Sounds Like Sunset: Hit And Dis.

Sounds Like Sunset play The Alley on Friday, The Healer on Saturday and the Valley Markets on Sunday.

Certainly one of the more evocative monikers Australian music has produced, Sounds Like Sunset back it up with similarly soaring soundscapes. But here in Brisbane we either don’t seem to get their gist, or we just don’t like it. You see, Sounds Like Sunset are possibly the only band with a disses page on their website, and most of the negativity they’ve fielded seems to come from here.

“We just thought it was going to be kind of funny,” frontman Dave chuckles. “Most bands put up a page with all the most polished reviews imaginable, so we thought we’d take it from the other angle.”

“When we got back from Brisbane last time I got all these abusive emails. We just sort of do what we do, you know. I don’t know if it didn’t fit in with all the etiquette of everything else that was going on. The bands we played with last time are friends of ours, like Leo Nine and Dumpster. It’s not like we were trying to go out and kill people or anything. Maybe it’s just the scene. There are a lot of really noisy bands here in Sydney at the moment and we just seem to play together a lot, but we’re certainly not the first loud band in the world.”

For those familiar with the bands debut album Saturdays will recognise the evolution of the material from it’s on disc to on stage persona.

“If anything it comes together a bit better live. It’s hard when you’re recording to make things seem honest because you’re not having a whole bunch of goes at it, you just follow your inspiration, you know. The live thing is good because we don’t really know what we’re going to do and usually we can’t quite hear each other. There’s a little bit of flying blind, but I think a lot of magic happens when it’s like that.”

“It keeps the thrill in the live show for me. It’s better than knowing exactly what’s going to happen. You just sound like a robot. It’s better to mix things up and see what happens.”

“Some of the songs on the record we’ve never even tried to play live. They’ve never really worked out. We leave them as a recording and that’s it.

The recording process of Saturdays meant that all the musicians in the band were not playing on all the tracks. The result is more a sonic snapshot than a true indication of what Sounds Like Sunset are about.

“With the next recording we’re building a studio at my house, and we’re going to try and make things more on our terms. Things won’t be as compromised as they were. We’re investing on a bunch of second hand analogue gear at the moment. Once it’s done we’ve got pretty much free recording time, so we can release things as we like.”

“We’re not on Modular any more either, which is good because we can release what we want when we want without worrying about someone else’s marketing schedule or anything.”

While the band do have an association with Ivy League records (home of 78 Saab and Youth Group) they’re approaching things form an independent perspective at the moment.

“I’ve got a songwriting, kid of like a publishing deal with Ivy League, but they’re more just good friends of the band,” Dave explains. “They’ve helped us out from day one, but we’re not part of the label as such. They got us a lot of our first good gigs when they were running the bands at the Newtown RSL. They just took us under their wing.”