Taste Test: Bleeding Knees Club

THE FIRST ALBUM I BOUGHT WITH MY OWN MONEY
I remember I went to see Men In Black, and bought the soundtrack. I think it had that Gettin' Jiggy Wit It song on it; I loved it, I was a little kid. There was a CD shop straight underneath the movie theatre, so I went down and bought the CD. It came with a couple of singles and really shitty remixes on it.

THE ALBUM I'M LOVING RIGHT NOW
I've been listening to The Descendents' Everything Sucks, pretty much just on repeat. I'm in the process of writing another album for Bleeding Knees Club, and I just wanted to get inspired: their melodies are so great, but they're still really punk as well. I'm also listening to this Australian dude called Bored Nothing; he's super-chill, that's when I want to give the punk a break and just rest my ears.

MY FAVOURITE PARTY ALBUM
Probably Justin Timberlake's Futurelove Sexsounds or whatever it is [it's FutureSex/LoveSounds]. SexyBack is a pretty amazing song: you have to be pretty brave to try and claim that you're bringing sexy back. I can't imagine having the confidence to claim you're bringing something back. I mean, what are Bleeding Knees Club bringing back? I don't know, maybe MySpace. But, wait, didn't Timberlake already buy MySpace? Man, nothing can be brought back, because Timberlake's already brought everything back!

MY FAVOURITE COMEDOWN ALBUM
When I'm super-hungover and just zoning out, I like listening to that first Fleet Foxes record, maybe falling asleep. And Galaxie 500's On Fire. That's a great album to lie around and feel sick to. And the Velvet Underground's like my favourite band; maybe I should be listening to Heroin when I'm coming down.

THE MOST SURPRISING RECORD IN MY COLLECTION
I get given all these records; like, I got given all these Vaccines records, a few sevens and some tens, and I don't really like The Vaccines. That's kind of surprise to me that I own them. Anyone that knows me would be like, 'Why the fuck do you have Vaccines records?' I also have all this 50 Cent on my computer for those times when I'm feeling all gangsta.

THE FIRST GIG I EVER ATTENDED
Until I was 18, my parents wouldn't let me go to shows, so I didn't see anything. I think the first time I ever actually saw bands I wanted to see was at Laneway Festival. I remember Tame Impala opened, and there was like no one there. That was pretty awesome.

THE WEIRDEST GIG EXPERIENCE I'VE EVER HAD
I was at a show in Perth and this girl came up and said to me: 'I bat off over photos of you'. And then her sister came up to me and said the same thing. That's easily the weirdest thing that's happened at one of our gigs; having people tell you that they bat off – that they masturbate! – to photos of you. Only in Perth would that happen.

MY BIGGEST NON-MUSICAL INFLUENCES
Skateboarding. Hot dogs, American food. High school. Breaking stuff. You know when you're a teenager and you just run around throwing eggs at cars and smashing windows? When I'm trying to write songs, I remember when I used to do that kind of stuff, and then I try and think of how I can make kids do that.

THE COOLEST PERSON I'VE EVER MET
I met this crack addict, once. We were at South By Southwest, stranded in the middle of nowhere, and this tracky-wearin' black crack guy drove up in a car, and he was like, 'Yo, you wanna lift?' The whole time he gave us a ride he was smoking crack out of his little pipe, offering it to us. We were like, 'No, man, we're not into that shit'. Then he started talking about how he met Paul Wall, and showing us photos, but they were all on his old '90s Nokia, so they were all blurry and you couldn't see shit. He was pretty cool. We invited him to our next show, but I don't think he ever made it.

THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY CRUSH I'VE EVER HAD
When I was a kid, I used to really like Lizzie McGuire, y'know, Hilary Duff. And Britney Spears's sister, Jamie Spears. She was pretty cool. All my earliest crushes – or all my celebrity crushes – were clearly informed by just hanging out watching shitty television when I was a kid.

IF I COULD HANG OUT IN ANY TIME AND PLACE IN HISTORY
Maybe in New York in the late-'80s, early-'90s, back when Sonic Youth and Nirvana were just starting to play bigger shows. I reckon that was a pretty cool era, you know, 1991: The Year Punk Broke. But maybe just before that, before it broke; before everyone sold out and it was still cool.

IF I WASN'T MAKING MUSIC
I've got a degree in advertising, so I'd probably be thinking of ways to try and sell other people's music to people. Although maybe I'd just be backpacking, and currently doing something a lot better than I am now. I wanted to go to space, but that probably wasn't ever going to happen. But don't Virgin fly people to space, now? Next time we get a record advance, that's totally what I'm spending it on. Then I'll record the next album when I'm up in space on the Virgin space rocket. Imagine how cool it'd sound if was recorded in zero gravity. I might email Richard Branson and see if he'll do that. What billionaire wouldn't give me that advance? It's like the ultimate: Space: The Final Album.