Living It Up, From Newcastle To LA

When Newcastle garage duo The Gooch Palms — partners-in-crime Leroy Macqueen (guitar/vocals) and Kat Friend (drums/vocals) — announced last year that they were pulling up stumps and moving to Los Angeles there were legitimate concerns about culture shock, whether they'd adapt to this brave change or become fish out of water in their new home.

Luckily it seems that they've settled into Californian life with complete ease: not only have The Gooch Palms already racked up hundreds of well-received shows in the States, but when Macqueen touches base with The Music he's bedridden in their LA abode with his leg elevated in a knee-strap, having suffered a surfing-related ligament injury. But mainly they're having an absolute blast, although Macqueen admits to them suffering some initial trepidation.

"Yeah, especially because we're from Newy as well!" he laughs. "Moving from Newy to one of the biggest cities in the world was definitely quite daunting, but me and Kat are so determined to do what's best for The Gooch Palms that we don't really care if we're not feeling totally comfortable, if that makes any sense at all."

The Gooch Palms have carved out this American niche using just their stripped-back gonzo aesthetic and the cache of catchy garage-influenced bubblegum rock they're fond of describing as "shit-pop", plus an inherent belief in what they're doing. "We'd signed to [booking agent] Panache and that was kind of like the point when we though we should move over [to the States], because we thought, 'What's the point of having a booking agent if we're not going back?'," Macqueen reflects. "It's such an expensive trip. We'd done one tour when we'd returned back to Newcastle and it was just so expensive hiring equipment and a car and booking hotels that we kinda thought that if we've got a booking agent it might be worth selling everything in Newy and moving over here — that was a year ago.

"Me and Kat are so determined to do what's best for The Gooch Palms that we don't really care if we're not feeling totally comfortable, if that makes any sense at all."

"We didn't really put a time limit on it, but then last year we ended up doing about 150 shows around America. Knowing that we've got a home base here gives you a bit of peace of mind when you're tripping around the country as much as we had been, rather than it being so far away."

And although he admits to missing the comforts of home ("I get homesick a lot and I know Kat does as well, although she's probably better hiding it than I am") Macqueen tells that the pair are pumped to be returning Down Under to promote brand new album Introverted Extroverts, released on their own label Summer Camp Records. The follow-up to their slow-burn 2013 debut Novo's may have been recorded in rural Michigan, but its genesis is nearly completely homegrown.

"We didn't have the whole record done back home, but most if it," he tells. "We'd demoed ten of the songs in Newcastle two weeks before we flew over for our first shows in America last year, so three songs were written [in the States] but the record was pretty much done a year ago.

"I think Trackside Daze was released on a 7" with a different version — that song and Ask Me Why were the two songs that kinda started the album songwriting-wise: it was, like, 'Okay, I can kinda see where it's going to go'. That's kind of how Novo's worked as well, we wrote two or three songs and then I could see where it was about to head. And I'm doing that now — I've demoed about 16 new songs, and I can already tell that there's about two or three songs that are definitely keepers, and they'll definitely steer where the next record will go for sure."

Introverted Extroverts manages a sonic progression from the lo-fi DIY bent of Novo's without becoming too slick or polished, a balance Macqueen attributes to the album's producer Bill Skibbe. 

"We could have just put out another Novo's, I think the majority of people would have been happy if we did another album in nine hours — we didn't feel any pressure that we had to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a studio, we didn't have to go too overboard," he argues. "And that's kind of how Bill Skibbe came around - because I'd heard what he'd done with Protomartyr and Jacuzzi Boys and The Black Keys and The Kills, and even just a heap of cool Chicago bands - and I just kept noticing that every record that he'd done sounded completely different, like he didn't have a signature sound or style. I could kinda tell that he really just sorta worked with the band, and at no point did he say, like, 'Why do you have a floor tom/snare/guitar?'

"Basically we just set up six different guitar amps and played all the music live, and then just chopped and changed what amps came in at what point and kind of did the album from dynamics. So in a sense it was kind of recorded live like Novo's, but then we just spent a little bit more time on the melodies and recording the vocals. We maybe changed a few things because we had a little bit more time up our sleeves, but we didn't want to go too overboard. We did add some little synth sounds that you probably can't even hear, just filling out things as well.

"But it's good, we spent basically two days just pulling sounds to make sure we were happy. There's basically little or no EQ on the record, because we spent that much time making sure that the sound and where the mics were placed was just right. That's kind of Bill's philosophy, and it worked really well for us. It actually ended up how we wanted it to sound, which is a great achievement."

And although their songs are catchy as all get out, The Gooch Palms' oddball lyrics are also an integral part of their charm.

"Pretty much every Gooch Palms song tells a weird story somehow, and that's the only way we know what to write which is just exactly what happened."

"Neither me or Kat are poets, and I don't walk around with a notebook and go, 'Ooh, man walking across the road trips over, I'm going to write that in my book today!'," Macqueen chuckles. "I'll basically just have my guitar and hum a melody, and then we'll sit down and basically come up with a subject. Like with Trackside Daze we lived next door to a train track in Newcastle, so we chose that as the subject and then just started filling in the blanks.

"Pretty much every Gooch Palms song tells a weird story somehow, and that's the only way we know what to write which is just exactly what happened. It will be interesting to see what happens now that we're not living in Newcastle: where the next batch of lyrics will go is kinda exciting."

In the meantime, however, the pair are stoked about all their hard work as The Gooch Palms coming to fruition, drawing parallels with another homebred rock'n'roll morality tale. "That's the sort of thing that I think Violent Soho's story teaches kids in bands — or anyone who's in a band — which is just not giving up," Macqueen proffers. "Every band goes through crap times, and we still have a million moments every week where we're, like, 'What are we doing? I can think of a million other things that would be easier than doing this', but I don't like doing anything else so as far as we're concerned this is it. It's amazing that the public actually allow us to do it, and like us enough for us to think, 'This is what we want to do'.

"Right now we're able to afford to live just off the band, which is an insane thing. Sometimes I look in the mirror when I'm feeling a bit shitty or whatever and then realise what we're actually doing, and then I'm, like, 'Holy crap! We're just two kids from Newy now living in LA', and if you'd told me at 12 years old that this is where I'd be now, I would have said, 'No way. There's no way!' I wouldn't have even known how to get to Sydney!"