'We're As Good As We've Ever Been': The Pretty Littles Follow Their Instincts For 'Mulga Wire'

The Pretty Littles

Jack Parsons’ dog, Margaret Scratcher, is currently keeping him company during a Zoom call. 

The Pretty Littles’ frontman is ridiculously easy to have a conversation with – it makes him ridiculously difficult to interview. Several minutes of agreeable chatter fly by – Disney, capitalism, and neuro-divergence are all covered – before anything constructive is asked, because of just how personable he is.

“I used to do this by the way,” he says, referring to his stint as a music journalist. “And I would be so scared to do interviews like this. I couldn’t do it.

“I’d go to water so badly…I think I was very eager to impress anyone who I saw as having a career in music, because I wanted one so badly. But really I was just a 21-year-old gronk, I was an absolute moron.”

Parsons is 37 now, and, it seems, far from a moron.

“I was always realistic about music,” he says. He had always been aware that it wasn’t the most stable of career fields.

“I think I was interested, even from an early age, in working out what a smart way to hedge my bets would be. ‘How can I be in a band?’ I asked myself, but also, ‘What is some adjacent world that I could be in at the same time?’ And writing and journalism was one of those ideas.”

Hedging his bets has so far worked out for Parsons. As the frontman of Melbourne-based garage-rock band The Pretty Littles, he has accrued a devoted following – the outfit definitely possesses indie darling status.

“I think we’re probably as good as we’ve ever been,” Parsons says of the band. He describes the beginning of their musical career, however, as “slow-going.” He says, “I really wanted to be better sooner. I was really impatient.”

Their seventh album, Force, peaked at No. 6 on the ARIA Charts; now, a mere year later, The Pretty Littles are gearing up to release their eighth full-length effort, Mulga Wire, on June 5th. To celebrate the album release, the band will tour nationally, headlining some of their biggest rooms to date, including The Lansdowne in Sydney and the Corner Hotel in Melbourne.

“They do get easier to make in some senses, and they get way harder to make in other senses,” he says of making an album. “They get harder to make because it’s harder to find time to put towards crafting it.

“Everyone’s got so many things going on; we all live in different sections of Victoria. So getting everyone together and putting time aside is much harder.”

One thing that has become easier, however, is learning to back their instincts.

The band, he explains, tends not to go into the album-making process with too much forethought - themes generally emerge later down the track. “We definitely follow our noses. Songs just pop up. It’s haphazard, for sure. It’s completely random. We follow little moments, little flashes of inspiration.”

Parsons has spent too much of his life overthinking. “Instincts are better.”

The process of making Mulga Wire is one he describes with pure joy as “awesome”. Everything came naturally to the band. “I think we’re just so happy to be playing music.”

One major inspiration, which seems to have shaped the band’s later output, and its strong sense of Australiana, is the work of Paul Kelly.

“I’ll often come back to Paul Kelly and look at his catalogue: the storytelling, the rock ‘n’ roll, the smut, the folk, the introspection, the poetry. And he’s unapologetically himself and unapologetically Australian, you know?”

The song that seems to best distill the upcoming album’s themes is their gritty, uncompromising single In Our Times – a song that emerged from “a moment, a feeling, an emotional impulse,” he explains.

“A lot of songs happen that way for me, especially those angrier, political ones. It’s a sad kind of contrast, because I like writing them. Whenever I’m inspired to write, I feel invigorated by it. And in those moments I’m struck down by something I’ve seen or read, and it’s usually quite a heavy thing, but I’m grateful to be inspired, which is such a crooked contrast.”

In Our Times is candid and bleak, an observation on the “seemingly endless horrors” of modern-day life as it buckles beneath hyper-capitalistic greed.

“I think everyone’s feeling it,” he sighs. “I don’t know if it’s going to help, if it’s going to do anything…It’s an angry bastard, it’s a heavy one to play live, that’s for sure.”

Political sentiment is no stranger to The Pretty Littles’ catalogue. One only has to look at one of the biggest hits from their last album: Australian Dream, a song that does just what it says on the tin. 

Parsons stresses that he doesn’t view himself as a major political authority. But, then again, as he says, “Politicians themselves don’t really seem like they should be speaking about the things they’re speaking about.” His amusement is slightly pained.

“Songwriting has always been big in protest, big in making a commentary. It’s a time stamp,” he says. “If I genuinely have been struck down by something I’m pretty content to see it through, to see where it takes me artistically.

“I don’t really get that feeling of, like, I shouldn’t be talking about this… But sometimes you can ignorantly walk into areas that you shouldn’t be in, and awareness around that is important as well.”

The band is not afraid of inciting discussion and causing disagreements. “If we put songs out and it invites criticism, let’s have a yarn.”

He says that their 2017 song Sam’s Mob, for example – about the racist abuse that Australian Rules Football player Adam Goodes has endured – received major pushback. “If we do make something political, there will often be people telling us to shut the fuck up,” Parsons says, chuckling.

“I don’t like to make big statements at gigs or impassioned posts on social media, I’d prefer to just put it in a song. People can ask me or ask us or take what they want from it. And if they just like the sound of the tune, that’s good. If they feel something more deeply, that’s great.”

The over-reliance on social media to enact sociopolitical change is something that doesn’t quite sit right with him. “I feel a bit confused about grandiose statements and social media and its role in massive worldwide problems,” he says.

“People who own these platforms, they’ve all got their own motivations and intentions, which are so dangerous and so dark. And it’s been going on forever, I guess. But for it to happen in this world where we have so much access to transparency, but we’re still being fed all this dangerous rhetoric…”

He trails off, becoming glassy-eyed clearly starting to stare down into the abyss. “Social media – I can see how important it is, I just get confused about how much we rely on it to get messages out in the world. Every time I open it up, it’s like this carnival. It’s a wild thing, to be a part of that world.”

Writing a song, or listening to one, or yelling one into a spit-flecked microphone at a grimy pub, makes far more sense to him. 

The Pretty Littles’ Mulga Wire is out now. Tickets to their upcoming album tour are on sale now.

The Pretty Littles – Mulga Wire Album Tour

Friday, June 19th – Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide, SA

Saturday, July 11th – Republic Bar, Hobart, TAS

Saturday, July 25th – Lansdowne, Sydney, NSW

Friday, July 31st – The Brightside, Brisbane, QLD

Saturday, August 1st – Corner Hotel, Melbourne, VIC

This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body