Using Regret To Shape Their New Record

Two of The Rubens' three brothers, Sam and Elliott Margin, are settled at a table inside a South American café in Melbourne. Frontman Sam models a hotter-than-Hades brown paisley bomber jacket that we'd love to own while keys player Elliot dresses more casually in a dark-hued hoodie and Goodyear cap. The band boasts the same triple-threat brother combo as INXS, with their other bro Zaac on guitar, the line-up rounded out by their longtime friend Scott Baldwin on drums.

The night before our interview, the band had played the first of their showcase gigs in Sydney — before a mixed crowd of media and fans — and the boys are feeling pretty chuffed with how it all went down. Sam admits he felt "pretty good" performing the new songs and puts it down to the fact that The Rubens rehearsed "way more than [they've] ever rehearsed before". Elliott adds, on performing "the old ones", "the song starts and it's already over 'cause it's like muscle memory; it's just, like, done. And then [with] the new ones it feels like a fresh experience." His brother goes so far as to suggest, "It's more enjoyable."

"You get to enjoy it and watch each other and watch how the crowd responds to it," Elliott continues. Both of them agree it's impossible to prepare for those unexpected quirks that make a gig exciting and Sam offers, "Oh, there's always something. You know, you'll leave a pedal on or you'll — it's gonna take a while to sort of not screw up at all."

"Was it in Lay It Down last night Zaac had his distortion on or something?" Elliott asks and the frontman laughs then confirms, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Lay It Down was really the starting point of The Rubens success story. "We did become overnight successes in a way, if you wanna use those words," Sam allows, "because we had a demo [Lay It Down] on triple j Unearthed and suddenly they started playing it on high rotation on triple j. So that was overnight, really, at that point — or as overnight as it could be for a band — because we didn't even know how to play the song live yet. We weren't a band even; I mean, we'd played a couple of gigs, but we weren't prepared." Elliott interjects, "You guys didn't have pedals or anything!"

"We didn't have tuners at this stage," Sam confirms. "Like, we were so bad." Eliott recalls, "They'd be like, 'You got an E, Elliot?' Yeah, just tuning in front of the crowd if you could call it a crowd — eight people." So basically just their family, then? Sam responds, "Yeah, so that [radio play] happened then suddenly it wasn't just family — there was a packed room, even if it was a 250-people room. We were like, 'Wow!' Then we found out David Kahne, our producer, was interested in working with us." So a producer of international renown wanted to work with The Rubens before they'd even got their shit together? "Yeah!" they both enthuse in unison before Sam clarifies. "A friend of ours was going and doing a seminar thing over in France, which is like a mixing engineer seminar. A few people are selected to go and work with these producers and he just — in the studio — put on our demo for My Gun and David was excited by it."

If you're not familiar with Kahne's CV, he's produced records for the likes of Sir Paul McCartney, The Strokes, Stevie Nicks and New Order, and that's just for starters. Did The Rubens know that their friend was gonna present their demo to the producer in this way? "I think he said, 'I'm going to, maybe'?" Sam ponders before correcting himself, "No, no, I was in London on holiday and Dean, our friend, came over from France to meet me in London to tell me about this David Kahne guy. And then I was like, 'Wow!' David Kahne happened before triple j started playing Lay It Down." The pair are acutely aware of their fortuitous beginnings and Elliott marvels, "It was such an opportunity."

"All this happened over six months," Sam adds. "So it was just like [snaps fingers] that, you know? Then we had to go and make the record [The Rubens], which took ages. We toured the record for a coupla years and then this time we've spent a year and a half writing and recording it [Hoops]. Um, it's a heap more work and stress than people realise. It's a really, really fun job, but it's sooooo stressful. The uncertainty of fans, of income, longevity — it's just crazy." His brother agrees.

On whether they felt more confident working with the same producer for record number two, the brothers concur (Elliott: "definitely"; Sam: "totally"). Referring to The Rubens recording sessions, Elliott opines, "We probably kept our mouths shut more than maybe we should have." Sam takes it up there: "Well we have regrets about the first record, there are things that if we did it again we would change, or if we had balls at the time we would've said something. And we realised listening back to the first record that, although we like the songs and we think it's a good record — I never wanted to make another record that I don't wanna listen to because there's something in there that I wanted to change. So, going in, that was the main thing, was, like, we have to live with it for the rest of our lives. And we did! We got there, so we're really happy.

"You're selling something that you actually really like, so then it's much easier to perform and the audience believes it much more if you're really enjoying it. And I still really enjoy playing some of the old songs. I liked Lay It Down last night; I couldn't keep the smile off my face. I was loving it!"

Still, Sam reckons The Rubens' new songs are "just better songs". "They've got better parts, they're more interesting and they're, you know, just better to perform because there's more happening."

"It feels like the set's elevated as soon as — well we've only really played one show," Elliott considers before Sam stresses, "Well, last night everyone said the best songs were the new songs. Everyone. Like, my parents, the label..." Elliott acknowledges, "It would be depressing if it was otherwise."

"On the first record all the sounds are pretty same-same," Sam admits, "whereas [on] this one there's a lot of really cool guitar tones, there's more keys, there's different sounds — a lot more electric piano, like, Wurlitzer and stuff. We didn't have that on the first record and, yeah! We really wanted to make this sound more interesting." Were there any happy accidents in the studio that ended up making it through to the final mix? "I think there was a lot of little things," Sam suggests. "I just remember Dave, the producer, constantly saying, 'That was good, what happened there?' It's kind of a producer's job to and that's a really big thing that producers do all the time: good mistake or bad mistake, you know? I think imperfections are what they're looking for — good imperfections, like, especially with your vocal. I think on the first record, I thought a good vocal was a perfect vocal whereas on this record I wanted it to be really imperfect. I wanted it to be more gravelly. So the songs where I needed to do a nice falsetto I chose to do over these days and then when I knew we were going out with one of our mates and having a big party, I'd party, go nuts, smoke cigarettes and the next day I'd come in and do the lower parts that needed all that and, yeah! Tonally the vocals on this record are better I reckon, too, because of that; it's not trying to sing perfectly all the time."

"I think touring helped as well," Elliott posits. "Like, singing that many shows you really get to actually practice and get to know your voice and actually embrace your voice instead of trying to get away from the graveliness and trying to make it prim and proper."

The last song The Rubens wrote for this album wound up being the title track and it's an interesting new direction that sees them exploring R&B territory. "We love that," Sam admits. "I think on the next record it wouldn't surprise me if we went down the Hoops road a little bit more."

"Definitely," Elliott seconds. "It came at the end of writing, when we weren't even meant to be really writing; we were mixing the record and stuff, and then it came. And we went sick."

Alleviated of the pressure to write, Hoops came together easily. "It's, like, the record's there, we can see if we can make this song work," Sam explains, "and then it did and it was just like a nice full stop… People try and get you to do that, like, management are secretly hoping that they can put you in that mood. Yeah, 'It's great, it's great, it's great! Just keep writing,' you know? And they're right! You just need to keep going. That's the only way. You know, we wrote 35 for this one and ended up with 11. So we're gonna have to get going again [for the next album]."