The Lost Tapes, A Love Of Frogs & Overcoming Creative Turmoil

"A couple of days ago, I was going through my parents' cassettes," offers Major Leagues guitarist/vocalist Anna Davidson. She's back in Toowoomba, back in the house she grew up in, feeling "nostalgic in a good way", and rifling through old stuff, old memories. "[My parents] have kept all their old tapes, it's amazing. I found this song that I'd written in primary school, in like Grade Five, and it was called 'The Murray-Darling Basin Song'. I went to listen to it, but, my dad had taped over it! I can still remember the first line of it. I wish I still had it. It could be a #1 song."

Davidson, who's softly spoken and shy, admits to being "socially awkward" and finding the interviewing process "pretty uncomfortable". Speaking about Major Leagues — the Brisbane-based, jangly indie-pop outfit she fronts — feels "like bragging", to her. But Davidson is happy to recount her childhood years; having, she thinks, moved past the point of being embarrassed about the past. 

Davidson played clarinet and violin in school bands growing up (she even went on band camp, a trip from Toowoomba down to Canberra), but her greatest childhood obsession was with frogs. "I wanted to be a frog scientist," Davidson recounts. "My dad's parents had this cabin in Springbrook, outside of the Gold Coast, and there were always frogs there. Whenever I got into something, I'd get really obsessed. So, for two years, it was frogs, I learnt everything about them."

After moving to Brisbane, she played in a string of go-nowhere bands, before Major Leagues "just gelled". They were friends, coming from different musical places — guitarist Jaimee Fryer had played in church and folk bands, bassist Vlada Edirippulige came from a jazz background — but bonded over a love of Pavement, The Breeders and My Bloody Valentine. Their jangly guitars led them to support a host of other janglers over the years: Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing, Alvvays. And, after two EPs — 2013's Weird Season and 2016's Dream States — they've finally released their debut LP, Good Love.

Produced by Jonathan Boulet, the set is duly filled with guitars that sparkle and chime. Its songs are about relationships, but "not necessarily romantic relationships". Jaimee And Anna is about the bond between the band's two songwriters; its lyrics ("So far from home/How's it feel to be alone?") referencing the distance between the two, when Davidson was living in Melbourne.

"The song began as an expression of missing Jaimee," she says. "I really enjoyed living [in Melbourne]. But, it made things harder [for Major Leagues]; we couldn't write together much. A lot of my songs came out of living down there; being away from Queensland and so many of my friends. That gave me a bit of inner turmoil to fuel my writing."

Editor's note: This story was originally published containing a reference to sensitive subject matter that contravened the band's wishes. Simply: it shouldn't have been. We messed up here, and sincerely offer our deepest apologies for it, and the distress that it caused.