YOU could call their sound indie rock. But they’d much prefer monolithic tech pop. Meet Adelaide band Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!
The band started out while at high school in Adelaide in the mid-2000s and, after a few line-up changes and additions, released their debut album, Sea Priest, in 2010. The album spawned the singles Little Cowboys, Bad Hombres and War Coward, which were on high rotation on triple j.
The band are ‘‘20per cent’’ into recording their sophomore album, with the first single, Panther Shrine, already released and on airwaves across the country.
LIVE caught up with singer Caitlin Duff as she was packing her bags to move from Adelaide to Melbourne, in what is likely to be the first trickle of band members to move east.
Duff said she didn’t feel pushed to move to Melbourne by the music industry, but felt it would help the band succeed.
‘‘I wouldn’t say it’s a pressure per se but a desire. It comes from the fact that Adelaide, as liberal as we are, we don’t actually have much of an industry at all,’’ she said.
‘‘With a desire to succeed such as we have, I think it’s really important to push yourself. I don’t think anyone is on the other side saying I’m not going to do this for you, I’m not going to do that for you, unless you’re based here. It would just be a lot easier, I think.’’
The band, which will for a time be split between Adelaide and Melbourne, are recording the follow-up to Sea Priest ‘‘bit by bit’’ with UK producer Gareth Parton (Foals, The Go! Team).
The first song recorded was the single Panther Shrine, which is an electro-pop tune awash with trickling guitars and melodies, overlapped by Duff’s euphonic vocals. Duff said the single was the first song recorded with Parton as a test run for their relationship. Things went well and she is excited to finish the album with the experienced UK producer.
‘‘We were just going to record it – it was fairly well finished and outlined – but he ended up tearing it up anyway,’’ she said with a laugh. ‘‘What he ended up doing with it was so great that we wanted to get it out there as soon as possible.’’
Duff said the band’s busy few years, which included the release of their debut album and a swag of shows alongside Kimbra, Stonefield and Eskimo Joe as well as several festivals, had helped them mature.
‘‘We were really quite an insular group of people when we started writing Sea Priest. We’ve been shaken around a lot and that’s made us mature and that’s going to influence our music,’’ she said.
‘‘We’ve also been opened up to a whole new level of the industry and what’s required as musicians has been shoved down our throats in a way.’’
Musically, the past few years had also helped Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! pare back their sound, with more composition and less saturation. A lesson learnt from Sea Priest was to stand back and resist the urge to fill spaces in the music by adding layers of sound.
‘‘This time around we were really intent on not so much filling the space but letting it hang if it needs to, or building up certain sections.’’
All in all, it sounds like Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! have found confidence in their sound by recording with Parton.
‘‘I wouldn’t say we’re at the point where we’ve found our sound, but it’s certainly matured a lot. I think the songwriting itself is something that’s a lot more cohesive in the sense that it is actually about stuff now,’’ Duff said. ‘‘It’s not just words that sound really good together and words that are maybe clever, it’s actually about something. It’s a lot more meaningful for us, so obviously it will be for other people.’’
And as for the ‘‘monolithic tech pop’’ label? Duff said it was a journo mate who coined the phrase.
‘‘We fell in love with it straight away because it’s really refreshing to be the beginning of a potential genre. We’re not doing anything that different but it’s kind of caught on. I love it.’’
Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! play the Gum Ball Music and Arts Festival, April 27-28. Tickets and more information at thegumball.com.au.
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