Mark Spinks has always travelled on the edges of Australian rock. Forming Gravel Samwidge in Sydney in the 1990s while bowing at the altar of the likes of Lubricated Goat and King Snake Roost, Spinks crafted a cache of noise that flirted with the idea of pub rock before shoving it in the dirt. Straddling the shifting sands of inertia, anxieties and paranoias, Gravel Samwidge have been the champions for the acrid banalities of urban Australian life for twenty years.
“It's hard to think I've been at it that long,” Spinks muses. “It isn't the same though – a lot of the younger crowd might think we have the same members or we've been around for a few years here in Brisbane. When we started out we were playing with Lubricated Goat and those guys were all a little older – I really looked up to them. But I followed their path for years, for better or worse, so whilst music was being played I didn't really give a shit about it; there was definitely no thought about making a document of what we were doing, so we only had one cassette release plus a CD that Turkeyneck Records put out in 2009 (Nonchalance). Then five years ago I sobered up and the passion for music came flooding back.”
Gravel Samwidge has always skirted the periphery of grunge music, a term that Spinks rightly had reservations about. “I've had to get over the fact that we were associated with grunge, mainly because when growing up I saw grunge slowly grow into Pearl Jam and all these bands I wasn't into, and because we were from the '90s it was the easiest connection for people to make. We are grungy, but we're pretty noisy too. We're a dirty sounding band, so maybe we suit the word grunge better than most.”
The current line-up of Spinks, Ash Jenkins (bass) and Alex Morrison (drums) has been a stable backbone for some years now, helping with the current flow of new material. Further aiding this creative streak has been collaborations with Matt Kennedy (Kitchens Floor), an experience that Spinks has found opens up new avenues.
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“I went down to Melbourne years ago and caught up with Paul Kidney, and he helped get the ball rolling in terms of wanting to play music again. Then meeting the youngsters here in the scene – it's great having Matt play with us from time to time because his guitaring suits us really well. He really enjoys it because he doesn't have to write anything either, just cut loose like he used to do in Look! Pond or something.”
These creative conduits have sparked a spate of releases, the latest being the Trough cassette. Each cut shows the serrated, cynical outlook Spinks has adopted as his own, and the desiccated rock machine behind him proves to be an inspired listen.
“With Trough, I was originally only interested in the first three songs because the others are one- or two-years-old,” Spinks explains. “Those new songs we just did at home on a four-track and I wanted to follow that up. But Julien (James) convinced us that it should all go out, and I agree. There was such a long time where we didn't do anything. Now we're in a situation where if the opportunity is there to release our music, why not?”
