were like, so brand new, we barely knew them, so we demoed a lot of them. But things like Close Again were super sketch-like..

Kellie: Yeah, so Close Again, and Stopless and Deletia are all songs that I’m gonna say they weren’t finished when we took them in, but they were finished enough to record them, but we definitely knew we were working with, like dance producers, like people who were gonna be recording us on computer with a different background, that they would be producing us in a different way. So I feel, I mean, especially from my point of view, those songs were definitely open to reinterpretation and to be worked on in a different way, which is really different for me.

Tim: Yeah, as I said, we kind of like, were at the point where we’re like, whatever, you know, if someone wants to take these songs and do something different with them, we’re fine with that, because half of them, we’re almost sick of already, you know, like, we’ve been playing things like, I think Mr. Tuba and stuff like that, a long time already.

Kellie: I remember it was Joe who came up with that idea. There was a connection. And I think he’d sort of been talking to them and introduced the idea. Yeah. And potentially, at first we were maybe a little bit like “that’s a weird way to go”, but I think it was exciting. I think we quickly came around to it.

Tim: I mean, think back to the time it was really like the year 2000 the whole Triple J landscape was heavily influenced by rock bands crossing over into dance territory already. That was a big thing. It was almost like a kind of trend that was happening,

Kellie: Yeah, I don’t think we were setting up to do that, though. I don’t believe that we were going to do this crossover. I was looking forward more to being open to doing interesting things in studio and also allowing a producer to do the job of producing us in this new sense of, like, pulling apart your songs. And they did that too, like they really worked on drum sounds and, you know, arrangements and stuff like that. And with our other producers and engineers who we worked with, we did a lot of our own pre-production, and they didn’t really necessarily have any input into our arrangements. Most of these songs were ready to go, though, I think it was just really those three of my songs that I’d actually gotten to the point where I was very happy to let go of them.

Tim: But then you listen to a song like Olive and the arrangement is crazy, like they just chopped and chopped and chopped and pulled bits out and put bits in.

Kellie: I remember we did a lot of work on that song.

Tim: Yeah, it was kind of cool, because they were this duo who had this tiny little studio in Prahran, and I don’t think they were familiar with the songs beforehand. So what happened was we went in and we start playing them, and we recorded stuff, and they almost looked at that as, like, here’s some shit we’re throwing at the canvas. Then they could do what the hell they wanted with it, which was kind of cool.

I think, perhaps it wasn’t like a case of, ah, you know, I think when you perform this song, guys, you should do it this way. It was more like, give us what you got. We’ll do the rest, you know. So Dean had put down some beats, yeah? And they’d say, thanks very much, Dean, and he’d be ushered off, and they would chop the song right up, yeah? And, you know, they’d loop his parts all over the place..

Kellie: “Sound replacement”, which I think was very hard for Dean to accept.

Tim: For sure. So, yeah. I mean, it really brought an element to the band which we’d never had before, which is groove, like all the songs are on a strict groove, and Dean’s playing is very much straightened up.

Kellie: It was very different to our previous albums, because there isn’t that freeness of the drums. Yeah.

Tim: And I know that when we I guess we were super close to the process, but when a lot of people heard it for the first time. They’re like “Whoa, what’s going on?!” Because, you know, there were whole passages of drums where it was a loop of like one bar and things like that.

Kellie: Stopless has a loop that wasn’t even ours.

Tim: Yeah, that’s right! What’s the story with that? We can’t talk about it, can’t we?

Kellie: Okay, no, it was nicked from somewhere. It was nicked. Okay, they would never tell us where it was. And I eventually found out. I think Dean worked it out, but it’s from some weird, random place, a real mainstream artist and so we were like, we’ll probably get sued, or they will. I don’t know. Maybe we could sue them in advance. Maybe let’s set up our lawyers and take a meeting.

Tim: We were on Shock at the time. We were given a budget, and we were flown to Melbourne for a fortnight. We put in accommodation about what was it? A 20 minute walk from the studio in Prahran.

Kellie: We had a unit, and we would walk to the studio and home every day, yeah, and I was obsessed with Blur, and I was listening to one song over and over and over as I walk to and fro, which really, for me, pushed and informed a lot of acceptance of going into new territories. So the song that from Blur that I was listening to was called Battle, from 13, yes, and it’s got all this sub-bass, and it’s got a loop, you know, it’s dreamy, I mean, it’s very studio. And so that allowed me to be present and allow all this, like, different type of style of working.

Tim: I remember we got up every morning and walked to the studio, and then when we finished every night, it was really late, like midnight or whatever, and we’d walk home and it was freezing, and we’re all wearing, like, scarfs and hats and gloves and coats and whatnot..

Kellie: Yeah. Also, what I remember about the studio was that they were moving into this space to set up a new studio, but we were the first people in there. They’d just unwrapped their computers. They’d just got a G4, and this was the first time they were trying Pro Tools. They had another computer for Cubase, which is what they would always work on. But this, for them, was a massive learning curve as well. So we were their guinea pigs.

Tim: I remember there were big technological dramas just dragging constantly. The drives weren’t big enough. The stuff wasn’t getting saved correctly. They were trying to rig up tons of drives to access all the recorded ..you know..

Kellie: So we would lose stuff, I suppose, then there was this really big thing where if something good happened, we’d all go “save, save for your lives!!”

Tim: So good..! And also the studio was super small. Remember, like, it had a live room, which is about the size of this room here we’re in about maybe three or four by four meters, and a little control room with a big desk and a couple of couches, monitors and that was it.

Kellie: Yeah, this space we were in was an office space, and it wasn’t a studio, it was, yeah, purpose-built.

Tim: We’d always get there in the morning, and Woody was already at a desk coughing up, smoking, yeah, editing parts. I don’t know if he slept at the studio or –

Kellie: Yeah, he did. He was sleeping at the studio, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t see any sunlight for that whole entire time, yeah, but he went grey, like his skin color started changing when we were noticing it like he was literally turning grey. A little bit worried about his health, yeah, and state of mind. And we would also eat La Porchetta most nights.

Kellie: Yeah, I remember their tuna salad and pizza. It was very good. Yeah. Do you remember also that Dean had an absolute freak out, and we had to stop him from leaving, like he was ready to board a plane and get out.

Tim: It was on the first day, and we were recording Stopless, and he was playing along, and I guess it was the first time for him where someone popped him in a room, put his headphones on and got him to play a certain amount of bars. And they said “Thanks, Dean, that’s enough”. And also, like, I think he felt like he wasn’t nailing it, but, yeah, he did a freak out!

Kellie: Yeah, it was hard to see as well. And it was really worrying, because, you know, he was very determined, like, he really wanted to leave. You see him struggling, and then when it was my turn to do stuff, I know I also struggled, because I felt like I was like, I didn’t know the songs like I felt very under prepared.

Tim: It’s kind of weird for us, because if you think back to Kitten Licks, we took it upon ourselves to be like the co-producers as such, and be mega all over everything. And with this one, we sort of handed over the trust, which was a great thing to do, but you do enter that sort of like scary territory, yeah?

Kellie: And it just meant for us, like, when they were doing all of this rearrangement, we had to relearn the songs then, like on the fly. So you know, that’s not how I would normally work, and I’m fairly rigid in my work style, I suppose, only because I want to do it really well and I need to be practiced up. So doing it on the fly, even though, I guess we didn’t really understand how you edited, we’d never done that because everything was live to tape. You’d have to do drop-ins and be really super focused. But this was like, just play it 10 times, and they’ll choose the best one, that’s right. And that was like, really unusual. And now it’s very normal, that’s what you do.

Tim: I remember the mixing, which we again did in the same session, was kind of fun. Like, we’d probably bust through two to three songs a day, and it was just super creative, like, so it was like, Okay, now we’ve got all the raw materials. Let’s just play with it and see what happens. Yep, like, for example, on If You Lived Here, there’s that field recording when we sent Dean out with a portable tape recorder, and he went to the station and recorded the announcement over the speaker and stuff like that. Yeah. Another funny thing I remember, which just popped to mind, is it was like, right on the dawn of everyone having phones. I think it was Dean had a phone, or you had a phone. I didn’t have a phone. And so I’d be saying to Dean “Can I text on your phone again?” And I’d send like, thousands of texts, and I’d have to keep a tally of them and pay him 20 cents for every text.

Kellie: That’s so funny, because I remember going back to the hotel and calling Stephen, and it was the hotel phone, having to, like, you know, you get charged by the minute.

Tim: Dean would be getting bills for $400 to $600 and dividing him up between me, you and him.

Kellie: Oh, my God, I don’t know who I would have been texting, because I don’t think I knew anyone with the phone then, because, like, you and Dean were the first to get phones, and I took some time to come along. And I was remembering being at practice and just watching YouTube on your phone the whole time, going “Hey, do some stuff. Like You two idiots. Just like, be present”.

Tim: It’s like the tables have turned. “Now, get off your phone”.

Kellie: “I’m doing an email, I’m at work, at practice, give me a break”. Funny, yeah, how it’s changed so much. It’s crazy. And again, you know, we’ve talked about this, how free and easy it was, and in our book, we kind of talk about you just disappear when you went on tour. No, like I was share housing. No one would know where I was unless they had my tour itinerary and my Mum and Dad didn’t know where I was, sometimes, if I had spare change to go to a phone box, we’re so super connected now. And yeah, this was the brink.

Tim: Yeah, it really was.

Kellie: We played different instruments; you and I swapped. So this was also the first album that I would contribute a lot more of my own songs, not co-written, as well. Like that was very different for us.

Tim: When I listened to the album this morning in the car, the two major things that struck me were, one, that – this is a cringy thing to say, right? And I’m cringing as I say it, but it sounded like a band who’d suddenly grown up a little because it was a little more, you know, smoother, and it wasn’t quite as aggressive and manic and stuff like that, which, you know, I love this album, but I also love all the previous stuff, which is a much more high energy, bit crazy, yeah. But I love the songs, and I love the style of everything, and I love it as a whole. But the other thing that struck me was that it was a massive you album, like it opens and closes with your two big songs, and it’s got things like Deletia and Olive all the way through, which are amazing songs. And yeah, it was a real statement for you.

Kellie: Yeah, it really was, and I agree it is the album that I don’t want to say this, but I’m going to, like, a bit middle of the road, but it’s not because for us it is, but it’s in terms of the, like, general music world. It’s not a middle of the road album. But yeah, we did kind of grow up. There was a long time between records. We’d been through a lot of change and a lot of upheaval, and so we toured as much as we could, and we had to stop, and we had to kind of get, well, I had to get a job, and, like, I was working a job and kind of struggling with that, because I was feeling quite lost. And a lot of the songs are also quite like.. Stopless is a real big memoir song kind of thing. And I don’t know, I just feel like it’s a middle point in a lot of ways, where you get to a certain place and then you look back, and it was a look at the future as well. So, yeah, I don’t know it was a funny one, but I love it, like I’m super proud of this record, me too, and I do love the quietness and it’s funny because it sounds so synthetic in a lot of places, which is kind of hard to feel good about in some ways, but it’s just what happened at that time.

Tim: Yeah, and I think you know, our songwriting style and our voices save it from being something weird and that we’re not fond of. So as always, you’ve got some diary stuff. Give us a little insight into the Rocks On The Soul recording session.

Kellie: Okay, cool. So it was Sunday the 11th of June, 2000 This was the day before we are going in.
So we’re just getting ready. I’ve been waiting for this for so long. We all have it’s here and it’s now. We have to let it envelop us. I want to work hard. I want to not leave feeling like I could have done better. I know we can do something really great, something important. I don’t know if it will be but I want to be remembered for this. I feel that good about all of it. It will be interesting to see what transpires. But tonight, I want to be quiet and listen. Dean and I keep being snippy at each other as we both get defensive. Maybe it’s me. Do I inspire this kind of reaction? I don’t know, but Dean really does react to me weirdly. I hope we don’t have any fights. My thoughts here are low. I’m feeling like I’ve come in very underprepared. Head and like I don’t even know how to play my instrument. This is scary. I guess it’s the way Dean felt when he was having trouble. But this is even before I’ve even put a hand on a string. I’m not getting much support from Tim. I get the feeling he is just ready to step in and take it off me. I don’t need that kind of feeling looming over my already frail ego, but deep down, I know I’ll go, Okay, I just can’t get too sensitive and take the criticism as it comes and just deal with it.

Tim: Wow, it’s funny. Like almost all the sessions that you’ve quoted from your diary, there’s all these weird little personal niggles that we’ve sort of forgotten about, right?

Kellie: Yeah. And the thing about you and me is that, in the practice room, in studio, in the work environment, stuff, we might have, you know, arguments or robust discussions about things, but as soon as you walk out, we’re just goofing off and being stupid. I’ve not taken on any of these things, but, you know, a lot of it is insecurities and neurosis, and you’re just trying to get the best of stuff. And I’m trying to do that, and I just feel a bit insecure about stuff.

Tim: Sure, and I mean, I’m also someone who’s like so stupidly adhered to their own vision of how things should be. I often find it hard to, you know, include someone else’s vision or someone else’s kind of process or whatever, so that as well.

Kellie: Yeah, it feels very weird to read all this stuff out. It’s very it’s very personal and, I feel very vulnerable sharing, but it’s, the funny thing is, it’s kind of how we work to this day. But the most beautiful thing is that you and I always have a lot of fun, like we are really good friends. And, you know, I might have read out some stuff where I’m saying we’re having ego, yeah, head-to-head, whatever it is, wars and creative disputes, whatever, but we’ll walk outside the room and just laugh about something.

Tim: Let’s talk about Stopless. It’s like the most beautifully simple song, only four chords. It never goes anywhere. The lyrics are like a long stream of consciousness about you and your relationship with the world, broadly speaking. Where did it come from?

Kellie: Well, it’s really out of my journals, and I remember writing it I was living at Mount Nebo. It wasn’t meant to be, like the memoir type song that it’s turned out to be or whatever, but yeah, just all, like, bits and pieces out of my diary. And yeah, this song just kind of came out. And really strangely, I’ve had so many people write letters to me about it, stop me at, you know, festivals to tell me how much that song means to them. You know, another person I know told me that they did a school project on it where they had to, like, talk about the lyrics as poetry. You know, it’s really resonated with lots of people, and I think it’s just because it’s really simple.

Tim: It’s also talking about looking back through your diaries and memories and regretting things, and, you know, things like that. So it’s very personal in that regard. Like it talks about looking at the past in a sort of way which is painful, perhaps, or regretful – things like that. And everyone can relate to that kind of thing.

Kellie: Yeah, and so it’s four chords, like, it’s kind of, you get lulled into this nice sort of rhythm. The drum beat’s there. My singing sounds nice, you know, and the guitar parts are floaty as well, and mesmerizing. It all came together really well. Very proud of that song, yeah, it’s awesome. I love it.

Tim: The next song is Domino. Yeah, so Domino, as we discussed last episode was going to be a single, but it never was. And we had the version of it that was going to be the single version, which we re-recorded for Rocks On The Soul, and it was super similar. Nothing changed in the arrangement or the parts and the Pound System, just, you know, said to us “Let’s just do it again so it fits in the album”. Yeah, and do you remember where we wrote it? It was your house on Jubilee Terrace in Barden. We were sitting downstairs at the table, and I kind of had that riff, and the word Domino was the only word that really fit with the riff, because the riff kind of goes no, no, no, no, no, you know. And so we just started batting it around and, you know, throwing lines to one another and rhyming, and yeah, sooner or later, we had a song.

Kellie: Yeah, I do remember that now. And that was a really fun way to write, because it was, you know, the song is kind of weirdly meaningless, because, like, what does Domino refer to? But then, you know, the verses are kind of a bit dark about like, drowning, getting stuck in the undertow or whatever, and didn’t wanna let you know, you know. So we just like rhyming stuff, but we’re both very particular about words and what words might evoke in the listener. I don’t want throwaway, dumb stuff, yeah. So yeah, we probably spend a lot of time making this sound a certain way. I love playing this song. I love singing it. I love how it sounds. It’s one of the rocky songs on the album. It’s like a real traditional Screamfeeder song.

Tim: The arrangement is really kooky, and it does odd numbers of things all the time, and we’ve got to keep our eyes on the ball. That’s kind of just how we wrote that one. Yeah, threes, yeah, but it kinda like flows.

Tim: Talking about lyrics, like, we’ve both got quite a high filter, quite a high quality-control thing. So, like, the funny thing about that is that there’s tons of our songs with weird little in jokes and nonsense words and funny things inside them, yeah, which make them, in a way, kind of kooky and weird, but at the same time, they’re really thought about and really considered, and we’ve really put them through every test of that we can.

Kellie: You know, often with lyrics, for me, the first line is the one that’s the most meaningless, right? And then the rest of it builds like, I can’t change the first line either, because it’s like, what started the song so often it’ll be the first two lines that kind of don’t fit with the rest of stuff. But speaking of throwaway like in-jokes or whatever Stopless has one, right? I remember being interviewed by Scott Mercer for his podcast, and we talked very in depth about this song, and he asked, why is it that you sing that one line? “It’s just never been a dream I have”. So the previous line is all the things that I will achieve in my life. It’s not some nine to five thing or a housewife, not that any of those things are bad. And you say, it’s just never been a dream I had, not that any of those things are bad. It’s like a reference to Seinfeld. It’s like, Oh, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Because I’m sort of saying, like, I don’t want to work full time or be a housewife, but I know so many people who have spent their lives working full time and or, you know, my mom was working, but also a housewife, and I didn’t want to, like, make that sound bad, but yeah, not that anything is wrong with that, and then you sing the next line, and was asked “why did you do that?” It was like.. “I have absolutely no idea”.

Tim: I think it was just a mixed decision, like Woody was just “Let’s break it up a bit”.

Kellie: Yeah? So that’s quite funny. I didn’t know that. Oh my God.

Tim: Oh dear. So back to Domino. I mean, really, the song revolves around that one word and the word could be someone’s name, or it could be a reference to the game. I don’t know.

Kellie: I do remember afterwards going this is awful, because this is not what I’m about. But I was like, imagine if we got, like a Dominos sponsorship, and they gave us money and it became an ad. Well, they’d give us free pizza. But no, that was never the intention. It was more, actually, you know what? Okay, this is what my memory may be. So remember, we were seeing Joyce the Voice, and we were getting those singing lessons, and she was making us sing like in Italian and Domino like you have to pronounce. You gotta have your mouth in a certain way to make it sound good. I kind of feel like it was a vocal exercise, right? And just a very random word to focus on. Were we having lessons before this album or afterwards? Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I think that might have been the side effect of Joyce the Voice Lessons.

Tim: There it is. Domino. Such a good song. I like it, yay. What’s next? Above the Dove. Do you know where I got the title from?

Kellie: I bet you it’s a book. No, oh, no no – Sesame Street.

Tim: It is Sesame Street. There was little sketch, a little cartoon on Sesame Street about something was in the sky above the dove. And I was like “That’s cool. I’m having it”.

Kellie: Thank you, yoink. So tell us about ..this is a fairly complex song.

Tim: It’s a weird song about, let me see if I can remember it correctly. It’s about aliens coming to earth and erasing all the knowledge that mankind has amassed or whatever, and going, this is largely bullshit. Let’s just take the animals and freaking leave the humans to it, I think, you know, that sort of sums it up. It feels like it’s a dream. I don’t know, like, I don’t remember writing it. I just remember getting the phrase and going “Hey, I’m having that”.

Kellie: Yeah, cool. But, like, um, musically and arrangement wise, it’s quite complicated, or complex, or is it not really?

Tim: No more complex than anything else on the album, and it’s got its own weird tuning, and it’s kind of makes the chord sound a bit strange.

Kellie: Maybe that’s what it is. But there are lots of stops and starts, and there’s quiet and loud and..

Tim: Oh, very much, yeah, there’s a lot of really filtered, like guitars that are mega dull, and, you know, very much, like just almost a sound. You can’t even tell it’s a guitar.

Kellie: You know, actually, that’s what I was noticing this morning on headphones, was that it sounds like it’s underwater.

Tim: Yes, it does. Yeah, there’s a couple of songs like that.

Kellie: Yeah, it’s great. I like that. But again, it’s like, very kind of quiet, yeah?

Tim: And the end of the song has that berserk delay pedal freakout thing. Yeah, you just grab the delay pedal and wind it out so that it just holds the sound and just throws it around. Does all this crazy stuff.

We were really into the old analog delay at that time, fantastic. It was also a fairly overused sound on a lot of things at that time, later on.

Kellie: Yeah, good work. That’s a good song. Song number three, that was a single, wasn’t it? I think it was the first single. We made a film clip for it, yeah, and that was by Rachael Johnson.

Tim: We were all lying in a big bed. Yeah, it’s dreamy. It’s almost like a fairly high-production clip for us, done in a studio with lights and yeah, things like that.

Kellie: Yeah. We also had this thing was like a water tank, like just a tray of water, right, with broken glass in the bottom of it, and you shine light into it, and you move the tray, and the water ripples, and so you’ve got this beautiful, yeah, like ripply light effect. Nice, very nice.

Wow. I’d forgotten about that.

Yeah, have a look at the video. We’re, yeah, wearing pajamas. And I think it’s the second video I’m wearing pajamas in. But made a really beautiful film clip for Stopless as well, where like was very much almost like let’s make it like My Bloody Valentine – like it was photocopied. And, yeah, that was a nice one.

Tim: So the next song is 14 & 44. Do you know where I got the title for that one?

Kellie: Yes, it’s a bus timetable time, isn’t it?

Tim: The 375 going down through Bardon into the city that came at that stop at 14 past and 44 past the hour, right? Which is like, so boring and stupid, but whatever. Honestly, it’s a bit of a dumb song. I’m not crazy fond of the lyrics. It’s just I used to cycle quite a bit in Brisbane, and I’d be out there with my headphones on super loud cycling, which is very dangerous, I’ve actually had accidents from doing that, and just had huge rushes of adrenaline and excitement from the music and the cycling. And it’s just about feeling full of energy and like you can explode from so much energy. Basically, that’s about it.

Kellie: Yeah, it’s so much fun to play.

Tim: It’s awesome because the riff moves in this certain way that grabs your body and makes you move with it.

Kellie: Yeah, I just love playing it, because I’m just all over the neck as well. Yeah, it’s so much fun to play, right?

Tim: And it’s got, like, a Ticket to Ride, a Ticket to Ride, a Ticket to Ride in it.

Kellie: Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, the Beatles reference can’t go too wrong with that, or maybe get sued again.

Tim: Wow, yeah, and the one note guitar solo at the end, yeah, you gotta love it.

The next song, track five, is Deletia. It’s one of my faves.

Kellie: Yeah, it’s a good one. Again, it’s in the A tuning. And so I just kind of wrote a bunch of songs in this great a tuning, E, A, D, A, A, E, and it is like a whole world of possibilities opens up with this tuning. And so I wrote this on the guitar, and I think I played the guitar and you play the bass, yes, so the bass line’s quite jaunty.

Tim: Yeah, I’m a jaunty kind of guy.

Kellie: You’re a jaunty kind of guy,

Tim: Jaunty McJauntslot.

Kellie: That’s what we call you when you’re not around.
Yeah. Okay, so the lyrics for this, I’m really proud of these lyrics, because they’re really descriptive. And then generally, kind of personal. They’re kind of looking more at the world in general. So, we read a lot of these books, like Douglas Coupland, and I don’t know, just all the books we were reading were often having, like, you know, very harsh assessments of where we’re going. And I felt that, you know, as a society, and as you know humankind, we’re making a lot of bad decisions. And I’m referencing things like, you buy all these things, and plastic’s just piling up to the sky, and we don’t even know how to write anymore, and we don’t know the essence of stuff, like glass is actually made from sand. All of these modern things are just taken for granted, and we just a throwaway culture. And, you know, back in 2000 it was the, you know, the y2k thing. And I guess we’re all kind of thinking about the future and how, how we fit into it. And so this song, for me is just a bit of taking stock of how fast culture’s accelerated.

Tim: Yeah, and I mean, as we said, it was also we’re all tipping into that world of having phones and computers everywhere.

Kellie: The last part of it is like, you know, language and virus, one and nought. It’s like we are turning into machines in some way, the way that we have no connection to the past and the essence of, you know, yes, glass being made from sand. It’s like a natural product that creates an unnatural product. You know, I don’t know if that’s good.

Tim: Yeah, I get it.

Kellie: Thank you. Thanks for getting me.

Tim: And I remember when we recorded it. It was all going great, but then perhaps you just did it, but perhaps Woody suggested you do the little come up at the end of the note. So “Glass is made of sa-and”. He did a little lift, and that was the sweet moment. Everyone went “Oh yeah!”.

Kellie: So I had a lot of trouble singing, because I wasn’t very confident in terms of my singing, because I was still finding my voice, and I didn’t have confidence to explore anywhere with my voice. And so I do remember Woody was like pushing me to try and get different emotions into my voice, and it was just that it started pushing me further back into myself, because I was feeling criticised and judged and I couldn’t deliver, and I was very down on myself, and we were doing a lot of using, you know, what we call the gray whale, which is autotune. So to me, that it felt like a real failure was so hard. But there’s a certain innocence about the way I’m singing on this as well. Because, like I do feel I’m very trapped in a very small, limited area. He did try to get stuff out of me that I kind of delivered.

Tim: I think also, the thing was that more so than ever before, the focus on the precise melodies was really there, like with Kitten Licks, even sure the melodic poppy songs, but we’re pretty loose on them, and we could do what we wanted. This one was, like, the melody should do this, because the chords are doing that, and it would help, and it would make it into a hook.

Kellie: Yeah, well, the chords are the bed, so the vocal actually really needs to be doing interesting stuff, yeah. And that was one of the things about my songwriting at that time, I was really getting into just having, you know, four chords, or, like, a simple musical thing, and it’s the singing that changes, not the chords, or..

Tim: Yeah, oh, it’s a super strong songwriting tactic. Look, it’s awesome.
Now the next one, Metal Detector is a bit of weird one, for two reasons. One is that it wasn’t actually gonna be on the record. And then prior to mastering, I was like “Holy shit, we need Metal Detector on there”. And I called up Woody and said “We need to mix metal detector and have it ready”, because mastering was like a day away, and I’m like, we need to put it on there. So I flew to Melbourne. We mixed until six in the morning, then we flew to Sydney to master the record with Metal Detector on it.

Kellie: I do not remember any of this.

Tim: Yeah, it was crazy. And honestly, like, it’s my least favorite song the record. I’m like, why did we bother with this? It’s such a weird thing.

Kellie: I can remember writing this. And it was when we were going, I don’t know, hey, Kellie, you play the guitar. And so I came up with the ding ding ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And I play that on the recording as well. I think when you we were writing this song, when you brought it in, we were like, Yeah, a bit meh.

Tim: It was super late stage, and it was something that it was just like, here’s the parts, this is how it goes. And we didn’t really have much time to work it through. I think I was trying to be too clever with my chords, which I often, you know, I often tend to do, and the verses are kind of bit shit in the end as a result. And I thought that, um, it was all like, deep and meaningful, but in the end, it’s a bit boring. And the choruses are also a little bit shit, because they’re just the last lines of the verse, which is just repeated over loud guitar.

Kellie: Yeah, okay, fair enough, yeah. Next!

Tim: Next is Olive. Olive I love, oh, my god, it’s so pretty. It’s got interesting twists and turns. I think the key of singing is perfect. The bass line’s amazing. I’m in love with this song. I freaking dig it. Had you forgotten it? Not heard it for a while?

Kellie: No, I’ve heard it, but like, every time I hear it, I’m reminded, yeah, I think one of the things that’s so good about this song is it’s a very nice, fully rounded song, you know, like, it’s got the lead break at the end. It’s got a middle scoop out where it’s just the singing, it’s a breakdown, it’s a real song.

Tim: I think, you know, as I said, prior to mixing, it was a much straighter song. We didn’t have so many cuts in. I mean, like it does cut in now a lot, and it’s like any more would have been too much, but I think they kind of nailed it, and they just applied a really creative thing to it, and got a lovely, interesting sort of arrangement.

Kellie: And I’m feeling like that’s what I was talking about in my journal, was that we recorded stuff, but it didn’t end up being what we wrote. So putting a bassline down to it, I’d have to change how I played it.

Tim: With a lot of songs like this one especially came out better. Like, oh, absolutely improve the song. Made it more interesting. It’s got a Breeders vibe.

Kellie: It does. And I’m pretty sure that I was channeling The Breeders, you know, like with, well, maybe the Pixies with the “Can’t start a fire”.

Tim: Does that line have any special relevance?

Kellie: No, it doesn’t. I think it was just imagery about being left out in the sun and not being it was about a lighter frustration. Well, it was like the lighter wasn’t working. So, yeah, there was a frustration there. Do I mention a lighter in there? Or am I just making it up? Yeah, so it’s kind of imagining, like this thing that’s broken out in the sun and it still won’t work. Yeah, I was frustrated, you know, like again, looking back at where I ended up, I think my family stuff and being a person trying to navigate a broken family as an adult.

Tim: Okay, yeah, I like it.

Kellie: Thank you, Tim. I like it too. I’m very proud of it. Thank you. My voice sounds good. Oh, it’s called Olive because, you know, it was that stupid thing where we have to call a song by a name that has nothing to do with it. And I like Olives. Olives are amazing, yeah? So, I was just really into Olives at that time, and I just called an Olive. It’s not a person’s name, it’s the food.

Tim: Yeah, strangely enough, it could go with a Domino’s Pizza.

Kellie: With Olives. Great. I see where we’re going here. We’re obviously hungry. Talking about pizzas and food and stuff.. Mr. Tuba is next. We played this one heaps. I remember doing on it tour, you know, for years, actually.

Tim: Yeah, it’s another one that I stole it more or less word for word, from Sesame Street. It’s about like a brass band where this guy joins the band, he plays the Tuba, and it’s really loud, and he doesn’t listen to what everyone else is doing, and he just marches in and does his own thing, and everyone else in the band’s like “Dude, you gotta listen if you’re in a band!”. You gotta, as well as make noise, you gotta listen. And, you know, include what others are trying to achieve if you want to be in a band. And I thought, hey, there’s some shit that’s amazing, because, like, my daughter was four at the time, we watched a lot of Sesame Street, and this was back when they showed all the really old shit from, like, the 70s and 80s, the lovely old animated clips, and old songs which I learned so much from, you know, sort of listening to how they put songs together. And, yes, I nicked it from there. And, you know, I love that song. I pushed you guys into playing it just recently.

Kellie: Yeah, we’ve gone back to playing it again, yeah, and it’s, it’s kind of nice, but you and I have also played it as duo, always. It’s a lot of fun to play.

Tim: And, yeah, it’s got that sort of lovely long end section which gets all atmospheric, and it’s got a bit of subtle field recording in it, right?

Kellie: Yeah, so you can hear, I’m pretty sure it’s Dean, because I know I did some of this stuff too, but I’m pretty sure this was Dean walking along. You can hear him press like a cross the road button, and there’s a bus pulling up, and it’s very quiet, and you hit cars, it sounds like the ocean, yeah? It’s actually very calming. I like it.

Tim: That was the third single, right?

Kellie: Yeah, gosh, we didn’t do a video for this.

Tim: No, we didn’t.

Kellie: Okay, did we just put three singles out?

Tim: Yes.

Kellie: Good thinking us.
So track number nine is If You Lived Here.

Tim: This one is super interesting as well. Tell us about this one. Where do you get the phrase from? It sort of seems familiar.

Kellie: I’m pretty sure it’s an advertising campaign for, like, a new suburb. Yeah, I think it was play-home thing, whatever. And I remember seeing it and just going that is a really great statement. Like, if you wherever you are, if you lived here, you’d be home now. And so the song is kind of like this. There’s a traveling element. It’s always about movement, you know, like this person’s driving home from their life, working life, or something. But there’s, I think there’s, it’s very hard to talk about this song, because it’s not really me, like it’s come from somewhere else, and it’s like, I’m reflecting someone else’s life.

Tim: Is it sort of heavy, or is it just not? It’s just more incidental.

Kellie: It’s heavy. It’s like, this, this person’s dying, right? Or that they’re potentially going to, like, end their lives, right by driving home and not going home. They’re actually, they missed their turnoff. They missed the exit on the freeway, and it won’t be long, so they’re actually gonna, like, drive off a cliff or something. So it’s like, there’s two people, and the woman, I think maybe she’s dying, and the man is actually deciding he’s going to go off.

Tim: Wow, there’s a lot of story,

Kellie: I know, and I can’t really describe it, because it’s nothing I know about. Okay, I haven’t lived through this, but it’s like a story I’m telling without telling much of the story. It’s like my imagination, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s really weird.

It’s also, again, a look at modern life. The water is flavored with flouride the air hums with shiny black power lines. The reception is pathetic. It’s all about this modern stuff, that that’s the only stuff we’re really worried about. And so the stuff that we see in our neighborhoods, this eve of technology being our focus, and I guess a little bit of our personal-ness is lost. And so I think that these people are really struggling with that in this story, and she’s dying, and he decides, wow, he can’t look after her, so he’s gonna go kill himself.

Tim: Wow.

Kellie: I know, right?!

Tim: Whenever I hear the song, the physical picture that it puts in my mind is of like a very American like, you know, new subdivision in a desert kind of picture, right? Half-built houses against a sandy backdrop and mountains.

Kellie: Yeah, that fits in the story really well. It’s desolate like it’s disconnected, new suburban life and how it’s really, really separating us from who we are.

Tim: Okay, you know, now I need to ask you about the ba-ba-ba section. Is that just us having fun? Because it sounds like it!

Kellie: Yeah, I remember working on this a lot in our practice room at Red Zeds. We worked on this song for a long time. We probably almost maybe abandoned it at one point. Came back to it, and I figured the ba-ba part was us, yeah, kind of having some fun,

Tim: As was the big, sort of chimey guitar part after it, where Dean gets all Keith Moon on the drums. There’s almost the one section on the whole album where he kind of lets rip, and they didn’t cut all that out!

Kellie: And so that’s the great part about this song. It does let us be us again. Yeah. And then, of course, there’s the field recordings from the train station, which I think was South Melbourne train station. And it’s funny, because the song’s about driving, but the field stuff is a train station, and it’s like listing off the stations. And it kind of feels a bit sad and lonely, you know, because it was winter too. So, I get taken back to that time.

Tim: And it’s so funny because like as the song draws to a close, it gets really triumphant and joyous, which is so typical of us to sort of forget about the mood of what the lyrics to try and go for and just get all rocking on it, yeah?

Kellie: But I love the end chorus, like it’s so beautiful. Like, you know, you we both have these beautiful harmonies and guitar lines.
Yeah, it’s hard to talk about the lyrical stuff because I’ve never really articulated it before. It’s a weird one, it’s very hard to talk about, because it’s not a story, it’s that there’s pieces of pictures, to me, postcards.

Tim: Yeah, I like it. It’s a good one.

Kellie: Yeah.

Tim: You like it too. All right.
Next song, The Singer. I love The Singer. It’s like, probably my favorite song of mine on the record. And when I played it in the car this morning, I was like, hey, I want to bring that back, because it’s like, I know all the words really easily, and it’s still in a good key for me. And I really like the chorus. I do it as my solo shows, and I repeat the chorus, like, crazily, like I do three, four times at the end, and stuff like that. And the lyrics are mega kooky.

Kellie: I know. “How many pisses have you ever done?” That’s cool. Can you remember your favorite one? Can you remember your favorite piss Tim, when you pissed on the phone?

Tim: That was a good one..!
The pee part’s super incidental, like, it’s got nothing to do with anything. I think it was just for a rhyme.

Kellie: Actually, I wonder if you were thinking, I’m not going to say the word kisses. I’m going to turn into pisses for like, edginess or like, kookiness.

Tim: I can’t remember. You might be right, yeah.

Kellie: Do you remember I played the guitar on this as well, right? So there’s like two opposing guitars, and knowing that I played a lot of guitar on bits and pieces, it was because I was bored. And I was like, I’m bored of playing the bass. And then I think we were kind of a bit stuck writing songs. So it was like, you go here. Kellie, do something. So what it does is introduce a new element, which, like, that’s why we started doing the keyboard stuff later.

Tim: That’s right, to like, just kind of bring in a fresh element to like, make us feel excited about stuff. Yeah, and the lyrics also feature a ripped off Bitch Magnet line about having a bucket of bolts and a jar of pens.

Kellie: Yeah, very good. I love how you can pull in these little snippets. And probably I’m the only person in the world that knows it. There wouldn’t be many other people that did.

Tim: Got a bucket of bolts and a jar of pens. Love it.

Kellie: Love it too. Let’s listen.

Tim: You know what? I’m gonna push for us to do that one again at practice, because it’s fairly rock, and fun, and you know, you’ve got a good vocal line on it and stuff. Cool. You into it?

Kellie: I’m not, not into it. Double Negative. I’m, you know what that makes really, I’m just trying to be, what is it? Positive? Far out. I’ve either had too many coffees or not enough coffees today, both at the same time. Yeah, the double thing, yeah. What does it mean? I do love our vocal harmonies, and the choruses are great.

Tim: Oh yeah. We had the group of singers in there for that one. Remember, we had a gang vocal?

Kellie: So we had Leo Mullins, Ollie Brown, who’s from Art Of Fighting, and Brendan Webb from Sandpit too. They were some of the best singers in the country, so we were lucky to have them. Leo was from Two Liter Dolby, and also played in like The Welcome Mat way back in the early days. So that that was a coup. And it was also the usual thing with us, get in a whole bunch of really amazing singers and mix them down so low you cannot hear them.

Tim: Yeah? I mean, you can kind of hear it, but not really.

Kellie: It doesn’t stand out, which is a shame. Yeah, we should get all of these things remixed. You can remix them in your spare time.

Tim: So the last song is Close Again. It’s the other awesome bookend, which I guess goes so closely hand in hand with Stopless, like it’s, you know, similar kind of vibe for chords, same tuning, slightly different lyrical kind of tack, I guess.

Kellie: Yeah, it’s sort of similar. I mean, I guess Stopless Is the taking stock, and then I think Close Again is the looking forward again. It’s a bit of a looking at the world.

Tim: So Stopless is inner and Close Again is outer, right? Okay, can you give me an example?

Kellie: Yeah, so there’s a big, long, chorusy thing at the end, which is like “Every crime is intertwined for every one of yours is mine. Faceless hope, a tight rope, or some easy antidote, personal Chernobyl, like generating a black hole. Entertain, don’t explain. It’s just a band-aid for your pain”. I guess it’s kind of personal sounding, but I mean, I was just so proud to be able to get the name Chernobyl.

Tim: Yeah, that’s good work.

Kellie: Personal. Chernobyl, I mean, that’s, that’s very evocative, isn’t it? Like, I was always very obsessed with dying in nuclear war. That generation grew up like, worried that we were gonna die from nuclear war. And so, you know, Chernobyl, when that kind of thing happened, I still kind of, you know, obviously, years afterwards, I’m using that as a metaphor for a personal kind of breakdown, or, you know, this ill at ease kind of feeling, which I think is just pervasive in society.

The idea of, you know – Douglas Coupland does it so well. He talks about, Life Without God, life growing up thinking that we’re all going to die from nuclear holocaust, the idea of this accelerated culture that we’re all just kind of hanging on, you know, and we’re speeding through life, and it’s a bit scary sometimes. So I guess maybe this song is more personal than what I sort of said earlier.

Tim: But it’s less specifically personal about you and your diaries and your particular memories and feelings towards –

Kellie: Yeah, I’m just trying to paint a bleak picture.

Tim: And succeeding, yeah. And it’s got the massively long – like we just went crazy on the editing and the, you know, effects and the parts, and it’s got all these crazy sorts of counter-melodies.

Kellie: You’re playing bass on this. And so this is one of the great things I love about this song, is your bass lines, and you’re doing, like, lead stuff on the bass. It sounds so great. And it’s all delayed as well. And there’s, you know.. it just sounds so good.

Tim: Yeah. And Woody just edited tons of your lines in as, like, refrains that add texture and color.

Kellie: Yeah. I think this song really succeeds in being this little dark, brooding personality,

Tim: Yeah, and the fact that it’s mega-long is a great closer for the album.

Kellie: One thing I don’t like in some of these songs is the weird processed drum sounds.

Tim: I guess it was something we weren’t tuned into it as such, in the room. It was a secondary thing, like we were more about the guitars, maybe the vocals and the bass even, like, it was almost like we handed them the reins to do the rhythm section stuff, and we just kind of like, okay, we don’t have to think about it, they’ve got that under control. And also, there’s something when you’re mixing, you’re probably mixing sort of loud, and it all sounds a bit kind of like hot, because it’s unmixed and uncompressed. And then you do the final mix and you compress it, and it and it all kind of tidies it up a little further.

It’s always a shame to go from the sort of semi mixed, unmixed sound to the final mix, because if the mix tidies things up, really, and when you listen to it unmixed, various things are mega loud, and they’re super exciting, and it’s all bit crazy. And mixing always tidy things up. And it’s, I’ve always experienced that as a bit of a.. Yeah, it’s great now it’s mixed, but it was sounding so crazy and wild before. That’s like demo-itis, yeah.

Kellie: So this album was received with very mixed reviews. Some people that who were really big Screamfeeder fans and personal friends were like “I can’t do this record”. But then there’s some people who are like “This is my favorite Screamfeeder record”. So yeah, it kind of divided people. I reckon that if people went back to it now who didn’t like it, they would probably be surprised at how the guitars are actually in there when you think they’re not. There’s all the elements of Screamfeeder. It’s just been treated differently.

Tim: Yeah. I mean, there’s plenty of songs like Olive and If You Lived Here, where the guitars are actually fairly forthright, I guess it’s just Stopless. When it kicks in, it doesn’t really kick in. Like it comes in and it eases in, which is very different from any other album we’ve ever had, which was like, punch!

Kellie: Yeah. And I do think that’s disappointing, because I would love to hear just kick in the face of guitars too, but it would make it so different, and it might not really suit Stopless – maybe we should remix it.

Tim: We’ve got so many live versions and remixes of it already on various things.

Kellie: I remember this one gig we played in Toowoomba. It was at that little pub The Spotted Cow. I was in the middle. It was one of the first times I played in the middle too. You and Derek were either side of me. And I just remember, and I’ll never forget this being so in the moment, to like be present, to notice what you and Derek were doing at that time. I just remember being lost in it and going “this is incredible. If I never feel this again, I’m feeling it now, and it’s like, hey, wow”. I just remember being enveloped. I was just right in the sweet spot for both guitars. Wow. And it was wild. It was so great.

Tim: So usually, we kind of stick to the same stuff on the guitar with every playing of the song, but often we’ll wander off, and we might get what we’re doing, you know, we might place it at a different point in the song, so we’re not playing the same thing at the same time, and often, you know, the longer the song goes, I’ll get a bit more random on it and take it up and take it down, and yeah, it’s quite fun.

Kellie: I never know when it’s going to end. That’s the other thing. If you come and see us play live, we do not know how we’re ending this song when we start it. We never do.

Tim: You could almost say the ending goes forever. Goodness

Kellie: We’ve gone full circle. I feel like that’s the point we need to end. Do we? Shall we? Might we?

Tim: Well, yeah, that’s Rocks On The Soul. That is a great place to end. Yeah, we don’t need to prattle on any more about it.

“Whether you want the depravity of the post-punk noise, the sweetness of a soothing pop song, or something in between, on Rocks on the Soul they deliver. I’ll give this an A-“. (In Music We Trust)

Throughout the 1990’s, Australian music in the post-grunge area exploded in popularity, fuelled by the excitement of the new punk DIY ethos and the sheer excitement of independent, non-corporate bands making thrilling new sounds.

Screamfeeder rode that surging wave, producing  four acclaimed albums, enjoying significant airplay and touring relentlessly. Things were looking pretty good.

But by 1999 Screamfeeder found themselves backed into a corner by their American record label at the time, being legally prevented from recording a follow-up album to their 1996 smash Kitten Licks.

The covers EP Home Age had filled the gap, but the band were sitting on an ever-increasing pile of diverse new songs. In the end, they found a way to opt out of the disastrous contract and arrangements were promptly made for a recording session in the winter of 2000.

The studio and producers were an odd choice, a discreet office location in Melbourne’s South Yarra owned by electronic duo The Pound System. It turned out to be perfect – Woody and The Rev could hear new potential for the band’s trademark male-female vocal interplay, sweet yet bruising guitar lines and never-sitting-still song structures.

Together the team proceeded to deconstruct Screamfeeder’s approach while exploring the possibilities offered by the then- new Pro Tools digital recording platform.

It was a bold move; it would have been too easy to make ‘Kitten Licks II’, but instead the band turned a sharp corner and produced a quite-unexpected album.

The songs are sprawling and hyper-melodic, layered, edited and experimented with. Vocals are lush and the melodies emphasised, drum beats are looped and hypnotic. This was the sound of a band confident enough with their songs that it didn’t matter the sonic tangents they took off on.

“…At the time, it sounded like it was too good for a band from Brisbane, which is never true — of anywhere — but that’s how Screamfeeder made me feel. I was excited by it. It was probably the last time I felt truly shocked by what a Brisbane band was capable of. Now everyone knows.” (Ian Rogers)

Tim came up with the album title, a play on The Isley Bros ‘60s LP Soul on the Rocks. The album alienated some of the more change-resistant fan base, while engaging with a whole new one, who were captivated by Kellie’s epic Stopless, or the quasi space-age Above The Dove. Dean explored the local area and added his field recordings to some of the songs, notably If You Lived Here.

Finally released in October 2000 through Shock Records, the album was a masterful return to form, showcasing a set of songs that quite clearly raised the bar, from the first notes of masterpiece Stopless to the emotive closer, Close Again. If there’d been any doubt about the band’s ability to survive the industry travails, Rocks On The Soul proved them all wrong.

And here we are in 2015. Exactly 15 years later and Rocks On The Soul  remains a pre-shoegaze-comeback gem. The songs and ideas are at once confident and assured, but never cocky, with Screamfeeder’s naiveté and wide-eyed wonder and love of the music they were creating shining through.

Here’s our new album, it’s called “ROCKS ON THE SOUL”! Two words which are very ambiguous and loaded with meaning in every direction, which is something we like very much over here at feeder HQ.

It’s been 4 years since we released our last full length thing, “KITTEN LICKS”. The first two years after that were spent touring our asses off and releasing singles (“Hi Cs” and “Triple Hook”, which are both included in this package along with all their b sides) and our 10 song covers EP “Home Age”. The next two were spent wrestling with overseas record companies, lawyers and accountants. Very un-rock. We’ve been in the ring, gloves off, and it weren’t too pretty.

Anyway, one day when we were feeling as though we’d never be allowed to go and record an album ever again we went to meet Woody and The Rev, the Pound System lads! Two hours later we had their studio booked for a month, the budget sorted and approved and we were all ready to get amongst it. It was the first time we were to have the pleasure of working with producers as such; we’d always hired someone to record our albums, (and always been satisfied) but never felt compelled to credit them with production. Everyone expected the beat – crazy Pound System to completely techno-fy us.. They DIDN’T!! they acted like two completely mature and sensible gentlemen, recorded our songs for us, very well, offered their opinions on certain musical angles, (as well as telling us that a lot of our parts had “too many notes” or had “more chords than a Levis factory”). Anyway there ain’t a scratching noise or a doof beat in sight. Sure we used loops and filters, but it was all completely in the context of Screamfeeder music.

The Pound System rocked! It was awesome fun recording with them, the smoothest and most inspiring session ever. We were confident enough to be pointed in a new direction and more than ready to be completely taken apart and put back together again in a different way. It felt right, and timely to do that. We’re happy with the direction they pointed us in, and it feels nice to be re-assembled all over again! It was good to have a new focus, to come in from a new angle. We’re steeped in our own past, but not weighed down by it, quite the opposite.. we found we could completely refresh ourselves and our sound with someone else’s influence, and create something outside of any pre-existing genre or set of internal or external rules. We got a ton of caffeine and tobacco on board and did just that. Quite simply, to quote king Woody “we’ve made a fuckin’ RECORD!”

Stopless: Kellie bares her soul and her fears become strengths. Woody assembled this song, Dean sat back and nodded.

if I’m talking in past tense / I have lived a charmed existence / now that change is in the air / another force that we’ll compare / I thought at times I’d been enlightened / to tell the truth I’d become frightened / by all the things I’ve never learned / and all the energy I’d burned / on all those stupid boys that I thought / were worth my time and I would die for / I’d lose my head and when my heart felt / I’d add to my life’s list of disappointment / he sounded good on the phone / I’d walk at night on my own / I knew that it was worth it / and I’d never have to do it again / I’ve been having weird dreams again / I just wanna have the one where I win / all the times they’ve said this job’s for you / some dss guy wouldn’t have a clue / of what I will achieve in my life / it’s not some 9-5 thing or a house wife / not that any of those things are bad / it’s just never been a dream the I’ve had / I’ve got a dark ambition in me / I will be independent and free / and all the stupid things I’ve done / i’ll never have to do them again

Domino: We wrote this in Kellie’s kitchen at Taringa, before she moved to Toowong, before she moved to Bardon. It’s a fun song, so simple it’s hard to believe, and very hard to remember how to play.

domino, domino / didn’t want to let you know / didn’t have to undergo / should have watched the undertow / realised you’d never know / domino, domino / try to recognise the slow / always go against the flow / I would always be shallow / I could never be like domino, domino

Above the Dove: The aliens ain’t coming to save our souls, sorry everybody. Our first single from the record.

we’ve got an intergalactic invasion on our hands / don’t call security because they won’t understand / the doves are nesting in the floodlights on the field / they don’t want to miss the action darkness might conceal / aliens take positions in our libraries one by one / they unwrite our history books with their little laser guns / as we’re deleted word by word it becomes clear / future’s exploded because our past has disappeared / knowing there’s a sign to say they’ll take you when they leave / wearing shirts that proudly state that we believe / confident the continent will surely hear the word / the call’s been made and all the passengers have heard / going to a place where they can walk the streets with pride / the insect world is packed and they all climb inside / the birds can learn to swim and all the fish will fly / above the dove in the safety of the sky / you won’t be proud, but you won’t be allowed / above the dove in the safety of the clouds

14 & 44: Our newest song, we finished it off the week before recording. Pure Rock WILL guide. (By pure coincidence the running time of the Above the Dove single is 14:44.)

on the corner at five to ten / you could have set me on fire again / the record’s spinning slightly slow / I’m out of gear I’m feeling all set to implode / at the speed of sound everything’s alright /don’t feel so down at the speed of light / a restaurant window at four to eight / every move a second late / a clue to move a cue to stay / I never knew what time was meant to mean anyway / at the speed of sound everything’s alright /don’t feel so down at the speed of light / in a foreign car in a borrowed night / in a purer second pure rock will guide / wanna disappear right before your eyes / in a blinding flash of light I will vaporise / I got a ticket to ride I found a new way to glide / I got a sharp little knife for an invisible slice

Deletia: Woody thought it sounded like the Stone Roses, I’ve never even listened to them, neither has Kellie as far as I know. More soulful social commentary though.

I couldn’t see, pressed my face into the glass / transparency up to the sun betrays my past / chances are this has been a big mistake / I have learned to embrace the things I hate / it’s always been the same with you / your lies have always been see through /make lists of things you want to buy /plastic held up into the sky /I forgot what it’s like to write by hand / no one teaches us that glass is made of sand / I’ve trained myself to enjoy what I can’t taste / pre-determined to subconsciously erase / conditioning that will make us /discard the things we know won’t last /restrict what’s in your memory / pretend you don’t act randomly / this is the future purposely / non-interactive apathy / you’ll wait your turn so patiently / undoing your brain like tapestry / instant microwave train of thought /social behaviour is not taught to children who think nintendo’s sport / language and virus, one and naught / avoid your life

Metal Detector: Mixed this ’till 6 in the morning then flew to Sydney at 7.00 to master the record. Didn’t feel too great. The Rev came through like a king with the atmospheric noises.

it was the calmest scene,it was the warmest sea / I could walk ankle deep it was like diamonds / I was lost in a dream of what was to come / I comb the land each day, scraping the sand away / metal detector’s running away with me / bottle caps sending me such a hum / I wrote the rules that say I don’t have to lift my gaze / there is a priceless treasure staring me in the face / and that just makes my work look dumb / so waves do not break for me, diamonds don’t wait for me / I will detect the key that opens the secret door / that’s going to take me from where nothing is mine

Olive: Can’t start a fire. It smoulders for a long time though. Your soul is on the rocks.

started out easy, the kids are alright / they got a natural flavour / the bit is there to bite / I hate waiting, it takes such a long time / when I’m left out to dry / this one’s broken, I gotta get another one / can’t start a fire / can’t start a fire / is there a reason why your head is still on tight? / can you take your time to answer
I found out just in time about / the lies that we wrap around a family just to survive / and I’m left out to dry / even though I’m left out in the sun / I can’t start a fire / can’t start a fire.

Mr Tuba: I wrote this in the garden after watching a Sesame St animation about Mr Tuba, who joins the band but doesn’t listen to what anyone else is playing. Everone’s met someone like this. Dean went out and recorded street noise to go on the end of the song.

mr tuba your sound is beautiful and round but you don’t listen / the rest of the band are tired of only playing your tunes / you should stop being rude, and just be happy with what you’ve been given / a nice big bell an inspired section and a chair to sit on / small prickles grow into rosebushes / we can change anything we feel / how can we love a guy who pushes? / we won’t deny or can’t conceal / that we’re not going to grow to love your presence

If You Lived Here: We almost scrapped this song a year ago. Dean didn’t know what to play even when the tape was rolling. Lucky he’s so obedient. Kel went down to the station and got some more “field noises”. A true “3 chord-er”.

he knows it’s not always out there / he slows, the song on the radio is always on for him / and she’ll turn the light on for him / she knows it’s safe to be sun-smart / sun screen’s on special at k-mart / the summer’s burning in, and she knows she’s not long for this world / but you’d better be patient sister / if you lived here you’d be home now / water’s been flavoured with fluoride / air hums with shiny black powerlines / the neighbourhood’s electric / the reception is just pathetic / he makes his way down the motorway / he takes his hands off the steering wheel / the exit’s gone, it won’t be long / if you lived here you’d be home now

The Singer: I got to use my favourite Bitch Magnet songline in one of my songs after years of trying. The weirdest lyrics on the album, half serious, half funny, half silly, half abstract. A lot like the band really..

what kind of voice did the singer have? / who sang the songs from when you were five? / theme tunes were filling you with life / and words that really dance in your mind / and when you slept did you dream of me? / do I still own a set of keys? / and though that I was sleeping too / I know that I had dreams of you / I’ll tell you yours if you tell me mine / country slipped in my city mind / saw planes flying sideways in the sky / they’re navigating on a butter knife / is this a match we’re holding? / think I just felt a spark / secret language doesn’t need decoding / a maze a letter in the dark / how many misses have you hit bang on? / were you a target or a broken gun? / how many pisses have you ever done / and can you name your favourite one? / got a broken glass and a cloudy lens / got a bucket of bolts and a jar of pens.

Close Again: The surprise package. It ended up so long because it just got better and better. The crazy drums on the end are some mistakes of Dean’s we’d pushed up to the far end of the screen where we thought the song would be over by. It reached all the way, over 10 minutes, so we left them on too. Probably the most fun song to record, it took on a life of its own.

so close today / i’ve been giving into my misconception / and living by your misdirection / crawling around my day / as changes fall through and tumble down / so close again / boredom whispers quietly restless / fidgeter’s fingers i have, i confess / here i lay / a grey hell / i’ve been awake in my sleep again / every crime is intertwined / for every one of your there’s mine / faithless hope, a tight rope or some easy antidote / personal, chernobyl / like entertaining a black hole / entertain, don’t explain / just a band-aid for your pain.

hi cs

smiling stars and musical notes / I can’t read either / on hi cs I navigate by neither / can’t see a pattern forming

triple hook

i know you’ve been banging his drum / I know so does everyone / talk’s cheap, but it’s never free / you shouldn’t trust your secrets with me / so thin that it doesn’t stink / stretching it on top of everything / even your smile hides a bitter tongue / I know what you’re talking about / rumours are getting around / talk low so nobody hears / your body language is loud and clear / is it hatemail that your’e sending? / is it a broken heart you’re mending? / is it your mother’s cash your spending? / is this your get away? / I know what you’re talking about / rumours are getting around / talk low so nobody hears / your body language is loud and clear / I know you’ve been banging his drum / I know so does everyone / talk’s cheap. this advice is free / don’t trust your secrets with me

sparks jump

sparks jump from less than all we have mentioned / bulbs don’t light from just good intentions / a million thoughts will just get ignored every second / lick my phone mouthpiece to colour in the gaps that you discover / taste my words before they’re deleted by others / minutes tap their fingers as their coffee takes a day / seconds dream of being years / where everything they say won’t be erased / used up all of your attention / the more I try the less you’re digesting / and time I lose,  I guess I’m forgetting more every second, every second / big hand chews his nails ‘cos his coffee’s taking years / other hand’s impatient with the motion of the gears / minutes tap their fingers while their coffee takes a day / seconds dream of being years where everything they say won’t be erased

planet matador

can anybody tell me if I’ve been talking in my sleep? / cos cocoons they cook at night while I dream / bad morning to the day when all your days become aligned / you be a passenger? / I’ll be a meteor / you be a telescope / or be an astronaut / will you be planet bull or planet matador? / and nothing excites like when you were a child / and nothing seems to get you feeling wild / like planets we’re attracted but we can’t see the force / will you be a passenger? / or be a meteor / being  a telescope / or be an astronaut / will you be planet bull or planet matador? / or planet matador? / or planet matador? / can anybody tell me if I’ve been talking in my sleep? are the rings that run around me charging in? / and I wake up to find that all my worlds have been aligned