Keeping The Door Open

"It's really strange, it's like the last ten years didn't happen,” admits Sarah McLeod, the fast-talking frontwoman from '90s alt.rock favourites The Superjesus. “How can my brain just block out a decade like that all of a sudden? [Right now I'm] just in the moment and [I] hear the song start, then bang! I'm right back where I was before, and so is everybody else. Everybody looks the same too, that's the thing, nobody looks any different, so it just doesn't feel like anything has changed.”

On paper, though, it looks like plenty has, or at least should have for The Superjesus. After all, since the band's last record McLeod has released a solo album, put together a Motown EP (for release later this year) and has even started contributing vocals to electronic club tracks – about as far removed from 'rock'n'roll' as you could imagine. The boys of The Superjesus, meanwhile, have hit the stage with a number of acts during that time, including Faker, Rogue Traders and The Androids. But as the frontwoman informs, this openness is very much newfound – for herself at least.

“I wasn't open to jack shit when I was younger,” she candidly laughs. “I thought that anyone who was in more than one band, that meant that they were jack of all, master of none. [I thought] you always just focus on the one thing and if you're in other projects you're just spreading yourself too thin. I'm in so many projects now and it doesn't seem that hard to do. Because you get bored – and maybe it is as you get older – my mind gets bored in one genre, and also with the same musicians; I like to play with different people and I like to do different kinds of music. So to do lots of projects just seems like a natural progression.”

But it's this willingness to continue diving into music that has perhaps helped reignite the engines of The Superjesus once more. McLeod explains that over drinks in their hometown of Adelaide, she and bassist Stuart Rudd toyed with the idea of getting the band back together for a full national tour. Drummer Paul Berryman's recent return from Washington then seemed like the catalyst to turn beer talk into reality. They just needed their guitarist:

“So we got in touch with Tim [Henwood], and I was a bit nervous [about that] at the beginning because I hadn't seen him in a long time,” says McLeod, “I wasn't sure if we'd left on bad terms – I couldn't really remember, y'know. And I just rang him up and he was lovely! And I said, 'Do you have any interest in playing?', and he said, 'Fuck yeah man, let's do it!' And then after that it's been pretty smooth sailing.”

Picking up immediately where they left off in 2004, McLeod says that the feeling in the rehearsal room has been electric and inspired, and with little finetuning needed – just a small refresher course for her lyrics (“I used to write a lot of mumbo jumbo”) – The Superjesus are ready to wind back the clock and rock like it's Homebake 2001.

“[The songs] are all still sounding really exciting to me. I haven't had time to get sick of them yet and I hadn't listened to them in the last ten years; I'd forgotten about them completely, I'd wiped that whole block of time from my brain. So they still sound really exciting, and groovy,” she adds. “I forgot how groovy they were.”