Up The Punx

It's a tipsy but unassuming Seth Bogart that answers the phone in his Los Angeles apartment when Time Off puts the call through, interrupting the frontman from his domestic duties. “I'm just making dinner and I'm kind of wasted; whoops!” Bogart giggles as he speaks.

The part-garage punk, part girl-group pop outfit that are Hunx & His Punx have been one of the more celebrated acts to come out of the fertile US lo-fi garage scene in recent years. It is quite surprising then, given Australia's appreciation for these very same acts, that this month's tour will be the band's first trip to Australia. Bogart can't wait to make the trek down.

“I put it on my dream list and it came true!” he exults. “The last two years we were speaking to promoters and we almost went but then something would happen at the last minute so it seems that it just wasn't in the stars for us.”

It is now, and as far as Bogart's plans for his first ever visit, well, they're a little different than what your average touring rock band admits to being excited about. “I'm really just looking forward to seeing a kangaroo's boner,” he says, seemingly half-jokingly. “And I want to meet some Australian people and go to the beach and have fun.”

Going back to the start of the Hunx & His Punx project, Bogart credits a lot of the initial idea to former guitarist Justin Champlin – aka Nobunny – who Bogart was in a relationship with at the time. The idea was to start a girl group just like those that were so popular from the late 1950s and through the 1960s, but finding teenage girls willing to participate in such an artistic endeavour proved to be something of a challenge for a couple of men in their late 20s.

“I was kind of writing songs and my ex-boyfriend Justin was also writing songs and he was trying to put together a girl group of actual high school girls to sing these songs,” Bogart explains. “But he was too creepy and scared off all the teens. So he asked me to do it because he said I sound kind of like a girl.”

As far as musical touchstones go, Bogart takes his greatest influence from something of an unlikely source.

“Alvin & The Chipmunks, that's like my favourite band!” he says. “I love it, I don't know why, but I just wish I could sound like that. If I could get plastic surgery to sound like a chipmunk I would totally get it. If I sounded like a chipmunk that had a really big boner, it would be so cool.”

Hunx & His Punx released a compilation of their single releases since starting the band called Gay Singles back in 2010, which was quickly followed up by their first studio album proper, Too Young To Be In Love, released in 2011. The success of this record led to a great deal of time on the road for Bogart and his band, and time on the road can lead to tension. So when it came to releasing another record in 2012, Bogart went out on his own, releasing the excellent, though somewhat sombre, Hairdresser Blues just under the name Hunx.

“I call it 'everyone was too annoyed to put up with me so I had to do it on my own' record,” he laughs of Hairdresser Blues. “Honestly, I was extremely depressed and the only thing that was making me feel okay was to write songs. And I kind of burnt out with [the band] because we'd been on tour so much and they were sick of me, so I just decided to do it on my own. But now I'm ready to get back with them.

“I really like [Hairdresser Blues], but I'm excited to collaborate again with the girls, we've started writing new songs and it feels really nice. I was lonely, I guess.”

It has been almost 18 months since Bogart left his home in San Francisco and relocated to Los Angeles; the experience has been fraught with emotional turbulence, but Bogart is happy where he is. “The first half was like suicide central and the second half has been like the best time of my life,” he says of his stint in LA thus far. “I think it just took a little bit of time to get adjusted to; it's a really amazing city that can be really wonderful and really dark, it depends on what you get mixed up with and who you're with and where your mind is at.”

A new record is well and truly in the works and ought to be released in the coming months. By the sounds of things, Hunx & His Punx are getting heavier and thrashier; it sounds like an utterly brilliant proposition on paper. “We've been working on a new album called Street Punk. It has a more punk vibe to it; it kind of is more inspired by early LA bands like Germs, Redd Kross, Black Flag and that kind of stuff. I hate doing the same thing over and over again and that's honestly my favourite kind of music, so it's gonna have that kind of vibe, I guess.”

Amongst touring and writing and releasing records, Bogart runs a record label, has started his own internet television show called Hollywood Nailz and was, until recently, the co-owner of a hair salon. “I consider myself cursed because if I'm not being productive I feel extremely guilty,” he says. “I don't know what it is but I feel like I have to be doing something otherwise I don't see the purpose of being alive, unfortunately. I wish I could just sit on my arse and watch TV, but I'm just not like that.”

Given this mindset, it's entirely unsurprising that Bogart has plenty of ideas about what he'd like 2013 to have in store for him. “I want to make a new record, I want to make a new episode of my show and I started a record label – it's called Wacky Wacko – so I really want to put out some new records on that as well. I just want to keep doing the same thing but maybe take it up to the next level, you know?”

Hunx & His Punx will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 17 January - Sydney Festival, The Famous Spiegeltent, Sydney NSW
Saturday 19 January - Sugar Mountain Festival, Melbourne VIC
Sunday 20 January - The Tote, Melbourne VIC
Friday 25 January - The Zoo, Fortitude Valley QLD