Barbershops, tailored suits, Truffaut films and cable knit – are Canvas Kites and their frontman Thom Moore penning the first chapter of a Wes Anderson-eque coming-of-age story? LUCY HEARN finds out.

“Everything that came before us inevitably plays a part in shaping the music we write today. To suggest otherwise is absurd, [but] I don’t believe we wear anything but fabric on our sleeves.”

Former Mercy Arms frontman Thom Moore is defending holding his influences in high regard with swift, albeit slightly blinkered logic. But while his new band Canvas Kites draws clanging comparisons to acts such as Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and, less overtly, The Shins, Moore insists their new stuff is “isn’t really that jangly”. He prefers the words “neat” and “immediate” to describe the trio’s brand of breezy, guitar pop.

Canvas Kites are Moore, Alex Knight (drums) and Brett Adrien (bass). Their debut single, ‘Wayside’, a spangly jaunt, slick with harmonies and rounding out at two minutes 30 seconds, has received a reasonable amount of attention from triple j, music blogs and local radio, but Moore has fixed his attention on brighter lights and bigger cities across the Atlantic.

“My plan is to get these guys ready by February to go overseas … I’m saving and investing and I’m sure I’ll get other people to invest. I’ll get us over there.”

The most salient indication of just what Moore wants for this new outfit, however, is not in anything he says, or how he says it, but in the details of the world he has created with his bandmates. Among the junkie-fucked, backpacker-squirming alleys and apartments of Kings Cross, it seems Moore is quietly penning the first chapters of a well-considered coming-of-age story. Amble around the corner from the flat he shares with Knight, and you’ll find the deli where they both work. Slip down a side street nearby and you’ll find William, the band’s tailor, a roll-your-own smoking barnacle of a man, not without requisite European charm. Backtrack a spot and you’ll meet Raymond the Barber, who cuts all three members’ hair from a tiny shop still sporting its original chairs.

Moore takes me inside the barbershop, where Adrien and Knight are getting their hair quiffed and razored. Earnest discussions ensue about just how short to go on the sides, and what number blade Raymond should use. Moore is jokingly disgusted by a 1970s book of bad hair. He hides it under a Men’s Style magazine. More than seeming affected, this scene comes off as revelry in shared experience: a quaint, three-way bromance unfolding. In a later conversation about aesthetics, Moore touches on this: “I like it when a band has a natural unity to its members. Brett, Alex and I watch the same films and listen to the same type of records, so we kinda agree on a lot of stuff without having to discuss it at too much length.”

Of course, it wasn’t always this easy.

“I like it when a band has a natural unity to its members. Brett, Alex and I watch the same films and listen to the same type of records, so we kinda agree on a lot of stuff without having to discuss it at too much length.”

At the end of 2008, though it wasn’t official, Mercy Arms were through. Or, at least, Moore was through with them. His relationship with the band’s other members and their attitude to his new songs was a source of continual frustration. “We’d [only] meet up for rehearsals and I wouldn’t want to give new songs because I felt like I wasn’t getting anything from it,” he says.

After the Big Day Out tour, Moore stayed with a friend in Perth for two weeks, to clear his head and make a final decision about the band. This decision was, evidently, to leave, though it appears to have come at a cost. “Talking about Mercy Arms still brings me a lot of pain, even though it’s [been] like eight months. It sounds so pathetic. I could say rude things, and angry things [but] I prefer to acknowledge that I have pain about it and move on.”

Moore jokes about the difference between trying to play ‘Wayside’ with Mercy Arms as opposed to with Canvas Kites. “It’s kind of like having bad sex with an old partner and then you find a new partner and you do the same position but it’s a lot better,” he laughs.

We leave the barber and head to a Czech beer garden to close out the night with pints of Budvar. Present: Moore, Knight and William the Tailor. The mood is convivial. When bassist Adrien arrives, the conversation turns to drugs, girls and French film: they’ve been watching a lot of Truffaut, any girl you take home has to be eloquent and none of them are that fussed on cocaine. Adrien asks, with minor irony, if cable knit is a good look for him. I assure him it is, and am reminded of a comment made earlier by Moore, which seems to have become the thesis of the evening.

“We’ve got to think of what energy we want to put across … You’ve got to look sharp, for people to think you’re sharp.”