Step On It

When Melissa D'or, bassist and vocalist for Melbourne band Ana Nicole, heard RRR's Stephen 'The Ghost' Walker had spruiked their debut Twinkie on his now-legendary show Skull Cave, she was telling anyone who'd listen. Skull Cave listeners will understand that though Walker's musical taste and knowledge is wide and varied, the man loves and plays bold music – stuff that challenges the listener. Twinkie will do this. It's all soaked in echoed vocals, metronomic but glitchy drum jags and duelling synth and bass. As Walker put it: “They have managed to get a fantastic widescreen wall-of-sound electronic-based drive to the entire album… It's one of those records that if you put it on a decent sound system they just sound bigger and deeper.”

“I got all these text messages when I was at work when [Walker] was talking about us on the radio,” says D'or. “It's like, if somebody is going to review your album, you want him to; if somebody on radio is going to talk about you, you'd want it to be him. To get kind words from The Ghost is pretty much a life achievement… I pretty much told everyone in the office – most of them had no idea what I was talkin' about, but that's okay.”

Their sound evolved through a long period of D'or and now drummer Simon Castricum jamming. Though they had no clear sonic directive to work towards, or from, D'or reckons her choice of instrument played a large role. “I play the Epiphone Thunderbird, with heaps of overdrive,” she says. “It's a tree-trunk of a bass, heavy… They're known for a really heavy sound – like if you go right back to a Detroit, MC5 or Stooges kind of sound right through to even Nikki Sixx from Mötley Crüe [who also] plays one.

“We come from a range of styles and I guess so do our audience. The common thing we see at our shows, which I think is quite rare for Melbourne, is that our crowd dance… actually dancing, not the Melbourne nod-the-head look-too-serious, but really-getting-into-it dancing. There's nothing better than playing live to that.”

They've been forced to find a replacement for guitarist (and notable visual artist) Masato Takasaka, so the launch will be their first live show with Andrew Kershaw. “He's a real character and has a lot of personality,” says D'or. “[He] not only fits in well with the band but adds another level as well, so I'm really keen to see him live. The energy in rehearsals is already really amazing, so I can't wait to see that on stage.” They've also enlisted Romy Hoffman's synth-punk project A-Gender for support duties, along with post-wank (their description) two-piece Franco Cozzo.

The album artwork is a stumbling block; all cake, whipped cream and high heels, it belies what's inside. “I guess we could have been a bit more obvious and gone for some sort of moody and dark, serious image,” D'or says, “but that's not really our style. Most of our songs are about greed, excess, desire, love and the conflicts that come along with those things. The excess in the photo reflects that, so the simple 'standing on the cake' is just a bit of a subversive dig.”

On Twinkie, the band did everything themselves (except mixing and mastering), right down to cutting out the cover lift-outs. Not a big believer in the CD as a format, D'or says the physical release was more about servicing radio than anything else. Of the internet release she says, “It's a bit of a silent activity. You don't really get a sense of it; that's why I'm really looking forward to the launch. And it's like we're already onto the next thing, y'know, we're already looking at new songs, so we don't really want to spend too much time looking back… we need to keep moving.”

Ana Nicole will be playing the following shows:

Saturday 24 November - Gasometer, Melbourne VIC