Electric Feel

You all know the song. It questions your emotions – how you're feeling. And if your answer to the question matches The Preatures' breakout single, then you feel god damn good, that's for sure.

“We're so surprised on how Is This How You Feel? has been received by people,” guitarist and vocalist Gideon Bensen beams humbly. “But having it come out and knowing that people are waiting, it makes it all the more exciting for people to hear it, and hear what's coming next from the band. Because from the last EP to this one there's a difference in what we sound like and how far we've developed.”

The title track of their sophomore EP, Is This How You Feel?, following on from last year's Shaking Hands, is a slice of disco pop funk that is as alluring as it is endearing. It's a song that dances with you all night long but only leaves you with a kiss on the cheek, and shows that sensuality can come from both sides of the band – be it masculine or feminine – thanks to the back-and-forth verse-chorus style between Bensen and enchanting frontwoman Isabella Manfredi.

Although the Sydney quintet have been kicking it on the city's live circuit for a few years now since getting together at local institution The Lansdowne Hotel, nothing they've done before this has resonated so immediately with so many. But The Preatures have long backed themselves in, and it's now clear why. Bensen pinpoints the soul rockers' ability to deliver classic sounds in a fresh way as simply being due to having the songs down.

“So you could play it on the acoustic or play it on the piano and there would be a real song there – that's always been the main focus for us,” he says. “We looked at obviously Fleetwood Mac, the Divinyls, quite a bit of Bowie, Prince – Prince was a huge influence on this EP. You can hear songs in what they do rather than sounds. And then we just married the two up using effects and things like that – a lot more keyboards and synths, things that people around us were using – and we just incorporated that.”

And with their music soundtracking prime time TV shows like Offspring and the band playing support to Pink for a string of dates as part of her mammoth Australian tour, the crossover appeal of the five-piece is about to soar. The Preatures have become one of the country's hottest up-and-coming bands and things are moving fast, or as Bensen puts it, “it's kinda gone from whoa to go very quickly”.

Working on this new EP pretty much since the middle of last year, the five songs signal a new direction for the group, and pushed the band in their decision to produce and mix the release themselves, with lead guitarist Jack Moffitt manning the controls. Indeed, Is This How You Feel? is The Preatures dialling into the essence of themselves.

“This EP is really a lot about grooves and rhythms and things like that, whereas the last EP was quite largely about songs and structures. Although that's been important for us, we've really focused in on writing something that people can move to – that was the big focus,” he drives home. “We explored a lot more things, like sounds; here in Sydney, it's quite an electronic city, so a lot of our friends use samplers making beats, stuff like that. We hung out with them, saw what they were doing and incorporated it into our stuff.

“We're a band that pushes ourselves and forces ourselves to try new things,” Bensen continues. “If we were doing the same thing by now I think we would have gotten a little bit bored and maybe one of us would have moved on to do something else, but because we're constantly evolving everyone's feeling challenged and spurred on to come to the party and bring something new.”

That party is soon to be going down far and wide, with The Preatures showcasing this new EP across Europe and America before the year is out. Recent gigs with rocking US sister starlets Haim went down smoothly according to the guitarist: “It makes you play so much better when you know the crowd is receiving it and enjoying it,” he relates. “Everything goes out the window after that.” And now that they're clued in to what people are looking for they're happy to let the demands and expectations of their fans direct things in the future.

With the buzz and momentum that's now behind The Preatures, we should expect a pretty quick turnaround for a debut record. Bensen confirms that the band are already writing new material and would love to have a full-length out early next year.

“Just because of the timeline now,” he explains. “With the free time that we have to tackle all this – the stuff that's been sitting in the wings for a while [we can play with]. But it's all about timelines, y'know, you're always writing and doing something but you've just got to put it away for a while until the time is right. There's more people involved now in our Preatures camp so we've got to make sure that everyone is on top of everything and that the time is right.”