'At The End Of The Day They're Fuckin' Pop Tunes, Man!'

Artists tend to get a little flustered when asked to describe their sound to an uninitiated listener, caught between the need to excite a new listener and attain their interest while remaining humble about something they've put their heart, soul, blood and sweat into. Marcus Finocchiaro, bassist for Sydney-based indie-pop act The Lulu Raes, has no such issue, however, and his quirky-but-very apt description of his band's soon-to-be-released debut album Lulu rolls sweetly off his tongue. "I'd say that this is the most advanced songwriting in a body of work that we've been involved in and hopefully we can continue to disguise our pop music as rock'n'roll music, but at the end of the day they're fuckin' pop tunes, man!" he laughs.

Becoming only slightly more serious for a moment, Finocchiaro is happy to relate to us exactly where most of the ideas for his band's idiosyncratic tunes, and their inherent accessibility, come from. "Taras [Hrubyj-Piper] has always had a great ear for melody," he compliments his guitarist. "A lot of this album is just pieces of his brain. And what can I say? He's got a palatable brain."

He tells us that the light, easy, breezy vibe of the band's sound extends to the album's lyrical content as well. "It seems to me to be pop music," he states, "and pop music seems to have the same themes over and over again for the past 50 years: it's unrequited love, it's going out and enjoying yourself, it's occasionally something slightly more introspective. Like the lyrics of Fade Away - that's a lot more thoughtful than most of the rest of the record."

The band head off on an extensive eastcoast tour after the record comes out, taking in several more regional areas as well as the major centres, and Finocchiaro says fans of their recordings can expect a little extra something in the live arena. "This is me being biased, because I like playing live more than I like being in studios," he says, "but I'd say the live show is more of an experience and it's more something to talk about the next day whereas the record is more just something for yourself.

"The live show is far more energetic and far more of an outing. I would say that the appropriate place to listen to this record would be your car or on your headphones or something like that. So there's a distinction there."

And it seems that fans will not have to wait too long for the next piece of recorded work from The Lulu Raes, considering they have actually been sitting on Lulu for quite some time. "There's so much shit in between times," he says of the wait between finishing recording and actually releasing the album. "You've got to put it out at a specific time, and the label wants you to do three singles and all that. I reckon if we had our way, we've would have gone, 'Right, it's finished, there you go!' But I don't think that's really how they like to run things. We've been sitting on this for around a year.

"So we're all right into writing mode for album two. The writing to present songs is what will be going on after the tour. We'll get nice and competitive with each other to see who can present the best song."

Finocchiaro has an idea in the back of his mind regarding his band's future, long term. "I have this theory that we're going to be really famous in Japan," he laughs again, before adding, "I don't know if it's a theory as much as a want. I spent some time in Japan a couple of years ago. I fuckin' loved it! I feel that with this band there is something to sell to that audience. If you think of J-pop and the way that works - it's all very melodic, it's all very good time - there is a parallel there. Hopefully.

"So then we can sit on the plane and sing that Tom Waits song [Big In Japan]!"