Fight Songs

The name Rick Fights has been appearing in local gig guides with increasing regularity of late, and while it may sound like the stage name of some demented wrestler or pugilist, it's actually the moniker of the new project by I Heart Hiroshima guitarist Matt Somers. As evinced by debut mini-album Fights, Rick Fights is a distinct beast – insular and brooding and imbued with evocative imagery courtesy of deft wordplay – but it's a world which its creator is only just learning to happily occupy.

“It's fucking scary,” Somers chuckles of his new venture, which sprung into fruition when I Heart Hiroshima took a well-earned break. “I've had the band name for a long time – probably about a year before I Heart went on hiatus – but before we stopped playing it was mainly just a place where I could leave songs that didn't work for I Heart. I didn't really have any plans for them or anything, I just felt better about myself if I didn't throw them away so I'd just record them and keep them aside just in case. And it worked out, even though I only ended up using two or three of those ones. I took me about a year after we stopped playing to get back into it, just because we'd been playing so much and I didn't have the urge to write songs for ages. Probably at the start of this year I got back into the swing of things and have written 20 or 30 songs – it's getting a lot easier and more comfortable.”

The aesthetic of Rick Fights is inherently miles removed from the angular rock of I Heart Hiroshima, but Somers can still see a definite lineage between the two concerns. “There's a couple of songs on [I Heart Hiroshima's 2009 album] The Rip where I could do a pretty similar version in the Rick Fights style – in a way they're kind of similar,” he considers. “It took me a long time to find a style, for a long time I was worried about how much dependence there would be on the vocals. I was trying to sing in a certain way and do certain things, but I've gotten to a point now where I'm a lot more comfortable with my actual natural singing voice. In I Heart I was just screaming most of the time, so singing is a bit strange for me – even now when I listen to my own voice it makes me feel strange. It's kind of an extension of what we were heading towards in I Heart, I think – there's a lot of nature-y references on The Rip as well and that's the main thing I'm doing now, writing a lot of mountain-y adventure stories.”

Fights has evoked comparisons to a lot of Australian acts such as The Triffids, Nick Cave and The Go-Betweens, but Somers admits that his inspiration for Rick Fights has come mainly from further afield. “I'm not very good at sounding like what I set out to do,” he says. “It's not like I want to sound exactly like them, but I think that my influences have mostly come from Nebraska-era Springsteen, particularly in the use of characters. And I was listening to a lot of Midlake when I started writing for Rick Fights – their songwriting is really nice, and I like the way their guitar movements are always really lush. I like their aggrandising nature, plus I've always loved reverb – it makes it sound serious or something. Plus in the last year I've really gotten into Roxy Music – I've been getting a lot from Brian Ferry and Brian Eno. It's all over the shop really.”

Rick Fights plays The Primitive Room, Spring Hill Hotel on Saturday 8 December