GRUB ProfileMatilda Beales has always loved music. She's been surrounded by it since childhood, and came of age going to countless gigs in the Perth area.
For her, however, it was a spectator sport – not something she had ever considered getting out on the proverbial field for. All of her strumming and singing stayed behind closed doors – and if she wasn't deeply ingrained in her city's music community, maybe it would have stayed that way.
“It was very confined to home for me,” she says – speaking to The Music from her boss' office at her government job. “Maybe, if I was drunk enough, I'd play a song I'd written at the behest of my mates.
"The majority of my friends are musicians, but I had really crippling nerves and stage fright. It was a very slow process of trying to get myself on-stage. I was fucking terrified of being perceived, and people thinking I was ridiculous. I'm very glad I did it now, though.”
Beales eventually mustered up enough courage to form her first band – GRUB – in 2022. After performing their first gig at Fremantle's Buffalo Club for “like eight people” (per Beales), the groove-driven, sunburnt rock band quickly picked up a slew of supports for local legends like Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Carla Geneve, and Last Quokka.
Following a few initial changes, they landed on the line-up that's seen them through the most of their tenure: Guitarists Duncan Strachan and Mitch McDonald, bassist Edo Ekic, and drummer Peter Bibby.
“It wasn't conscious in terms of how well I thought we'd play together.” says Beales of assembling the band. “They all just happened to be really good friends. I worked with Pete and Dunc at [Perth venue] Mojo's, so we drank a lot together and watched lots of gigs together.
"There was one gig Dunc couldn't play, so Mitch filled in – then, immediately afterwards, told us he was joining the band. Lucky he did, because I think it became pretty integral to the way we sound.”
Beales laughs: “It's audacious, isn't it – three guitars? Who the fuck do we think we are?”
After spending the last few years honing their craft and establishing a reputation locally, it's time for GRUB to finally break the bubble and go national – hopefully even global – with their self-titled debut album.
A sprawling, seething and slinking 36 minutes of antipodean attitude with a westerly blowing right through it, the freshly-released LP traverses touchstones of dance-punk, riot-grrrl, spaghetti western, and jangling garage rock.
When queried on describing the tone of the eponymous effort, the frontwoman notes that she and her bandmates were daring to be different. “We were going for a sound that was a bit creepy and a bit scary,” says Beales.
“It's threaded through a lot of what we do. The lyrics I write always tend to have this Australiana horror vibe, so that outback feeling is very intentional. The weirder, the better.”
For Beales, the album also importantly delves into some deeply personal matters. Songs such as Ghost, The Floor, and In Ya were all written in GRUB's early days while Beales was undergoing chemotherapy.
Spoiler alert: She survived, as the woman laughing and chatting away in the Zoom window will happily testify to.
Even so, there were inevitably moments that she thought that she wouldn't – and now having them as a matter of public record stirred mixed feelings in Beales.
“Although they're lyrics that can be interpreted in a pretty general sense, they're very specific to me,” she says. “They're shackled to being sick, being at home, being trapped inside this weak and vulnerable body.
"They definitely feel a bit different now, but they've also come along for the journey. I've internalised them in a new way, and I like how that works. Besides, the songs are still very GRUB – they're fuckin' raucous and balls-to-the-wall.”
Trainspotters may have noted that GRUB was released on Wing Sing Records – the indie label owned and run by Blake Scott, he of The Peep Tempel and Australian Music Prize-nominee solo fame.
Based out of WA himself, the acclaimed singer-songwriter was an early-adapter fan of the band – which is something GRUB still finds utterly surreal. “The way Blake tells it is that he was driving to work, and our song Ghost came on [Perth radio station] RTR,” Beales explains.
“That's how we ended up on his radar, although we had no idea – when he messaged us to ask if we'd support The Peep Tempel in Perth, it was completely out of nowhere for us. We were just elated. It was wild, considering what big fans we were of the band, and also of Blake's solo stuff.
“Before we knew it, we were talking about putting out the album on his label," she adds. "It's been a really good fit – we're aligned in a lot of ways, and grew up in similar environments. There's a lot of piss-taking and razzing that comes naturally to all of us – he just happens to also be one of the coolest Australian musicians ever.”
Whether it's GRUB's self-titled album, or Blake Scott's Niscitam, or Slightly Odway, or Innerspeaker, there has always been an inherent idiosyncrasy to the music of Australia's west. Call it Perthonality, if you must.
Talk turns to what it is about Perth's music scene that forges such distinctive, definitive sounds – and Beales, despite having been surrounded by it for most of her life, is truly none the wiser.
“It's funny... I don't know if you see it or are as conscious of it when you're actually from here,” she says. “I guess it's not necessarily on your radar when it's all happening, but I love it. It's obviously something for all of us to be fucking proud of and to value, y'know?
"When a band is from WA, you really see that highlighted – and it's only just registering to me now that it's celebrating the geography of the music. There's really something to it.”
Now, Beales and her best mates get to add to that lineage. With their biggest-ever show opening for Amyl & The Sniffers set for next February in Fremantle, GRUB are confidently taking their next steps and asserting themselves within the Australian music scene.
They're not for everyone – they're loud, they're ocker, they're a bit creepy, they're a bit scary. Crucially, however, they could also be your mates.
“A lot of the most important albums in my life have been the ones that make me feel as though I belong,” she says. “I think music serves as something to make you feel connected, to yourself and to something beyond you.
“For me, as someone who has struggled with loneliness and depression, music is quite a solid mate in those times. I'd love if the album felt like a friend to someone. It hope it makes them honest, gross and vulnerable – ugly vulnerable, not cute vulnerable.”
Beales smiles, exhaling as she stares out a nearby window and the weight of her words catches up with her.
“If anyone can feel any of those things through listening to GRUB? I'd be stoked.”
GRUB's self-titled debut album is out now.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
