Speedstar: Now And Ten.

Speedstar play The Zoo on Thursday.

Speedstar turned the ear of the music world with their Bruises You Can Touch debut album early this year.

“We’ve had a few weeks off after our headlining tour,” says guitarist Ben Smith. “This will be pretty much it for the year.”

This being The Zoo’s 10th Birthday celebrations, of which Speedstar are a major drawcard. While the band we wanting to include a gig at the valley venue as part of their first national jaunt, the lure of being part of the big bash saw the indie pop lads hold on to their show until the years end.

“Any time you think you’ve done it tough, there are always other bands that have been away and touring longer than you have. We’ve done more touring this year than we did with the EPs. We had a couple of month and a half long tours. When you’ve got an album out and you’re doing it for a specific reason and you can see the effect it has on crowds then it’s a lot more enjoyable than touring around when no one knows who you are.”

Bruises You Can Touch can be quite a spacious album, with lots of room to take a breath within the songs before being swallowed up in their sonic crescendo. Are the songs changing on the road; does this space give you freedom to grow them further?

“We don’t tend to change things within a tour, but in between you can get sick of doing that slow acoustic version, lets try amping that one up a bit. You do tend to get tat sort of evolution in songs over the year. Doing this headline tour, previously we’d just gotten so used to doing this 45 minute support act set, so now it’s more than eight songs… wow, we’re going through the catalogue looking for more to do.”

Is there much of the band’s earlier work finding it’s way back into the set?

“Yeah. We’re even going back to the first EPs. We’ve been throwing quite a few of what we call B sides in there as well… You just get a bit used to playing any song after a long time. You can alternate between a really atmospheric version of the songs or get a more percussive things. We’ve tried a few versions of the older songs.”