Tradition And Change

Ahead of their gig this weekend, Epithets have taken off to the foot of the Darling Downs to finish writing the next album and Nick Smethurst is sounding excited about the experience. “Because our drummer lives in Melbourne now, the opportunities to actually work together are very few and far between,” he states. “I really like us being a prolific band. And we've tried, but everyone's got jobs and partners and degrees, so we kind of figured the only way we'd get really working on this is to go away. It's treating it as something deserving of its own context, which I think is really important.”

Music has been a major part of Smethurst's life from an early age. Involved in the Brisbane music scene from 15, he's been involved with a number of local bands and was a major force behind the venue 610, but as well as being a musician, he's also a great fan of music. And it was that love of music which drew him to begin composing himself.

“I started writing songs because I heard things that made me think that it was worthwhile to start creating a dialogue,” he says. “And I mean increasingly, out of those early days of writing, my inspirations and the inspirations of the other people in the band will change. Particularly for what we're about to start working on, there's this circle of bands like Talk Talk, Bark Psychosis and Autistic Daughters and all that sort of thing that we've been orbiting around.

“It's a really interesting point I was thinking about just the other day. You'd be hard-pressed to find more than a half-dozen bands that all five members of Epithets like. Everyone comes from really different backgrounds and everyone indulges really different interests. A few of us will definitely pocket in around certain bands, but it's always a very big surprise to find something that all five of us really enjoy. And so, maybe that shows through in the pop angle [of Epithets], that we're all really, really into The Go-Betweens. And I'd say that we all appreciated classic stuff like The Smiths and The Cure as well. Which is one of those things that you get into as a teenager and you don't perhaps pay as much attention to for a while and then you come back when you're a bit older and you can kind of see past the fandom and the angst and see that Johnny Marr wrote really amazing rockabilly guitar parts. Or the way that Robert Smith used a Fender Bass VI on Pictures Of You, which is absolutely incredible texturally.”

Epithets play infrequently, due to logistics and a desire to avoid over-saturation, so when they do play, there's a lot of thought that goes into the show.

“It's so important for us to play with good bands,” Smethurst offers. “And good is highly subjective, but I mean we played at Black Bear with Carry Nation and Big Strong Brute. That's huge, because they're friends and they're amazing musicians.

“I do think we have something; there's a way that we perform our songs live that is perhaps more urgent, more vital than on record. And part of that is a huge amount of nervous energy. There's a lot of introversion there. So we are nervous performers and at the same time it means a lot to us to perform. I guess I just hope that we represent our own ideas in a way that connects. We're not making music that everybody is going to find instantly accessible or appealing, but hopefully we're making music that a few people care about a lot.”