Taking Requests

A blizzard is raging through the streets of Buffalo, New York when we call Lemuria's Alex Kerns, a long way from the scorching summer we're experiencing. Luckily, in a matter of weeks Lemuria's embark on their first Australian tour. Nonetheless the band are noted road warriors.

“Lyrically, a lot of our songs are abut distance and being far from the people that we love; touring has a lot to do with that,” Kerns admits. “That's a negative aspect of it, but being in a touring band has really shaped who I am. Pretty much everyone I know – minus Sheena [Ozzella – guitar and vocals] – are people I know from touring. It has basically become my life and I love doing it.”

A little bit pop-punk, a little bit indie-rock, at times lyrically eloquent and musically complex, at others just plain and simple catchy pop music, Lemuria aren't the kind of band you can pigeonhole easily, particularly given their sound has shifted a fair bit in the decade they've existed.

Their most recent LP, The Distance Is So Big, has been called the most fully realised of the three records they've released. Kerns agrees.

“This is the first album where we've gone in and really thought things through. We actually made demos to every song and we sent them to J Robbins before we went in to record. That's the first time we've ever made demos; before, we always had the attitude of 'Why would we record twice?' But it definitely helped.

“We now have Max Gregor on bass. He contributed a tonne to this record; it was great to have a third mind involved. With [2011's] Pebble we had a bassist but he was only in the band for a year, but even then it was just Sheena and I writing the stuff and teaching Kyle [Paton] or Jason [Draper] how to play it. But now we have a guy who kinda has a songwriting personality as well as Sheena and I.”

Producer J Robbins is a bit of a legend in post-hardcore circles thanks to his work as the frontman of '90s band Jawbox, but he's not all that hard to get in touch with. “I just emailed him,” Kerns says of how they came to meet. “Sheena and I are huge Jawbox fans, and also Burning Airlines and Channels; we loved the stuff he did with Jets To Brazil and many other bands we've been listening to forever so we thought it'd make sense for the style of music we play.”

The band are understandably excited to play plenty from the new record, but Kerns promises there'll be an even spread of tunes from across their catalogue.

“We pretty much do an almost even distribution of every release. And we take requests as long as it's a song we've played in the past couple of years, not something obscure from our first demo or something. We try and mix it up; we wouldn't want someone to go to one of our shows and they have one of our records and not hear anything from it.”