Straight To The Top

Straight Arrows

It's been four years now since Sydney garage aficionados Straight Arrows dropped their debut platter It's Happening, a prescient title indeed given how much has actually happened for the band since its release. The four-piece have carved a strong niche both at home and abroad with their charmingly ramshackle live show, and now they've returned to the studio – well, half to the studio and half to frontman Owen Penglis' house – to conjure up second effort Rising. A psych-tinged, fuzz-laden romp through the guitar sounds of yesteryear, Rising covers a lot of sonic territory while never steering too far from the core Straight Arrows sound.

“I always start out with ideas, but you set off to do one thing and it goes the other way,” Penglis chuckles. “I had this idea that it was going to be this punk album, and then I started writing these bubblegum songs, and then I started writing these dark, heavier songs – and then they all just ended up on there. I mainly like albums that have got a bit of weirdness to them and divert a bit from where you expect them to end up. I get bored trying to write the same kind of song more than once.”

Penglis believes that experience has bonded the tight-knit group since It's Happening, hence the album's slightly more mature essence.

“We can play our instruments now a bit better,” he laughs. “On our first record we didn't know what the fuck we were doing. We just booked three days in a friend's studio in his house, and pretty much just played the songs – we'd keep playing one until we got it right and then move onto the next one. So we took a little bit longer with this, not just trying to get a correct take but a good one or the best one.

“I guess it's a product of touring and playing a bit more together because we don't really like practicing. We're going to have to practice now to learn all these songs again, and even then we're all, like, 'Fuck, do we have to practice?' Some people love practicing but we find that the shows are like practice. It's fun to hang out – we'll go and get pizza and some beers and then go practice, but after an hour or so everyone's a bit pissed off.”

There's even an expanded lyrical palette on Rising.

“I guess the first record's a bit more juvenile and outsider,” Penglis reflects. “This one's a little bit more introspective and a bit weirder, and maybe a tiny bit more mature. I think the whole record is about growing up a bit and seeing the world slightly differently, maybe a slightly wiser view of where I'm at given my experiences. [Straight Arrows' guitarist] Al Grigg in Palms has a very strong aesthetic and his lyrics are all kind of yearning and a bit romanticised, whereas mine are all a bit introspective and on the weirder side of things. It's almost psychedelic-based, but not in a modern fuckwit kind of way.”