Wigwam Bam

Forming only late last year, local five-piece The Murlocs have nonetheless managed to create an exciting niche for themselves in their very short time together. Plying their trade within the (admittedly quite porous) boundaries of the garage-doom-skuzz-beachy realms of bands such as '60s garage pioneers The Count Five, this outfit have managed to sound somehow unlike all of this, as evidenced by their terrific new five-track EP, Tee Pee. Their debut record earlier this year had set ears pricking amongst the more interested and interesting members of the musical arm of the fourth estate, but singer Ambrose Kenny Smith says following up a solidly received debut wasn't something he and his band thought too much about.

“We did the first one on an eight track in a shack in Upwey with a family friend of mine,” he says. “We sort of did it for fun, really. It felt like just something we were doing at the time. We just kind of recorded it in one day and never properly released it. I just did it all myself, using some of the band money, making cardboard slips and we had them to give away when we played live on PBS and things like that. I guess with this new EP we wanted to try and do it properly and have something we'd be proud of.”

And Tee Pee was recorded by legendary Eddy Current Suppression Ring guitarist Mikey Young, whose name seems to be in the production credits of just about every cool record going around at the moment. Kenny Smith obviously respects Young's work, but he seems most impressed by the fact he, Young, was up for paying a visit to his, Kenny Smith's, Nan.

“He's done a lot of great garage bands,” says Kenny Smith, “so I was completely down for having him do the record. He was just so portable and easy. He was so awesome. He just, like, came to my Nan's place in Ivanhoe in this sort of dingy, old-style house. I don't know, he was so laid back and into whatever it was we wanted to do. I was a bit worried at first you know, that he wanted us to be the best work he'd ever done or something like that, but by the time it came to mixing it, we were more than happy with it.”

What was it about the record that made Kenny Smith happy? Were the band attempting to capture their live sound? Or go for something with more bells and whistles? It appears as if the latter was the case, though only slightly. “A lot of people at the moment are recording lo-fi garage stuff, but we didn't want to do that,” he continues. “We wanted to go for… I don't know, not polished, but maybe something a little bit crisper than our live sound. We didn't want it to be some trashy sounding garbage. That was sort of what we did with the first EP and we wanted to move away from that.”

Given Young's flourishes, how will the record translate to a live setting? Kenny Smith isn't worried about it, although he's also not completely sure of how it works. “It's pretty similar live,” he says. “Me, I guess I kind of just do things differently when I get on stage. With the recording, we wanted things a certain way. When it's live, I don't know, it's just 'let's go'. I think we handle ourselves pretty well.”

And the launch is, fittingly enough, at the Tote – just the absolute perfect venue for this brash, young, brave music. Kenny Smith seems happy about it, too. “To us, to headline at the Tote is just crazy, given it's where we started and everything. The last few shows we've played there, we were really happy with our sound, which makes it the best place to play, in a way. We're pretty excited to see what happens.”

The Murlocs will be playing the following shows:

Friday 31 August - The Tote, Melbourne VIC