Before the release of second album 'The Rip', ANDREW MCMILLEN caught up with the members of I Heart Hiroshima – Susie Patten, Cameron Hawes and Matthew Somers – at a sushi train in Brisbane to discuss overseas tours, reverential covers and getting inadvertently high with Tricky. Photos by PAUL BROADHURST.

You've just played [music industry showcase] Big Sound in Brisbane, and now you've been chosen to play another industry showcase, One Movement For Music, in Perth (October 16-18). How did that come about?
Susie: Every state editor for SPA [Street Press Australia] nominated bands from their own state to be put in the competition to win, which means they get on the cover and got to go to Perth, expenses paid. We didn't even know we were in it. They all got together and chose who they wanted to win.

Paul [Curtis, band manager and founder of Valve Records] must’ve been stoked.
Susie: Yeah, he was so happy: "You fucking go get 'em, man! You are the new Van Halen!" You can quote him on that.

You recorded a cover of ‘Pink Frost’ by The Chills for the Friends With Swords EP. Where’d you first hear it?
Matthew: It's an old fave.

Cameron: It's on a Flying Nun compilation record. We saw the film clip for it while were staying up late in New Zealand, ages ago.

Susie: We'd always sort of said, "This is a really cool song". We'd always toiled with the idea of doing a cover but we never decided. Then we had an extra day when we finished recording [debut album Tuff Teef] and Paul was encouraging us to do something really quick; a song that was unfinished, anything at all. We said, "We've kind of done everything we can do". Then he was like, "Well, do a cover!" We sort of umm’d and ahh'd, and it was kind of a frustrating process for a while, but it turned out good, I think.

Matthew: I'd kind of like to record it again, though. We've played it heaps now.

Susie: We'd do it better, but that's always the way with recording.

Do you listen to your own music?
Cameron: A couple of times after we finish making it.

Susie: Yeah, and I think that during the process of getting things mixed, you have to listen to it.

Cameron: It is good to just sit down and listen to it, when you know it's completely done and you don't have to do anything. It's reassuring.

You recently returned from a European tour. What were the fans like there? Were they cool with approaching you afterwards?
Susie: Totally, more so than here [Brisbane]. Generally they were really friendly, really approachable, really enthusiastic audiences, all across Europe. It was really good.

Many language difficulties?
Susie: Maybe in Italy, but that's about it. We had our tour manager, Mirko Vogel, who recorded our album. He's German so that was great in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium. It would have been way more difficult if we didn't have him, but for the most part they all speak English and could understand us.

Are you happy with the way the tour turned out?
Susie: Totally, it was hard work but it was really good, really worth it. It was our first big tour outside of Australia.

What's next? I guess the Asia Pacific, after you succeed at One Movement For Music, of course.
Susie: Yeah, we're gonna take over Thailand and Vietnam.

Did you imagine the band getting to this point of being as big as you are?
Susie: I don't think we're big at all.

“Indie big”, wouldn't you say?
Susie: I don't know. I guess we've worked pretty hard, but we're all just working jobs and playing music, so it's not as if our lifestyles have really changed that much.

Do you think it's possible to get to a point where you could do it full time?
Susie: Maybe, I don't know.

Matthew: That'd be good.

Susie: But I don't know how realistic it is.

There's this perception that some bands have to leave the country to “make it”. Look at An Horse, The Drones, Snowman and The Temper Trap, who are all building fanbases outside of their home country by relocating or touring relentlessly. Do you think that's a reality for you?
Susie: I think so, yeah, when you get to a certain level. We're not fuckin' Wolfmother, but even then, they're going overseas all the time. It's hard to be a band that just lives off of touring in Australia.

Cameron: I think it depends on what you're doing musically.

Susie: Even people that are probably at that point, like Paul Kelly doesn't go overseas, but he's been doing it for how many years?

Matthew: Powderfinger too.

Susie: And they were doing it for like 10 years before they even got anywhere.

Cameron: It does seem you have to be that sort of [alternative rock] band to be able to “make it” financially in Australia.

Do you think there is a limit to how many times you can go around the country, over and over again? I look at bands like British India who seem to constantly go around Australia and play regional shows and capital cities, and I wonder how many times they can keep mining the same territory.
Susie: Yeah, of course. It's important to limit it for your sanity, too. There's a venue in Sydney called Spectrum. If I ever have to play there ever again, I'll probably kill myself. We've played there at least eight times.

Matthew: I looked at our MySpace yesterday, and we've played around 210 shows throughout Australia since we started in 2005. That's a shitload.

Susie: In basically four cities. We've been to Perth what, once? Twice?

Matthew: Every now and then we get to do sweet regional shows, but they're only good when you're supporting someone “known”.

Susie: Yeah, if you're doing your own tour, it's just funny.

Matthew: You can walk off the front of the stage and just play facing the stage.

You've had some pretty big support slots in the last 12 months: Conor Oberst, The Streets, Cat Power and Tricky. How did those come about?
Susie: It was all weird and fluky.

Matt: We have a theory about those Tricky and The Streets slots, because we have “grime” and “big beat” listed as our genres on our MySpace as a bit of a joke. So when they were looking for bands to support in Brisbane, they might have asked us to play, and then been like, "Oh, fuck!"

Susie: "Yeah, they look good, let's sign them!" For the Tricky show, we were really high.

Matthew: Involuntarily!

“I guess we've worked pretty hard, but we're all just working jobs and playing music, so it's not as if our lifestyles have really changed that much.”

Susie: His show was so weird; backstage there was this spread of snacks and a bag of weed. I don't know how the show came about, but it was so funny. I talked to him afterwards. He was really intense. He had all these bitches around him, and I was like, "Thank you, Sir Tricky!" I don't know how the Cat Power show happened, but Conor Oberst asked for us. They went through a big list. I remember the last night of the tour, Conor took me aside. He spun someone around who had like a tour shirt on, and he was like, [in an American accent] "See this place right here? We were in Mexico City. We got the call out. We looked through all the bands and we picked you." I was like, "Cheers Conor! Thanks buddy!" It was so fun. It was only three shows, but it was one of the best tours. Such good dudes.

Are those kinds of support slots helpful in getting exposure, even when they're as oddly-aligned as The Streets and Tricky?
Susie: Totally. I think that's always fun. Who wants to play with a band that sounds exactly like you? It's always bands that we kind of dig. We'd never play with a band that we hated to get exposure. Although, we nearly supported the All-American Rejects in Austria, which would have been ... awesome.

When did you decide you needed a manager?
Susie: We didn't really decide. We were approached, really early on.

Matthew: It was the second show that was listed on our MySpace.

I suppose that Paul takes care of the business side of things. Do you have any interest in taking more of a front seat role in that department?
Susie: "That can turn your friends against you". I think Jay-Z said that. No, I think we're happy to stay in the back seat. Sometimes he'll do frustrating things, but mostly he just approaches us with opportunities.

So you just write, record, play shows, and Paul does the rest?
Susie: We say “yea” or “nay” and offer our opinions when necessary, which is good. We have complete creative control. That's good.

How did you guys meet [Brisbane filmmaker] Paul Rankin, who directed the ‘Shakeytown’ video?
Susie: I’ve known him for a couple of years. I did a Yeah Yeah Yeahs video with him. We were both really into the band, and they wanted fans to submit videos of them being themselves for that ‘Cheated Hearts’ video … [It] had excerpts of all these fan videos from around the world cut together to make it look like the whole video … [On the morning of the shoot] he got me a bottle of scotch, because I was really nervous. I was wearing a skirt and stockings and lipstick and stuff. We did it and we got on the video, which was really funny. So Paul and I have been friends for a while. That was a few years ago. I know he'd always shown interest in doing a film clip for us. 'Shakeytown' is his creative vision. He's a bit of a genius, that kid.

Your new album The Rip is out soon. Are you happy with how it turned out?
Susie: It’s pretty fucking good. When you were saying, "Have you listened to it", we haven't even gotten the CD back yet. It comes out next week [October 2]. Paul said it's going to arrive this week. We got one MP3 of the whole album so you can see where the gaps are going to be and how long there are. I've shown that to a few people and listened to it a couple of times and it does make you go, "Fuck, it's really good," hearing it as it is now. It's the way we all wanted it to be.

How did you get [Gang of Four’s] Andy Gill to mix it?
Susie: Oh, you know, he's just my man … Nah, he has a relationship with Paul from past projects. He did Eduardo and Rodriguez Wage War On T-Wrecks for Regurgitator, the album from 2001 with 'Fat Cop', the abomination. I think Paul had sent him our earlier stuff and he's always been really keen to do it. I think the relationship kind of stuck out and he'd always send him our stuff. Then when we kind of saved a bunch of money recording the actual album, we had a bit of cash to spend on getting it mixed with someone with a profile. It happened that we were over in Europe at the same time that he was mixing some other stuff so it was really cool. We got to hang out with him and be there in the studio [Beauchamp Building in London], which was awesome, and really beneficial for all of us.

I think we'd resigned to the fact that we'd probably just give it to him and have an email relationship with him, but it was cool that we got to sit down with him personally. He's such a nice dude, really chilled. We saw Gang of Four live too. It was so fun. Finding the venue was like playing Legend Of Zelda or something. It was “off the map”.

Why did you do another album instead a couple of more EPs?
Susie: Fuck EPs. We don't like 'em. We would have done only albums, I think. It was Paul that said, "No, you should put out a few things at a time and start small”, which I think is his business mind coming in. It worked, but I think for us personally, an album is way radder.

So you wanted to capture the spirit of the songs from that time in a coherent kind of statement?
Susie: Yeah, totally. Thirteen songs, around 48 minutes. Pretty epic for us. Nearly an hour! I wanna watch someone listen to it for the first time, and hear the first song [‘Count Me In’], and be like "new direction!" We've got a quieter kind of song. It's a bit tropical, a bit Caribbean-esque.

Matthew: It sounds like a holiday, but in prison.

Susie: Yeah, maybe it's like you're on the beach in Cairns, but you can't go swimming because there's fucking box jellyfish and crocodiles in the water.

How do you guys write songs? Do you come together with different ideas? Does someone comes to the table with a song to start with and goes from there?
Susie: Basically, and then it just kind of… starts.

Matthew: Usually someone will have a little piece.

Susie: And then usually someone will start singing and it will be like, "That was kind of good! Go for it!"

Music before lyrics?
Susie: Always.

Matthew: We're not really musically-minded. It's like, “That sounds good. That doesn't sound good. That should go there. That shouldn't go there.” I wouldn't know how to start with vocals and know what a vocal is supposed to sound like before the music. It's confusing me now.

Do you write songs about topics?
Susie: They kind of form into topics.

What's ‘Skakeytown’ about?
Susie: I was thinking about zombies. I had never really watched zombie movies before. I had only just started, and I was just singing about getting attacked by a zombie. I'm singing about a scene in 28 Weeks Later. It's like you're in this dark concrete house and you're getting attacked by a zombie, but in a kind of nice way.

Do you find it an urge that you have to meet when writing songs, making music. Is it something you have to do?
Susie: I think my life would suck a lot if I didn't have music and wasn't making music.

Matthew: It doesn't feel good to not make music.

Did you come from musical families?
Susie: Yeah, I did.

Matthew: My mum makes clothes, she's a fashion designer so it's kind of artsy. My mum makes pottery, so that's about as close as it gets.

Cameron: My dad plays guitar and my mum sings in a choir.

Matthew: Wow, I didn't know that! This is a good interview!

Susie: My dad plays saxophone really badly in a marching band.

Cameron: Fucking sweet!

Susie: I used to play in a marching band with my dad in high school. My mum played the piano. I was rocking trumpet and my brother played drums and guitar. My sister played flute, and piano - pussy instruments like that. I kind of think I'd do a bit of everything. I played guitar when I was really young but then couldn't reach everything because my hands were too small so I gave up. Then I played piano, trumpet and then somehow I fell into playing drums. I think I'd always bashed around on the drum kit that my brother had at my house. I started a band in high school and ended up playing drums.

I'm outta questions.
Susie: We're outta answers!

Although I'm kinda surprised that you guys are still so tight after your six weeks in Europe together.
Susie: Oh, we definitely had to take some time off from each other afterwards.

Cameron: But we haven't played a show this week, so we're all like, "Hey guys! Haven't seen you in ages!"

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The Rip is out now on Valve/MGM. Launch dates here.