They're In Stock

When Time Off catches up with affable Twerps mainstay Marty Frawley, he's just returned from playing a well-received Saturday morning slot at Victoria's Meredith Festival, where the band had a great time despite the weather and self-imposed restraints stopping them from seeing too many other acts on the strong bill.

“It was so hot we just had like a band camp, and we were allowed to bring our friends down so we were just sitting in the shade enjoying the dirt,” he laughs. “It was really cool, but we only went down on Saturday and didn't get to see any of Friday – I was kinda glad because it was so overwhelming, I got home on Sunday and I was bloody pooped! None of us went down the night before as a strict group decision – I think it was a concerted effort to cut down on mistakes, but there were still plenty of mistakes so we could have done with it maybe! It was actually my decision, out of everyone in the band I get a bit toey, so we all stood together as a team – as a band!”

Twerps are now one of the main Australian drawcards on the 2013 instalment of the Laneway Festival, and Frawley is really looking forward to getting amongst it.

“I'm really excited, he enthuses. “I love the idea of it – it's a bit smaller, and I just like that there's a lot of little stages. And the bands that are playing are really cool – and we know a fair few of them – so it's going to be fun. We're going to be on the road all together – we're all catching the same planes and staying in the same hotels – so there's just going to be a bunch of larrikins, I tell you what!”

Last year Twerps followed their excellent 2011 self-titled debut album with the equally strong three-track Work It Out single, which augurs extremely well for their sophomore album, due out later this year.

“I wrote He's In Stock the night before we played our album launch and we played it that day – it's so cool writing a song that takes three minutes to make!” Frawley grins. “We just started playing it and went, 'Ooh, let's play this tomorrow!' – that's how most of our songs are written. Work It Out is more about me; it's not about a bad relationship, it's about me being in this incredible band and saying to myself, 'C'mon man, you've got to work harder!' Recall was written recently too – it was quite a new batch of songs, but we've got heaps more now.

“[The new album] is going to be Twerps – I feel like we always sound the same whether it's got more guitars or more keyboards – but Julia's [McFarlane – guitar/vocals] writing a whole lot of new ones, and I've been writing a lot. There's one song in particular that I'm really fucking amped on – it's in the same vein as Dreamin' or something, a bit of a rock song and it's really Aussie. It sounds like something that you'd listen to in the '80s on the beach in your stubbies. So we're just sifting through what we've got, but we want to make a pretty intimate album I think, more so than the last one. Julia and I are a couple and we just got engaged, so I think we really want to play on that angle – Yo La Tengo have that similar dynamic and it works for them. It's going to be a lot more chill. But I don't want to have an album that has Aussie-sounding songs and then not-Aussie sounding songs, so I'm not sure how it's going to pan out yet.”

Twerps will be playing the following dates:

Friday 1 February - Laneway Festival, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 2 February - Laneway Festival, Sydney NSW
Sunday 3 February - Laneway Festival, Footscray VIC
Friday 8 February - Laneway Festival, Adelaide SA
Saturday 9 - Laneway Festival, Perth WA