Falling In And Out Of Love

A good back story is sometimes a tough thing to lose. Many artists over the years have found trouble shaking off the tag attached to them at their first foray into the public eye. The Strokes were the snotty rich kids of New York socialites. Lana Del Rey is reportedly trailer trash tarted up by an overambitious A&R rep. Even Coldplay took two albums to shake the “wimpy Englishmen” moniker (some say they're still raging against that particular machine). Most of the time though, guided by talent and ambition, the artists themselves move on and prosper. Sydney's The Falls are one such band.

This is how the story goes: Simon Rudston-Brown meets Melinda Kirwin. They fall in love and start to make music together. They argue. They make up. They break up. They form a band. It all went down in that exact order and if you think this would make for some interesting songs, you'd be right. Down the line from sunny Surry Hills, Kirwin explains that it's not always easy to pour your heart out every night over the distracting clatter of a pub or venue. “Before we released the EP, we didn't really talk about it at all. I don't think many people knew the story behind the songs, or even asked. A lot of people didn't know we were together or ever had been. Now, it's all out there and it can be really confronting at times. Particularly at gigs when you have to lay yourself bare on stage and sing those songs. Sometimes the lyrics get to us and that's what makes it most difficult.”

First single, Home, is one of the results of this emotional process. A bittersweet lament to better times, it's taken from The Falls' debut EP, Hollywood, named for the Hotel Hollywood in Surry Hills where the duo have spent the last few years cutting their teeth. As opposed to just jumping on to other bills as most bands would, Rudston-Brown and Kirwin decided to take matters into their own hands, building their own folk night from the ground up.

“We just went into the Hollywood one day and asked the bar manager if we could play,” Kirwin explains. “He wasn't really convinced so we just asked him to let us have one night. If he hated it we'd never come back. So we played that week, came back the next week and eventually we'd been there for a year.” These nights at their local eventually led The Falls to an idea called Folk Club. Inspired by Communion, a similar event in the UK run by Mumford & Son's Ben Lovett, Folk Club is a chance for the purveyors of the more delicate genres to be heard. “We're hoping that Folk Club will become a place for different artists to have the opportunity to do what we did,” she continues. “We found for us it was such a great chance to play to new people. It's a free night and a lot of people come down just to check out who's playing, which is nice.”

So, at this point we have The Falls down as lovers, creators and curators. Considering the fact that they've only been around for approximately a year, they've managed to stack their resume fairly impressively. Their recent tour with Of Monsters & Men and an upcoming jaunt with regular UK visitor Passenger won't hurt either. The only real question left is: what's next for these whiz-kids? “We'd really love to do an album,” Kirwin says excitedly. “With the EP, it was really difficult for us to decide which songs to record and it was mostly a decision made on budget than anything else, to just record five tracks. I think it will really feel like the whole picture for us, having the whole collection of songs in one place. That would be awesome.”