Michael Caterer from Love Connection tells DOUG WALLEN that his band aren’t proper musicians, he’s not a proper songwriter and that such naivety gives them freedom to explore all avenues. Horse head photo by LEIGH CROW.

Debuting last year with the bewitching single ‘I Know You’re Real’, Melbourne quartet Love Connection have more than delivered on that song’s promise with this month’s self-titled, self-produced album. Comprised of singer-guitarist Michael Caterer, keyboardist Kobi Simpson, drummer Dean Noble and new recruit Nathan Burgess on bass, the band mines a dreamy pop drone throughout their 34-minute debut. Guided by heady repetition and an avoidance of typical song structure, the eight tracks blend surreally into a homespun, multi-dimensional whole. It’s the latest coup for Sensory Projects, the artful Melbourne label also home to Mum Smokes, Panoptique Electrical and The Ancients.

On a recent trip to “the big smoke” from the rural cottage dwelling where the band’s songs are born, Caterer mapped out Love Connection’s unlikely origins by phone.

Did the band start as just you and Kobi?
Yeah. Our friend books the Empress [in Melbourne] and asked us to put on a show. So we put the songs together and played as a one-off thing. And it worked, I guess.

For that first show, was it you on vocals and guitar and Kobi on keyboards?
Yes. Well, I was doing a couple things. I was playing stand-up drums; I had a floor tom, hi-hat, and snare in front of me. We had some beats and pre-recorded things we put in there as well. It was pretty dodgy.

The songs on the album sound like they’re born from extended jams.
It’s interesting that you say that. They weren’t jam-based at all. They were born from the recording [process]. It was just me [playing], and I’d try to find sounds to complement what I had in my head. It was like I’d jam with myself and Pro Tools, I guess, and Kobi would be like, “That should be there” or “That’s a bit weak.” She was giving me that direction. Dean arrived late in the piece. I think the last song was being recorded and I asked him to put his drums in because he’s better at drums than I am. That’s when he got involved, with little additions here and there.

I write the songs on acoustic guitar and slowly they evolve. I’ll have three-quarters of a song, and [the band] will just pull it apart and piece it back together. Which is really good because it stops all your music from sounding the same. So that’s how we do it now.

But the songs aren’t these verse-chorus-verse things. They’re in it for the long haul.
Yeah, it’s interesting how that happened. It wasn’t planned. There’s the first and last song on the record, and the middle song was originally recorded as one. In mastering we chopped it up so you could skip to different parts and different songs. But we recorded the middle song first. You could feel these songs needed to drift off. Between the second song and the third and fourth songs, it just fell into place. I accidentally deleted some things and we put things in the right and wrong places, and it really worked well.

A few songs segue into the next one, like ‘Trilogy’ and ‘Movement I’.
Yeah, it’s strange. Kobi and I didn’t want to stop and start and say, “Hey, this is the next song.” We didn’t want to have ourselves in it at all. We’d decide what song should be next and then try to make something that gets from here to here. Essentially it is the one song – even though it changes key [and title].

“I got a friend to speak through a megaphone and recite lines out of this esoteric book on yogi philosophy, just screaming into various pedals.”

The vocals are also really organic, and don’t appear all that often.
We’re not musicians in any way. We just play instruments because we want to, and songwriting is in that same vein. I don’t know how other people do it, but I can’t sit down and write a song that’s going to … use “these” words. The words never come first. I get a feeling that there’s something coming and I get a melody over a sitting or two, and the words just come from it. And some things just don’t have the words. Then it’s understood that that part won’t have vocals. If you put vocals there, you invade the space of what’s being created.

It’s been a blessing recording it ourselves at our own pace, because we had the time to feel out that aspect. Your creativity isn’t being limited by time and money. There’s always the freedom to explore all those avenues.

Does playing so much with other young bands, like Rat Vs. Possum and the Parking Lot Experiments, make you feel like you can do whatever and it will be accepted?
Definitely. I have a bunch of recordings from before the [first] Love Connection show that Nathan and I listen to sometimes and laugh. That’s what Love Connection would have been if it wasn’t for that first show. The Parking Lot Experiments guys were standing up the back and afterwards they asked us to play a show with them. We were pretty naïve at that point because that’s all we had, and that’s all we could do. We were watching those guys, and that definitely gave us the energy and confidence and spirit to want to continue it and actually give the record to other people. Which is how Sensory [Projects] got onto it, really. We weren’t expecting that.

Yeah, it’s a boutique label with all these great bands, but not limited to a single sound.
It’s the best way we could be doing it. Somebody says, “Wow, I really enjoy that. Do you want to work together and have fun?” So we’re just all good friends, and nobody tells each other how things should be done. I don’t know how other labels work, but it’s been perfect for us.

I mentioned Rat Vs. Possum, which Dean’s brother plays in. They’ve signed to Sensory Projects as well.
Yeah. Their album sounds great. It’s all recorded. It’s different from their live sound as well. It’s really a lush album, actually.

A few people guest on your album, including Nathan.
Yeah, Nathan wasn’t in the band at that point. Jade [McNally] and Sarah [Phelan] are from Tantrums. Those guys came out and helped us find sounds [with various computer programs]. And Christian [Bizzarri] is my housemate. He’s one of those freaks of nature who has so much talent. His vocals are just Brian Wilson all over again. Whenever I’m stuck, he does a few harmonies for me.

Is it right that you live on a farm?
Kind of. In Wonga Park [about 30 kilometres from Melbourne’s CBD]. It’s this little two-bedroom cottage, and it’s got this roof-leaking extension to the house that a roof recently fell on. That’s where [we play and record]. It’s got horses. I used to have chickens and a duck, but the fox ate them. It’s amazing. I spent most of last year just going for walks around the 27-acre property out the back. It’s really therapeutic.

What’s the glittery-sounding string instrument on ‘I Know You’re Real’?
On the off beat, in the background? That’s an autoharp. A really old one, actually. That song was written on the autoharp. It sounds beautiful.

Do you play the autoharp live as well?
Well, that’s the hardest song to play live. We don’t actually play that live much.

But it’s the single…
I know. We play it every now and again, but it’s seriously kind of empty without [everything that’s on the recording]. Do I play the autoharp [part] with guitar and add some weight to it or use an autoharp, which is an acoustic instrument I’d need to mic up? All that I’d have behind me then is one person on keyboard, one person on bass, and one person on drums. We used to do it as a quiet song, [but] we added all these strange effects.

So you can’t quite replicate everything now.
It’s really hard. Our friend Tom [Mendelovits] from Milk Teddy jumps on board every now and again. We’ve come up with a great arrangement for it, but he’s not always available. My favourite part of that song is the outro, where the keyboard tone comes in, which is just the regular organ we use throughout the album. But I really turned the gain up high, and that little part just came from that. It’s exactly what needs to be there. But if Kobi starts doing that, you lose another keyboard part that is more of a filtering part. We’re kind of makeshift, so it’s pretty tricky. Every now and again we reinvent the song totally, and some people like it and some think it’s shit.

How vital are these vintage synths to the band’s sound?
It’s just all we’ve got. But it’s important for us to have those parts. You’ve got the bass lines and guitars doing their thing, but those keyboards to me have all the punch lines. All the catches that make me happy. It’s hugely important for us to have that there. The “vintage synth” is just this great old portable organ thing we just put gain on. It’s like regular analog keyboards tweaked to our own liking. And Kobi comes up with some of the best lines.

Is there newer material than what’s on the album?
Yeah. We’ve got four new songs, three of which we play live. I think the first two were in the same vein [as the album]. I hadn’t had a new song in a month, so I tried really hard to force a song and it didn’t work, but the parts that did work made a good song. It turned out to be really interesting. And this other one, Dean wrote more on. Each song is moving away [from the album] a bit more. The latest, which is a strange little demo, is really quite different. I wasn’t sure if everyone [in the band] was going to enjoy it, but they seem to be into it. There’s no guitar, there’s no real drums; it’s just all strange organ sounds. I got a friend to speak through a megaphone and recite lines out of this esoteric book on yogi philosophy, just screaming into various pedals. It created this warm two minutes of condensed mayhem. None of the melodies or the tones resemble anything we’ve done in the past.

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Love Connection’s self-titled LP is out on Sensory Projects. The band will perform at a label showcase with Children of the Wave and The Ancients at the Workers Club on February 5.