Of What Dreams Are Made Of

Don't Fuck With Our Dreams. That's a pretty forthright title for an EP. It's direct and it doesn't really care what you think. It should come as no surprise, then, that it's from one of the best bands in Australia at the moment: The Smith Street Band. For a group not too far out of the starting blocks – despite this being their third recording – that emotive phrase can probably be taken as a group mantra as well. The Smith Street Band, headed up by the indomitable Wil Wagner, are known for their hard-hitting yet simple punk aesthetic and their direct, immediate lyricism.

Wagner's currently in what he calls “freak-out mode”, getting gear and personnel ready for the impending tour for Don't Fuck With Our Dreams. “We're all getting quite itchy feet to just fucking start,” he says quickly. “But we have fun getting everything ready. Well, freaking out about everything, actually.” It's kind of a surprising thought: a band that have toured nationally almost constantly since the huge success of second album, Sunshine & Technology, last year, freaking out about touring. You'd think they'd be used to it. “Oh, we are. It's just the time in between. I was just talking to the drummer, Chris, who I live with, and yeah – it's the time in between that's the killer. Just sitting around waiting, it kinda gets to you.”

Despite Wagner's apparently always-on tour itch, you'd forgive him for maybe being a little apprehensive about touring this time around. The title of the new EP, which, as Wagner puts it, came about when the band had “a bit of time between tours where we wanted to record something, and we didn't want to do an album”, was the result of an altercation during their last tour. It's all a bit hush-hush, but it was obviously a pretty nerve-racking event for all involved.

“We were on tour with Bomb The Music Industry and The Bennies earlier in the year. There was a incident at a show that I can't talk about for legal reasons. But it ended with the guitarist from The Bennies, Jules, getting quite badly injured. He got hurt protecting people at the show. During the incident, while he was, like, bleeding on the footpath, he yelled out, 'Don't fuck with our dreams' to the guy that was... ah... hurting him. And that quickly became a mantra for the rest of the tour. It was a pretty inspiring and amazing thing to say in sort of intense adversity. He was thinking about everyone else... but yeah, that's where the title came from.”

It is, sadly enough, the kind of thing that happens at gigs from time to time, but in true Smith Street Band fashion, something negative turned into optimism for the band and their touring partners. “I guess the song is focusing on, rather than the incident itself, what happened afterwards and how it sort of strengthened and galvanised us for the rest of the tour, in our own bands but also with a touring group of people. As fucking horrible as it was seeing your friend get hurt, the amount of support and love that came out from everyone was super inspiring. I think that's what we focused on for the EP, rather than just being pissed off. You know, focus on the hope a little bit.”

While Don't Fuck With Our Dreams is probably one of the more confronting Smith Street Band songs (“I wrote it straight out, straight after it happened,” Wagner says, “with nothing changed in the recording”), it stacks up well amongst their multitude of other tracks, ranging from the obstacles of youth and living in suburbia to spirituality. Wagner and his bandmates – drummer Chris Cowburn, guitarist Lee Hartney and bassist Fitzy Fitzgerald – have made a name for themselves by appearing to be misfits, but really speaking to the obstacles and dreams of everyday life. “I'm pretty much writing constantly, so I'll write one or two songs a day. That's how I analyse things and deal with things, is just by writing about them. I guess that's where a lot of the personal stuff in the lyrics comes from. And I guess that's how the immediacy of the songs comes out. I try not to focus on big words or sounding clever or whatever.”