Breaking Through The Smoke And Mirrors

Yeah, yeah, so Quang Dinh was the bassist/vocalist in much-loved, now-defunct pop outfit Little Red. “With all the old Little Red stuff — it was good, it was fun; it seems like there was nothing lasting to it at all,” Dinh shares. “It’s all gone now. It’s all just evaporated like it never happened.” Now it’s all about fronting Naked Bodies. “Everybody needs to move on,” he suggests. “Imagine if Bob Dylan never moved on or Leonard Cohen never got with Phil Spector or something? Like, how boring it would be? Or Madonna never changed outfits, hahaha.” 

Much like Cohen, Dinh’s poetic lyricism is on elegant display throughout Naked Bodies’ debut album. “There’s stuff to express in the human experience,” Dinh opines, in his quiet, measured way. “I think art is kind of like a weapon and needs to be used more responsibly, because it’s a very powerful tool, a cultural tool, in society.”

“Imagine if Bob Dylan never moved on or Leonard Cohen never got with Phil Spector or something?"

On Naked Bodies’ first-ever gig, Dinh recalls, “I believe we just got high… It’s weird, the old marijuana. I think it’s just to lose your other skins so you can be a bit purer. It’s kind of a mission statement of Naked Bodies, that’s why it’s called Naked Bodies: we wanted to move into transparency. It’s what’s missing, you know? I just see so many bands these days and it’s kind of like they purposefully build up the wall and image, a smoke and mirrors kind of thing. We don’t wanna lose ourselves, you know? We just wanna self-reflect and self-discover. There’s no plan, really, it’s all just roll of the dice.”      

Dinh’s well aware that the music Naked Bodies produces is unconventional (“it’s kinda like feel bad music”). “It’s real difficult in Naked Bodies ‘cause it’s kind of strange, um, there’s a little bit of negativity involved and it’s hard to do that all the time, ‘cause it wears away at your own skin and your own face and you find it hard to be happy anymore.”   

We discuss how being connected to a record label can sometimes be viewed as a hindrance by artists these days. “I think so,” Dinh acknowledges. “There’s a centrefold in [the zine] that summarises that kind of feel.” Said centrefold is a photo collage featuring nudity and images of Dinh gagged or with eyes duct taped shut. “That pretty much summarises my experience. In ways,” he allows. 
Dinh explains he put together the cover artwork for the album, titled Piranha. “After Little Red, I don’t wanna be sucked into the machine again,” he stresses. “I kinda just wanna DIY and look beyond the business aspect — still be shrewd with that, but that’s not really what I’m in it for anymore.”