This Is Australia

17 April 2013 | 12:14 pm | Chris Hayden

“Some of what we’re talking about is just a time when we all partied at this house in that area."

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"We've all lived in Newtown at one time or another over the last few years, so we have a pretty close affiliation with the suburb,” so says Paddy Cornwall, bass player with rootsy Sydney outfit Sticky Fingers. The band has been riding a high of radio play and choice supports for the last 18 months on the back of their infectious singles Caress Your Soul (a track that recently landed at number 61 in the Hottest 100), Clouds & Cream and the most recent Australia Street. The band's links to the Newtown area and its surrounds are laid fairly clear on this latest track Australia Street being a well known hangout for the suburbs younger and, at times slightly less salubrious demographic.

“The song isn't necessarily about the street itself,” Cornwall explains. “Some of what we're talking about is just a time when we all partied at this house in that area. It was around the same time that we unofficially headlined a festival in Newtown by building a stage out of plastic crates and playing over the fence. That was the first thing we did to get a bit of attention outside our initial circle of mates. So the song is just about that particular summer. It was a time when the band was taking quite a lot of pills. We had a few dudes in our circle who were, sort of, dealing and so they were always around hence why the verses have this chilled out vibe and the choruses have this uplifting, sensational vibe to them. There's a lyric there 'chewing on your taste' which is pretty much about gurning.”

As you can probably tell from that explanation, Sticky Fingers are a band that pride themselves on letting their social lives intersect with the music they produce. Always a winning formula when done right, the pre-chorus cry of “fuck, that was a good time” on Australia Street really rams home the fact that we're dealing with a group of lads for whom the show and the night are one and the same. This is further evidenced in their latest video clip, in which the band members join a motley crew of randoms for a stroll through (you guessed it) Newtown, breaking a few champagne bottles and generally causing a ruckus on the way through.

“It actually went stupidly well; we nailed it in the first take,” Cornwall says of the endearingly shopworn clip. “We're all massive fans of wise-guy flicks and we kind of based this one on Goodfellas. There's that one scene where old mate (Ray Liotta) takes his girlfriend to this show but there's a massive line so he takes her through all these kitchens. It's a huge one-shot take so we wanted to do something like that. We planned it the night before because our manager told us that he was releasing the song on a Tuesday and that we needed a clip. So I put out a thing on Facebook saying, 'we're gonna film this thing tomorrow, meet in Camperdown Park if you wanna be involved.' All the people that are in it are pretty much people that we knew, though. At one point there's a dude with his pants down and his shirt folded up in a funny way, just looking like a total retard. Afterwards he's like, 'oh sorry man, doing that was the only way that I knew I'd get into your video clip'.”

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A noble effort indeed, but what was the reaction of the general public to Sticky Fingers' particular brand of chaos? “People were okay with it,” Cornwall laughs. “I think people kind of like that sort of thing because over the last few years Newtown has changed quite a lot and become this upper market place, sort of like Paddington, whereas it used to be a bit more working class and raw.”

Sticky Fingers will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 18 April - The Zoo, Fortitude Valley QLD
Friday 19 April - The Northern Hotel, Byron Bay NSW
Saturday 20 April - Big Pineapple Festival, Woombye QLD
Sunday 21 April - The Hoey Moey, Coffs Harbour NSW
Thursday 25 April - Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
Friday 26 April - Baha, Rye VIC
Friday 10 May - The Gov, Hindmarsh SA

Caress Your Soul is out now.