Three Kiwi ex-pats and an Aussie get together and channel Flying Nun. But, as Songs singer Max Doyle tells DOUG WALLEN, the Sydney-based quartet have moved away from their jangly, NZ-inspired past.

Based in Sydney but comprising three Kiwis, Songs have received as much attention in the past year for their immaculate guitar-pop as for their Google-proof name. Singer/guitarist Max Doyle, a professional photographer by trade, formed the band with guitarist Jeff Burch and drummer Steve Uren, who both played in NZ act This Night Creeps. As for bassist Ela Stiles – the only Aussie in the mix – she was once the subject of a Doyle shoot.

Once the quartet was intact, a jangle-heavy sound with nods to Flying Nun (of course) was the happy result. Split singles with The Bats and Love of Diagrams followed, with Songs set to release their debut album through Popfrenzy in November. A quick national tour and a stop at Spring Tones should further illuminate the band’s bracing, fully-formed tunes. That is, if anyone can find them online.

Just to get it out of the way, why did you choose the name Songs?
We were just swapping ideas. That was one of lots of names, and it just seemed amazing that no one had used it before. So we just jumped on it.

It certainly makes it tricky finding the band online.
Yeah. That’s the only problem. But it hasn’t really been. You get told it’s a problem, but I’m not personally aware of people getting frustrated trying to find information on us.

Songs are obviously influenced by the classic Flying Nun bands. Is that inevitable, given that you’re mostly Kiwis?
They were the reference points that got us together in the first place. I’m older than the other guys, and the Flying Nun thing was really big when I used to live in New Zealand. So I experienced it the first time around. And Jeff was drawn to it as part of the next generation. I was listening to all the Flying Nun stuff again after talking about it with Jeff, so we wrote in that vein to start with. So it really does directly influence our sound, but I think [we’ve] moved quite a way away from that now.

It’s a great place to start. Those records and bands have endured for decades, and new people are still discovering them.
Yeah. It was amazing seeing The Bats play a couple of weeks ago. It was sold out, and there was such a good feeling. I think they were really taken aback as well. Before, when New Zealand bands used to come over, [the gig would] just be full of New Zealanders being patriotic and getting drunk. But there wasn’t any of that. It was just a feeling of loving the music.

And Songs have done a split 7” with The Bats.
I know, which to me is mind-blowing. Starting this band like we did, if someone had said in a year’s time we’d have a split with The Bats, I wouldn’t have believed them. If we broke up tomorrow, that’s one great thing that happened out of it for me.

I have to say, your song ‘Keeping It Clean’ really sounds like The Bats.
[Laughs] I think that was the first or second song we wrote. Even using the world “clean” in the song, I guess it was like paying respect. We played with them at the Sydney show. We played as a three-piece without drums, because Steve was away. We played that song first in the set, with [Bats frontman] Robert [Scott] standing there right in front of me. That was pretty special.

I saw that Songs did an acoustic set for Radio New Zealand.
Yeah, that was pretty interesting. We went over to New Zealand last year. We’ve gotten a lot better in the last year. When we were there, we were still getting the hang of it. We did the acoustic thing and it was a bit daunting, really. You’ve got to be quite precise, because everything is miked really carefully in one of those soundproof rooms. You’ve just got to be good. [Laughs] So we kind of pulled it off, I think. I don’t know. I haven’t actually listened back to it since it was broadcast. It was quite a challenge.

Do you ever feel like you’re straddling two countries?
We had that feeling after we got back. It really felt like that for a while, but it’s still another country. We’re planning to get over there [New Zealand] hopefully in December. We’ve got a lot of friends there, and bands we like. I think Popfrenzy are planning to do an actual separate release in New Zealand. I hope so. It’s nice, after all these years, to have that connection. I haven’t lived there for so long.

How long has it been?
[Laughs] Well, you know I’m like twice as old as the other guys. I think I left there in 1986. I’ve probably spent a couple of months there since. I lived in London for 10 years and moved around quite a lot. So a long time for me. Not nearly as long for the other guys. But it’s good. When we went back there last time, it was so much fun.

The band have quite a few releases already. There’s the split with the Bats, a split with Love of Diagrams, a self-titled EP and the new single ‘Different Light’.
Yeah, the single is gonna be out in November. And we’ve done an album, which is due out in late November. It’s just been mastered. It’s 12 songs. In our live show now, we have a lot of bigger, longer songs, and we tried pushing the arrangements and finding new sounds.

“If someone had said in a year’s time we’d have a split with The Bats, I wouldn’t have believed them. If we broke up tomorrow, that’s one great thing that happened out of it for me.”

Does the album include any songs from the EP or the two splits?
It does, actually, but re-recorded. Not from the EP, but ‘It’s Dry’ from the Love of Diagrams split. It’s a lot simpler. It’s just got the organ and voices, really. And ‘My Number’ from the Bats one. Both those songs were demos that we fixed up a bit, so we wanted to do them proper.

‘Different Light’ is quite urgent. Does that say anything about the rest of the album?
Not really [laughs]. It’s the only thing like that on the album. It works really well because there’s this big, long, atmospheric thing, and then it cuts into that song. It instantly lifts the whole thing up. Popfrenzy listened to the album and wanted that one to be the single, and I didn’t argue. I quite like it. It was our first experience with a record label, but there was no reason to disagree. And hopefully it works. We’re just starting to do it live again. We’d sort of moved on from it. It takes a long time to get an album together, shows [were] getting boring, and that one wasn’t working that well, so we dropped it. But after we recorded it, we started bringing it back.

Well, soon you’ll have to play it at every show.
[Laughs] Yeah. It’s kind of hard to play really tight, because it’s got that fast beat. A lot of our stuff sits in this mid-tempo zone, and you can sit on it much more comfortably. We haven’t been really great at playing high-tempo yet. But it probably sounds fine.

And you recorded the album in Sydney with US engineer Casey Rice?
Yeah. He actually lives in Melbourne now. He’s had a child with an Australian lady, so he’s moved down to Melbourne. We only had to bring him up from there. And the mixing we did there. It was great. I really like working with him. I think it was the right decision. You never know, because you don’t know how it would sound if someone else did it. But I think it was right.

I wanted to ask about Jeff’s books-and-music imprint The Spring Press, which released the Bats split and your photography book Pop Pop.
It’s his thing, really. He just wants to put nice things out, whatever it might be. He’s done some really great things through there. All of us have other things going and are interested in other things. I publish a magazine called Doing Bird. It means doing time in prison. I’ve been doing that for about six or seven years. That’s actually how Jeff and I met, because he helped out at the magazine. And Steve is a graphic designer who does art projects and a few other musical things. And Ela, I’m not sure what she’s working on right now. Interesting bunch.

How did the video clip for ‘Keeping It Clean’ come to be? It’s well done and quite funny.
Well, Jeff’s girlfriend [Michaela Sanders] makes little films. She asked to do it and worked out how she could do it for next to nothing. She wrote this really simple script. I could see that it was going to work, because she thought it through so carefully. I really like it. When you’ve got creative people around and they want to do something, it’s nice to put everything in their hands. I was barely involved. I was there for about an hour-and-a-half. There were all these people I’d never met, just helping out. It’s been good for us, because without her we wouldn’t have a visual thing we could direct people to. I want to make a clip now, after seeing her do it. [Laughs] But I haven’t been able to get my act together on that one.

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SONGS TOUR DATES

Thursday, September 10
Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney, NSW
w/The Laurels + Danimals

Friday, September 11
The Troubadour, Brisbane, QLD
w/Little Scout + Big Strong Brute

Friday, September 25
The Metro, Adelaide, SA
w/Scott & Charlene's Wedding + Fair Maiden

Saturday, September 26
Spring Tones @ Roxanne Parlour, Melbourne, VIC