Iliad: A Boat Time.

Iliad play the Railway Hotel in Byron Bay on Thursday, The Zoo on Friday and Ric’s Café on Sunday.

Iliad will take you on quite a musical journey. The band’s debut disc, The Butterfly Effect (which has nothing to do with the band of the same name, and bears little musical resemblance), showcases just what the band is capable off, from Portishead styled minimalist grooves to raw guitar power. Vocalist Katy McNamara is already being singled out for attention with her stunning vocal delivery, while the band behind her kicks up a musical storm.

“We don’t make a deliberate effort to make people think they’re in one place and then take them somewhere else,” explains keyboardist Piers Twomey. “When people see us live we do try and throw in a whole different range of styles. We might throw in a sixties soul ballad and then the next song will be kind of a moody song, then a thrashy song. I don’t think it’s confusing, it all manages to meld. Katy’s throwing me good words…”

Piers and Katy are sharing a phone. Katy continues.

“We have moved on a little bit. Katy explains. There are a few more songs that are more groovy. We kind of went through a vocal improvisation stage for a while. Now there’s a more pop sort of sound, it’s catchier. Our range of music styles in songwriting has always been quite broad. It’s a bit more bluesy in the melodies these days.”

“Perhaps a bit more instantly accessible these days,” explains Piers. “Not in a commercial sense. I think we’d be kidding ourselves to say this is really commercial, but I think a bit more… I think our song writing has improved, but we’re not going to disown it.”

As can often be the case, some of the disc finest moments are those for which the band are the least prepared, and such is the case with Boat Song, the discs closing track.

“I actually wrote the lyrics to Boat Song, the last track, about half an hour before we actually recorded it,” Katy confesses. “It can be a bit of a habit sometimes, but when you can do something spontaneously it’s pretty true to the emotion at the time. I find it really works. We’d only written the music a week or two before. We wanted to do five tracks and we really liked it, and luckily it worked. At times it takes a while to put lyrics to things and we have play things instrumentally on stage for a couple of months before.”

While The Butterfly Effect disc is still far from it’s use by date, Iliad have already laid down tracks for a follow up single.

“We’re doing demos of new stuff. Our song writing’s a lot more mature,” Katy continues. “It’s hookier. There’s a new track that we’ve recorded that’s quite fast and has lots of distortion. We had to play it instrumentally for about a month. I just couldn’t think of lyrics because it’s quite angsty, and I was really happy a the time. I had to wait until something pissed me off.”