Sounds Of The City

Once upon a time – well, one night early in 2009 actually – two young musician friends, a rhythm section as it happens, stumbled across a young busker fresh from New Zealand playing outside the Coopers Arms in a mythical Sydney suburb called Newtown. The busker's name was Dylan Frost and within a few months he, bass player Patrick Cornwall (aka Paddy Fingers), drummer Beaker SF who, as it turns out, had never really played before and borrowed a drumkit from his cousin to join, and another guitarist who travels simply as Seamus (a fifth member, Freddy, occasionally contributes keyboards) had become Sticky Fingers, all pulsing pop-soaked reggae, and they'd released a mini-album ironically titled Extended Play, which they cut in a proper studio.

All have served or continue to serve time pulling beers behind the bar of the embattled Annandale Hotel, which also provided them with a recording environment and spawned their next EP, Happy Endings, a limited-edition acoustic outing that was prompted by the reaction to their support set on a Donavon Frankenreiter tour. Then Sticky Fingers took to a Newtown Festival stage and Evermore's Dann Hume caught them in action and offered to produce their next record.

The irony there is that the band had applied to play the festival three times and been knocked back each time. In desperation and in a shamelessly cheeky bit of self-promotion, they set up a stage in a friend's backyard that overlooks the festival area, playing and filming their performance of a song called Headlock, which they posted on YouTube. Whether that got them over the line is debatable, but the following year, there they were, officially playing the Newtown Festival. The indirect result is their debut album, Caress Your Soul, which Cornwall has previously described in these pages as “psychotic surf dub love songs”.

“The songs span over the past couple of years,” Cornwall explains, “and that's because the album wasn't gonna be an album; it was just gonna be an EP. But after Dann saw us play Newtown Festival and said 'I wanna work with you guys in some way, shape or form – whatever you're doin', I'm down', we sent him Caress Your Soul. At that stage we didn't even really think very highly of that tune – it was very much just a jam – we wrote it as we recorded it almost. But we sent him that down to Melbourne, and a couple of weeks later he goes, 'What do you think of this?' and he sent us back this impressive song and we went, 'Fuck! Sounds pretty good'.”

Testing the waters, Sticky Fingers released a single, Fractured, which they launched as part of the Annandale's 12th birthday celebrations, which was followed last October by Caress Your Soul, the single. “We didn't want to burst the bubble with an album too soon, didn't want to release it into the abyss kind of thing, but once we started hearing tracks that we were coming up with where there was a better mix, we thought, 'Aw, let's just make it an album'.”

“We had more than enough material,” Seamus chips in. “We had, what, 18 tracks all up to choose from? More, we had a lot of material to choose from.”

“This album represents the band as a whole,” Cornwall suggests. “There's definitely a massive variety of tunes and flavours in there but also it feels like it's very much got this sound throughout it – it sounds like a band.

“Australia Street is actually a really good example of the songwriting process. Dylan wrote the verses while that chorus was actually a chorus for another song that I'd done, so Dylan's song had a different chorus which we thought was a bit weak, and I had this song but the verse of that was bit weak, so we kind of smashed the two together.

“That song, we've been playing it live for the past six months, and that song – this was even before anyone had heard it on record – playing it live, crowds have been reacting to it. By the second chorus… it just seems to really unite crowds.”

For all the excitement about the debut album, Sticky Fingers are very much a working band, the album launch tour including their sixth tour of WA, while their CV includes names like the Woodford Festival, The Gum Ball and New Beginnings.

“We know lots of awesome bands in Sydney,” Cornwall says. “I think working in The Annandale, the massive advantage to that is you get to watch lots of gigs – and we know lots of awesome bands, but one thing we reckon we do which a lot of bands don't seem to do is just take the incentive to just hit the road without someone telling you you've got to do it kind of thing, rather than just kicking around the same old watering holes in Sydney, waiting for something that isn't going to happen…”

“A big record deal,” Seamus finishes. It seems too, that the good old-fashioned street press hasn't done the Sticky Fingers cause any harm either, especially in Perth.

“They'll listen to you guys, trust you guys, and come to a gig,” Cornwall explains. “The first time we came to Perth, the first gig was in Scarborough, and we had people come and watch, and actually watch, and at that point we didn't have any triple j play whatsoever, nothing, and we said, 'How did you guys know to come?' and they said, 'Oh, we read Inpress and the Drum, and we thought you guys sounded cool from the articles'. That didn't happen fucking in Sydney! Sydney's a real trend-based town and everyone tries to jump on the bandwagon just before they peak and, 'Oh, I was always here – I always liked this',” he sneers. “There's a lack of that over in Perth – everyone's a bit more real over there.”

Sticky Fingers will be playing the following dates:

Friday 22 March - Manning Bar, Sydney NSW
Saturday 23 March - Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale NSW
Wednesday 27 March - Rosemount Hotel, Perth WA
Thursday 28 March - Prince Of Wales Hotel, Bunbury WA
Saturday 30 March - Settlers Tavern, Margaret River WA
Sunday 31 March - White Star Hotel, Albany WA
Friday 5 April - Entrance Leagues Club, Gosford NSW
Friday 12 April - Republic Bar, Hobart TAS
Saturday 13 April - Royal Oak Hotel, Launceston TAS
Sunday 14 April - The Northern, Byron Bay NSW
Thursday 18 April - The Zoo, Fortitude Valley QLD
Friday 19 April - The Northern Hotel, Byron Bay NSW
Saturday 20 April - Big Pineapple Festival, Woombye QLD
Sunday 21 April - The Hoey Moey, Coffs Harbour NSW
Thursday 25 April - Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
Friday 26 April - Baha, Rye VIC
Friday 10 May - The Gov, Hindmarsh SA

Caress Your Soul is out now.