The Temper Trap: And Then There Were Four

The Temper Trap played a show in Melbourne the night before our chat. While bassist Jonny Aherne peruses a Southbank eatery's menu, drummer Toby Dundas divulges, "I got to bed at, like, 1.30am, so I think Jonny's had less sleep than me". Aherne joins us at an outside table. Before their recent trio of homecoming shows, Dundas estimates the band would've last performed in "January 2015".

Reflecting on The Temper Trap (formerly Temper Temper)'s career trajectory, Aherne points out: "Sometimes it takes a long time for things to happen suddenly. It took a long time but, when it happened, it was kinda all these lights did shine… I think people think it's magic — it's just like all of a sudden you were chosen, but nobody really knows how much you put into it."

"We would've been happy if triple j had smashed it and added it to high rotation let alone where it ended up getting to and, like, connecting with people all over the world."

Two flat whites are delivered to the boys. When writing material for the band's latest album, Aherne found putting pressure on himself "to write a Temper Trap song" counterproductive. Of the songs that "just worked", the bassist contemplates, "They came from — just not a place of pressure or trying to write a Sweet Disposition or something. That sort of natural place brings better work, I think." So we're just aching to find out: did they know Sweet Disposition would be a hit as soon as they wrote it? "No. I didn't," Aherne replies before Dundas elaborates, "You don't know. And even our idea of what a hit could've been, at that stage, would've been different: like, we would've been happy if triple j had smashed it and added it to high rotation let alone where it ended up getting to and, like, connecting with people all over the world. And I don't think that was on our radar at the time.

"I mean, second album, our label was telling us, 'Oh, this is gonna be huge and that's blah-blah-blah', and, you know, it didn't really kinda happen in that way. So you've just gotta — I mean, we just write the songs for us, and from our heart, and we believe in them. And then it's really nice when other people kind of, like, feel the same way about it. But it's not the be all and end all."

The band collaborated with outside songwriters such as Justin Parker and Pascal Gabriel for the first time on album number three and, when asked whether egos get bruised when these songs don't make the final cut, the drummer shares, "I think they're pretty used to that process".

"There was a song that the boys wrote with Weezer — with Rivers [Cuomo] — and it ended up this great song," Aherne tells, "but it ended up like a Weezer song. And then he was thinking about taking it for his record that just came out, but he didn't… Some of the songs which didn't make it, it wasn't because they weren't good songs it just didn't feel like The Temper Trap."

"The touring lifestyle definitely takes a toll on your personal relationships."

Midway through Thick As Thieves songwriting sessions, The Temper Trap's guitarist Lorenzo Sillitto left the band. "He'd been in the band since pretty much day one," Dundas laments of the guitarist's departure. "Lorenzo and I have been friends since we were, like, 12. He kind of came to us and he was like, 'I don't wanna keep going'." Admitting this came as "a bit of a shock", the drummer continues, "He was about to have his first kid and he was getting married and all sorts of things and, yeah! The touring lifestyle definitely takes a toll on your personal relationships."

Dundas and Aherne were with their respective partners prior to The Temper Trap's relocation to London about seven years ago, before their debut album Conditions dropped. "All our partners moved and, you know, Jonny's wife — and he's got two kids now — and, yeah! It was a whole big move to kinda go over there and take that chance," Dundas confirms. Aherne extols, "We were off in a van driving around Europe and they were kinda holding down the fort together."

When asked what their proudest The Temper Trap achievements are to date, Aherne has a mouthful of focaccia, so Dundas offers, "Winning the ARIAs was really nice, you know? Dougy [Mandagi, vocalist]'s mum was always very keen for him to get a real job — yeah, go to business school — so I think when he sent the ARIAs home she changed her tune." He was also pretty stoked to play during half time at the AFL Grand Final in 2012 — "I'm a massive footy fan".

"My dad is a Hawks supporter," Aherne interjects, "but they lost. So I was so ready for that to be a great day for dad, you know? But it was, like, bittersweet going up to him afterwards. He was like, 'Well done,' and he was, like, sad."