Rocket Home

What do people do when they leave one of the biggest bands in the world? If they're Nick Allbrook they clean their room. Allbrook has just gone through the day's main events, including posting packages to his granddad and a buddy in Perth and catching up on the latest Kingsley Amis novel, but then he gets truly excited.  

“That's what I did! That was the big thing today! I said all that other shit, but the big fucken' thing – I cleaned my room. I took my bed out and I took all my shit out and I vacuumed everything and put stuff away. It made me feel so good cause I felt so shit, and now I can play in my room and I feel heaps better! Then I went for a swim and felt a little bit better again.”

As the announcement came with the last home-ground Tame Impala show in May that Allbrook would be leaving bass duties from the band, the tears of ten thousand fans flowed across tumblr-land from their bedrooms, transmuted into devotee-created gifs and photo collages of mourning. The press release said it was so Allbrook could “screw his head back on” which many assumed was euphemistic label-speak for “get off drugs,” but seems actually to have meant “get a whole bunch of amazing shit done”. As any of the crying teenagers worth their weight as fans knew, Allbrook's most important contributions had been coming through his other projects for years, namely POND, its predecessor Mink Mussel Creek, and Allbrook Avery, the band formed with Growl frontman and Tame bass replacement Cam Avery. 

If POND and Tame Impala are related, then POND is the hot younger sister – skirt slightly shorter, a bit wilder on the dance floor – and pretty damn precocious. Hobo Rocket follows 2012's Beard, Wives, Denim which was included in NME's top albums of the year, along with POND being labelled “Hottest New Band in the World”. But where Beard, Wives, Denim was a sun-drenched jammy dream recorded on a farm in the wheatbelt, with Hobo Rocket it seems the younger sister is letting out a slightly more sober side, getting stuck into the black eyeliner and quite enjoying it for now.

“Have you ever heard of the Butthole Surfers? We got really into the aesthetic of  aggressively mind-blowing kind of psychedelic. Not mindblowing like 'How badass are Led Zeppelin, they-are-mind-blowing' but I mean just music that's like, 'arrghrullghurheerrrgh!!' [our best attempt at translation], confrontingly loony. Of course we're not as loony as any of the people we were inspired by, but that kind of idea. I guess that was part of the impetus behind it that makes it sound a bit more serious. And just having your usual progression of sorts, being flahooluck and then serious and whatnot.”

Allbrook explains the term, gleaned from POND guitarist Joe Ryan: “Flahooluck. That's one of Joe's Irish words that's meant to mean happy go lucky I think. 'Flahooluck with 'is money or 'is sheep or 'is taters,'” Allbrook adds in a cheeky brogue.

As well as the current line-up of Allbrook, Jay Watson, Cam Avery, Jamie Terry and Joe Ryan who all play on the album, the title track Hobo Rocket – the album's pivotal song – features the wholly unexpected and pathos-filled vocals of a mystery sixth member. Sometimes speaking and sometimes crooning, the voice sounds like it could be Johnny Cash, but in the way Cash would sound singing from the bushes in the infamous photo of him stoned and eating an entire cake with his hands.

“Yeah he's the shit man. You'd love Cowboy John. He's just this dude, this awesome dude who rocks up at the studio every now and then. He's the most eccentric man I've ever met. He just writes songs and smokes ciggies and drinks cordial with heaps of ants in it cause he says it's good for your strength or something. And then he did that, on that song. Which made it a good song.”

Cowboy John's vocals add to the different feeling Hobo Rocket exudes when placed in the context of the POND album progression. When it's put to Allbrook that Hobo Rocket is a little darker than what's come before, he agrees, citing “guilt” as a current preoccupation in his songwriting. “Guilt like the big human homo sapien guilt that just seems to be kind of inherent in our species... Maybe not our species, maybe just our culture. Guilt guilt guilt. Like you're not a good enough person, you didn't spend enough time with your grandparents, you don't eat well enough... You don't think hard enough, you destroyed the world, you destroyed the climate you ruined the aboriginals. But it's just an entire societal thing hey, isn't it? You get it. I think that's where the most basic first world fucking guilt comes from. 'Am-I-good?' Being a solid person. Being a thinking, developing, kind person.”

Luckily for Allbrook his world view includes some pretty basic ways of restoring a balance “Yeah you're taking off the guilt points every time you do something enjoyably and successfully creative. It's like every time you clean your room, or donate to charity.”

While his former and current bandmates tour Japan it seems Allbrook is genuinely relishing having at least a temporary home, creating a modicum of normalcy after four years of constant festivals and international tours. “I'm reading a Kingsley Amis novel right now. It's called ah… Troubles with Girls,” he explains, and then goes on to describe his favourite place to read. “The Napier Hotel. It's a well small old pub, with all these old posters and photos of premiership victories. They've got really nice old staff there and it's cheap, and it's always got one or two delicious beers for me to have. It's such a flag barer, a torch holder, of the English pub culture that's so Australian as well. The kind of like, finish work, stop in on the way to the tram for a little pot, read my book, warm my hands by the fire thing.” At the same time, he hasn't exactly been staying still, performing solo shows in Perth and Melbourne, accompanying touring US guitarist Isaiah Mitchell across Australia,  and continuing to record and write constantly, as well as catching up on a bit of outside genre goodness to add to the flahooluck stocks. “I've started listening to No Scrubs heaps, and Justin Timberlake and Solange. That stuff is bad ass! So emotionally direct, and the pumpin sort of hip hop bass lines, yes!” 

Inevitably though, while there's no regret in taking time to follow his own projects to fruition, Allbrook definitely misses his musical brothers. “Yeah… yeah totally. I love hanging out with those guys. I finally feel an enormous sympathy for their girlfriends. I hang out with [Jay Watson's girlfriend] heaps nowadays and it's just like 'Now I know what you mean'. You want to know what they're doing. I wanna know what the in-jokes are. But it's alright. I'm having a great time.”