Love Is The Drug

Fremantle rockers The Love Junkies have had a busy period of touring, as well as both single and album releases this year. They've also made a name for themselves for their furiously energetic live shows. “We always seem to have a really good time and I think when people can see that – when you're up there with your best mates, you know, jamming – I think that's infectious, that joy and that excitement, people feed off of that.”

The Love Junkies' punchy debut album Maybelene was released earlier this month. McDonald seems simultaneously proud of it while also wanting to partly distance himself from the record. Spanning various genres throughout the album, from noise to grunge and blues, McDonald doesn't have a sole musical pin-up in mind. “To me that album still sounds quite young, like, even though we were all incredibly proud of it and all that – you know, we were stoked to call it our first record – we were still trying to find our own identity and find our own sound, and we were just kind of grabbing things. Radiohead, as well, was a huge influence on me, and I hear some Radiohead influences in there… I couldn't pin it down to one band in particular, the album moves around quite a lot.”

The band started their Maybelene launch tour this month and the forecast looks good, with initial performances in WA selling out within minutes of the doors opening. McDonald laughs, “We were all quite shocked with how it went. We had a feeling it was gonna sell out but didn't think it was going to be such a big deal.”

As well as touring, the band has recently scored festival slots on Groovin' The Moo and Big Day Out. McDonald recalls the big crowd at the latter. “A lot of people definitely went out of their way to come down and watch. 'Cause we've opened a couple of festivals now, and you've just gotta accept the fact that you're playing to everybody walking through the gates, and some people will come check you out. But we had a pretty healthy crowd so we were all quite chuffed with ourselves.”

For relative up-and-comer McDonald, however, it's not the big crowds that get to him. “It's sort of weird, 'cause there's all these people running around and there's all this equipment everywhere – a big huge stage. There's all these speakers everywhere, some guy's asking what you want in all your monitors and you're just like, 'I don't know! Fuck, like, I'm used to playing on these tiny little stages'. I reckon that that's far more intimidating than the crowd.”

The three-piece also joined British India on tour earlier this year for their first national tour.

“I think you benefit a lot more from trying to jump on with a band that already have that kind of recognition, 'cause even if you've been getting the odd spin on radio, you still start out playing to like 20 people, and it's nice bypassing that and jumping in front of a big audience.

“There was a lot of confused people. Everybody kind of stood back and was like, 'What the fuck's going on here?' 'Cause they're just standing back and trying to figure you out and they have to get a taste of it, see if they like it. But people still went nuts; especially in Adelaide, people really dug it… I'm very interested to see how this next tour goes.”