Wild Boys

After 2013 saw both The John Steel Singers and Jeremy Neale bring out new releases and hit the road (in Neale's case, nine times in his various other musical exploits), you would think that a rest was in order. Yet on the eve of their Boys Gone Wild tour, the boys attest they just want to keep moving forward.

Both acts have steered away from past excursions to have a new focus on their music. Everything's A Thread, The John Steel Singers' second record, showed a rawness that paring back and taking control of the entire recording process brings, while In Stranger Times, Neale's new EP, capped off a year of frantic musicianship that saw him tour the globe with Velociraptor and garner Best Pop Male at the Queensland Music Awards. 2014 is a time to take stock.

“We decided to record all the stuff ourselves just because of convenience really, and then everything else came out of jamming,” Scott Bromiley states. “There was no real desire to do something different, the arrangement just facilitated the style that we would play. There was a looseness to the way we were playing, with the new dynamic of the band [Bromiley is now on bass] and it was interesting to see how things kept coming to pass.” Luke McDonald adds: “The song Everything's A Thread is pretty loose, and we almost didn't have it on the record; we couldn't get it right. But when we were doing the final recordings we just thought we'd throw it down and that looseness actually helped it hang together.”

“Plus we saved a shitload of money [recording the album ourselves],” Pete Bernoth drawls. “We spent four days doing two tracks in LA, mixing and everything, and it all felt so rushed that it didn't work for us. When we got back we didn't know what we were going to do, but we bought a few things, a really good mic, then started doing demos, found some cool sounds, and we wanted to continue. But it still took us a year to record the bloody thing… We're happy, though.”

“I've realised that I need to take it a little easier; it was good to get the name out but it was very taxing,” Neale concedes. “I just worked and did music and didn't take stock of things like being healthy. So this year is about doing cool stuff but not saying yes to everything. It's going to be a well planned year, I think.”

The tour may be short and sharp, but everyone promises one thing will come out of this venture – a new emphasis on the word “groove”.  “Since Scott has taken up bass we have all been about the groove,” Bernoth smiles.

“I should just take a pocket amp everywhere and play constantly,” Bromiley replies.

“It's such a sweet dad-rock term, you know?” Neale adds. 'That was really groovy, sweet kicking music mate'. That's a term that needs to come back.”