The Fauves: Time Of Your Life.

The Fauves play The Zoo on Friday and The Troccadero, Surfers Paradise on Saturday.

“I can imagine the bank managers face when I rock up and ask for some cash to set up The Fauves museum,” laughs Andrew Cox. “Somehow I don’t think so...”

The Fauves frontman, songwriter and self confessed band archivist and horder is musing on what to do with the masses of band propaganda, press releases and features articles

“I’ve been reading back through some of the interviews I did ten years ago and wincing at the earnestness and missguidedness of it all. Charting how you’ve changed and how your views have changed, I suppose. We’d already been going five years before we got picked up. It was pretty amazing they signed us on the back of that first album. 65 minutes of art rock extravaganza. I’ve got to take my hat off to them for giving us a deal.”

Nine years after the release of their Drive Through Charisma long player The Fauves have served up album number six, Footage Missing. While the effortless buoyant melodies of their most recent single Insert Your Life Here may well be classic Fauves radio fodder, as a precursor to what you’ll receive on the album it’s not really giving much away.

“Insert Your Life Here’s not really representative at all of the album,” Andrew Continues. “It’s our most mellow record, I think. In a way, singles have always been unrepresentative of our records. It tends to be the more light-hearted stuff ends up being singles, but this time it’s really unrepresentative.”

Is there some kind of strategy behind releasing things this way?

“The whole single thing is just proliferated with those upbeat pasty moments. To put our an eight minute experimental single is kind of shooting yourself in the foot. I think some people would have a completely wrong picture of the band if they haven’t bought a record and just heard our singles over the years. You could get quite the wrong opinion about our music in general.”

“I’ve always thought of us more as an album band. We don’t write singles and fill in around them, we write an album and then look for a single. I’d certainly say if you asked all the band members for their top five Fauves songs none of the singles would be in there. Some of the more left of centre stuff is closer to our hearts, I think.”

Are you getting to a point where you’d be happy to leave something like Dogs Are The Best People or Surf City Limits out of the set list?

“We do tend to play those more sparingly these days. You think that over the years people have heard those songs enough, and they wont be pissed about not hearing them, but inevitably they are. It’s about finding a balance with what people want to hear.”

Oddly enough, The Fauves are about to have a best of record released in Brazil.

“There’s a guy who puts out Australian bands over there, and he’s put together like a greatest hits disc for Brazil only. It’s out sometime before the end of the year. It’ll be good to get over there and play a couple of 200 000 seat stadiums to support it.”

Rock in Rio… Carnivale…

“Yeah,” he laughs. “That’s the thing. They don’t seem to worry about what’s cool. Men At Work are just being discovered over there at the moment. It seems to be the place all Aussie bands are destined to end up. I hope there’s a place on the beach there for us.”