"It is a type of conversation that you don't have in real life."
The first Tiny Little Houses band member to arrive for our interview is guitarist Sean Mullins who wears a forest green cardigan with a large key dangling around his neck (about which his bandmate later jokes: "It's the key to his heart"). We discuss how the band found playing BIGSOUND this year (for the second time) and Mullins points out, "It was sort of like, 'Well, have they got better in 12 months?'... [We] can't sort of rest on being a beginner band, you know? It was like we had to put a good show and I think we did that. It was a great show, actually; I think it's one of my favourites we've played."
"As you take a song that you've got in your head and give it to the band, it just changes."
Caleb Karvountzis, the band's frontman, enters the breezy outdoor area of this Collingwood eatery sporting a brown corduroy jacket and orders a latte. Tiny Little Houses started off as a solo bedroom project for Karvountzis and Mullins shares, "The single that we just put out, Song Despite Apathy, is probably about four years old or something". The guitarist remembers the pair wrote this song "in Caleb's basement before the other guys were even in the band, before we had a band". This song's accompanying video clip has a karaoke theme, so we can't help but wonder whether either of the boys has a go-to karaoke song. "Yeah, Teenage Dirtbag," Karvountzis answers immediately, "that is my jam... We cover it sometimes."
"We did it at The [Gasometer Hotel] residency," Mullins reveals. "It was the night we played with Alex Lahey... And actually Alex came up and sang with us as well." Did she do the Mena Suvari part? "Yeah," the guitarist confirms with a smile.
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"Lonely People is the first song that I ever pretty much did as Tiny Little Houses," Karvountzis enlightens of another song on the band's latest EP, "and it's changed so much since I recorded that originally." Karvountzis admits that going from writing songs solo to working collaboratively has been "a learning process". "As you take a song that you've got in your head and give it to the band, it just changes," he explains.
On how they approach some of the more difficult conversations that are necessary during songwriting sessions, Mullins offers, "It is a type of conversation that you don't have in real life, so it's hard sometimes to communicate those kind of ideas."
"It's just like having three girlfriends," Karvountzis chuckles. Or family members, perhaps? "Nah, girlfriends," Mullins stresses then his bandmate continues, "Family members you can tell really straight... Say I write something, the first person I show is my sister and she just tells me if she likes it... And if she thinks it's no good, it doesn't go anywhere. It's good to have someone that you really trust that can cut you down."
Now that Tiny Little Houses has expanded into a four-piece, rounded out by drummer Clancy Bond and bassist Al Yamin, Karvountzis notes the material they've "all written as a band" is "bigger-sounding". "I'm really looking forward to doing the album," he enthuses.
"We've got maybe a third of the album recorded," Mullins adds excitedly.