Out Of The Garage

17 April 2014 | 10:29 am | Steve Bell

"I always get nervous before I play live, but then I always end up liking it"

For years now California-bred reprobates Hunx & His Punx have been concocting slightly sleazy takes on the musical styles of yesteryear, whether it be '60s rock, doo wop, punk or garage (to name but a few). Their recently-released album Street Punk, however, showcases a harder and more aggressive side to the band's trashbag aesthetic, a shift which frontman and chief miscreant Seth Bogart explains was entirely intentional.

“Well I was really just super-sick of getting lumped in with the whole 'garage' world, because I feel like I don't really belong or something,” he muses. “I really just like punk music or pop, so I just decided that I wanted to go punk. When we play live we always like enjoy playing the really fast songs, so we kinda wrote a few of them as a joke and then got really serious about it. But Shannon [Shaw – bass] and I wrote that album in like a week and recorded it basically. It actually wasn't intense at all, it was the easiest thing in the world – it was so weird and easy. I feel like it was just meant to be or something, but it was a big relief to just be able to just yell.

“[The garage scene] is just a bunch of boring straight guys. I'm from more of a gay pop scene, so after a while I just kinda got sick of it. And so much of it's so fucking shit and so boring – Shannon's band [Shannon & The Clams] is really great, but there's just not a lot of it that I like. And I prefer punk, so it just seemed natural to do that.”

Some of tracks on Street Punk such as Don't Call Me Fabulous clock in at less than 30 seconds, definitely never threatening to outstay their welcome.

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“The whole album's only about 20 minutes but I have ADD so I don't think I could have done it for any longer – the last song's four minutes, so without that it's really like a 15-minute album,” Bogart laughs. “I'm surprised that our label went for it, but they did. I think shorter is better, but now it makes me want to write a 20-minute song just to fuck with things.

 “I mean those really short songs just happened on tour when we were just joking around. I don't think they'd be very good if they were extended, but we often play them over and over – I like to make them play it twice at least, sometimes more. [Don't Call Me Fabulous] kind of started because Shannon and I were really drunk in Europe after a show and she was complaining because some gay guy kept going to her, 'You're so fabulous!', and she was like, 'I hate that! It either means you're gay or you're fat!' Then I just started laughing uncontrollably, so we decided that we'd make an 'anti-fabulous' song.”

Ever the musical chameleon, Bogart admits to have been holed up working on a “weird electonica-slash-pop” album that will most likely be a solo affair rather than a band effort, but one vastly different in tone to 2012 solo excursion Hairdresser Blues.

“It's actually completely different than that – it's more like keyboard and organ and drum-machine-based,” he offers. “I'm in the beginning stages of recording it. It's weird because I wanted to put out an album every year, but it feels like this one might be two years, but I just really want to make it this perfect thing, you know? Maybe Shannon and will have to get together for a week and write another quick album just to have one come out this year. But the solo album won't be out until next year and it's going to be much different – I'm going to try to have a whole 'show' with like projections and a stage-set. I'm excited to do that.”

Strangely for someone who seems so confident and assured in the live setting – even when things are threatening to descend into chaos – Bogart admits to an element of stage fright.

“I love the creative part of [what we do] – for me creating the songs and recording them is the best, I love the art and the visuals,” he enthuses. “I really want to get into more videos, so I want to have a video for each song. I love that part. I always get nervous before I play live, but then I always end up liking it. It's kind of weird. The older I get the more nervous I get – it's really weird – but once I get up there I just forget everything, so it's totally fine.”