When Tranceplanets Align It's As Sweet As Sugarmouth

New indie-rock outfit Shrapnel make music that sounds like it's been plucked from the cosmos then forged in some dream-like fugue — merrily meandering from introspective and elegiac to anthemic and celebratory — but in reality it all harks back to Sydney's Inner West and two mates' schedules suddenly being in sync.

Sam Wilkinson was playing guitar for esteemed indie-popsters Day Ravies but the songs he was penning just didn't seem to fit that band's aesthetic, and so while Shrapnel began initially as a bedroom synth project he was soon plotting with good friend Chris Yates (Weak Boys, Dollar Bar) to extrapolate that into a new band proper. 

"Yates and I had talked about starting a band for a while and he was like, 'I really want to do it,' so we sort of sent each other a few songs backwards and forwards," Wilkinson remembers. "He was pretty tied up — pretty busy — but then some stuff freed up, like Weak Boys went on hiatus and [his son] Arlo was getting to an age where he had a little bit more time, and he sort of gave me the green light one day and said, 'Let's do it!' I think we'd played one show actually — we played one gig as a three-piece — and then Yates was pretty much on board soon after that."

Shrapnel's debut album Tranceplanetsugarmouth sounds fundamentally unique, although there's a traceable lineage back to '90s indie-rock mainstays such as Guided By Voices and Built To Spill. "Yeah there's definitely that influence, but there's not a huge plan - it's just what we sound like when we're together," Wilkinson shrugs. "I'm sure the fact that we all like that music plays a big part in it, but it's not planned or articulated to sound like that.

"I definitely like [Tranceplanetsugarmouth] as the first representation of what we can do together, but I also feel that as a band we're even pretty different since then, because we kind of just made the album straight away. As soon as we got together I had a few songs that I'd been sitting on a bit, so I was like, 'Let's just make an album right now! Let's do it!' That all happened while we were still figuring out who we were, and I think it's cool in that regard because I doubt there will be another one that will sound like that."

The current five-piece line-up of Shrapnel has also become a formidable live concern. "It's a bit more raw [live], and all of us finding these pockets to put these guitars in is a bit fun," Wilkinson laughs. "It can be messy, but I like it. It's definitely the funnest band I've ever been in — practice is just going to the pub almost, but anything that involves hanging out with your best buddies is inherently awesome."