Off The Piss

Given the confluence of several events – the coming of summer, ever increasing reports of alcohol-fuelled violence, even the beginning of the cricket season – it's both interesting and timely that Sydney singer-songwriter Spod should release his new single and EP, Couple Of Drinks. At first glance the title track is a straight-ahead, pub rock homage to the simple joys of sinking a couple with your mates, not an unengaging idea in these politically correct times. On further listening though, the song actually has a lot more to say: “It's partly about the journey of coming to grips with adulthood, in a sense,” he explains. “When you realise, 'No, I don't want to go out and be a knob. I want to be able to have a couple of beers and I want to be able to drive my car. I want to be able to relax and be responsible.' I just thought that no one really talks about responsibility in music. I was like, 'I'm going to fix that'.”

Spod has been working on an album, due for release early next year. As such, it's incumbent to ask whether Couple Of Drinks is representative of what we'll hear on the longplayer. It appears as if it's decidedly not. “It's a complete departure,” he says. “The album is very synth-heavy and slow and pretty. It's going to be called Adult Fantasy. It's about the journey into adulthood and the destruction of your childhood dreams. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, I have an incredibly fickle attention span. I'd like to keep doing the same thing so that people know what to expect, but I get bored really easily.”

Publicity for Spod's upcoming launch shows talks of a mysterious 'Spod Brew' that sometimes makes an appearance at his gigs. There's no way we're not going to ask about this. “It's just a little thing we've been doing at the shows, so that when I play Couple Of Drinks I can have a case or two onstage and I hand them out so that everyone can have a moderate, enjoyable beer while I play a song about having a moderate, enjoyable beer. And the EP comes in a beer cooler, so when you buy the beer cooler you get the EP. That's the only way I'm selling it. It just all seems like a fun thing to do. We're also going to do something with home brew, but we're not sure what yet. The Spod Brew was originally a home brew, but then we had some legal problems with bringing home brew into a pub, so we've had to make it beer the pub serves. Maybe [at] a backyard party or something like that, it could be a good way to make money. Beer? People drink it. I could be a millionaire this time next year, kicking back on my yacht, laughing about the old times.”

Anyone who's heard the track will no doubt agree that Couple Of Drinks is pretty much the ultimate sing-along song. Given this, Spod's upcoming launch shows should be do-not-miss affairs. More than this, though, it seems that Spod will also be encouraging audience participation of another, very rare, kind.

“We haven't played in Melbourne for a while,” he says. “It's going to be great fun getting out amongst it. Punters should expect to relax and have a nice time, really. Bringing along a penchant for singing along would go quite well. In Sydney I had a little man-choir that helped me with that. So if anyone wants to get up onstage and sing it with me and they know the words even roughly, that would be excellent. The more the merrier.”

Spod will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 6 December - The Gasometer, Melbourne VIC