Soul Kind Of Feeling

You'd have been hard-pressed to have missed James Boyd around the Brisbane rock'n'roll traps in the last few years, such has been his omnipresence. Whether in his role as agitating dervish in Velociraptor, delivering his (slightly) more restrained output in Running Gun Sound or inhibiting the sci-fi realm of The Majors, Boyd has always been a captivating presence. Now all of these divergent rock stylings have converged into James X Boyd & The Boydoids, whose self-titled debut album has already impressed as one of the year's strongest local releases. 

It's an understated collection, chock full of musings on the minutiae of daily life from a slightly off-kilter perspective which – despite The Boydoids comprising some well-known mainstays of the Brisbane rock scene – derives its strength mainly from the interesting and often evocative lyrics.

“I wanted it to be like a legit 'album' type band – a content-driven band, rather than just a live band playing club shows,” Boyd ponders of his initial aims for the project. “I was really influenced initially by all the cool Melbourne and Sydney bands doing the rounds at the moment, and thought, 'Hey, I should be doing this kind of thing!' Obviously I like the Velvet Underground and the boys do as well, and Chester [Wiltshire – bass]'s really rooted in '70s funk and soul and George [Browning – drums, piano] is like a soul gun on the drums – so yeah, lots of soul! Even lyrically I took a lot of influence from soul music, as well as Jonathan Richman and Lou Reed and that kind of stuff. You can 'baby, baby, baby' all you like, but for people to really relate to it, it has to have soul.

“But as much as I love a lot of music, I really like films and that's a huge influence on my songs. Part of the idea behind The Boydoids – apart from seeing Jonathan Richman doing his cutesy, cool thing – was also seeing Wes Anderson films and stuff like that, and thinking how it would be really cool to incorporate that into a band setting.”

Boyd admits that he works hard on The Boydoids' lyrics, even if they at times do seem to endearingly tumble out like stream-of-consciousness ramblings.

“I definitely work hard on the lyrics so that it all flows properly and tells a story,' he emphasises. “I put a lot of effort into writing these songs actually. In my other bands I would usually just play some chords and sing some melodies over them, and be, like, 'That's cool!' or 'That's crap!' straight away, but I put more effort into these ones. I really like a lot of the black African-American music, Gil Scott-Heron was a big touchstone as well.

“[The songs] are all about my friends and different people around Brisbane, and different people I meet at shows and places I've gone to. Mainly I just want people to be able to relate to it and just enjoy the words. The themes are all like love and stuff like that – there's a lot of love songs. I really love this girl so they're all about her.”

And even though Boyd is about to relocate overseas semi-permanently, it doesn't mean we've heard the last of The Boydoids.

“Even though I'm going to head overseas I plan to follow this up with another record in the next couple of months,” he tells, “because I think that if you want people internationally to really recognise you and you're not touring all the time you need to put out record after record, so I'll continue to do that definitely.”

James X Boyd & The Boydoids will be playing the following shows:

Wednesday 24 April - Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane QLD