Twine's Tom Katsaras: "I Accept That This Is What I Do And I Might As Well Just Do It"

An eventual descent into ear-splitting chaos is characteristic of a Twine track - characteristic, in fact, of almost any single released by a noise rock band. The moniker of the genre speaks for itself: the music situated beneath that umbrella is, by nature, loud, pairing classic rock instrumentation with distortion, experimentation, and atonality.

But what stands out to me about the Adelaide-based band Twine is not the sheer cacophony that they lean into unashamedly - though a certain level of sonic chaos is always a novelty. Crucially, what makes Twine’s songs interesting are that the melodies are still muscular, that the songwriting voice is still robust, beyond the outer layer of mere discord and dissonance and guitar-heavy texture.

Additionally, Tom Katsaras - the frontman of Twine - has an aching tenderness to his voice. It seems to be important to the band’s sensibility that he does not appear merely angry and disaffected - as is the case with many of Twine’s lesser noise-rock counterparts - he is everything else too.

Sleeping Dogs, the Twine single to be released tomorrow, October 11th, most exemplifies these standout qualities of Tom Katsaras’s songwriting approach.

“I think I always wanted to do it,” Katsaras says when I ask how he came to pursue music. “But I never…I was too scared.” He couldn’t play guitar, and he didn’t start learning until he was eighteen, after he finished high school.

Entering into the music scene in a way that suited him was a classic case of trial and error. “I spent fucking four years of my life trying to start something. From 18 to 21,” he says. “Random line-ups and bad people” was a “recurring theme” for him as he struggled to find his footing. “Playing with the duds, playing with the bandmate who turns out to be a bad guy…”

Twine has had many different band formations: Katsaras’s journey was plagued by clashing values and constant realisations that certain people were not right musically or spiritually for the band.

I suggest that it seemed to take a little while to reach the true iteration of the band, or the formation that works best for him.

“Totally,” he agrees. “I definitely feel like it’s where it’s supposed to be.”

Katsaras is completely self-taught. I ask if that fact has an effect on the type of music he has committed himself to.

“I definitely leant into the noise because of it. I didn't start writing noisy music, that came later,” he says, mostly after realising just how much he loves Washington-based post-hardcore band Unwound. 

Guitar feedback, to him, seemed “so easy. And it sounds so good.”

He never felt truly confident in his musical abilities, he continues. “I've had people ask me to join their bands, and I've never been able to say yes. I don't feel like I’m good enough.” Not feeling particularly confident in being able to “jam” lent itself to songwriting in complete isolation. In the early days of Twine, he used to bring fully-written songs to the band, but now there’s more of an element of communal songwriting and experimentation.

“Twine’s in a different form now, where it is shared,” he clarifies. “I'm definitely a little more comfortable in trusting everyone and working with everyone. Even if I have, like, a fully-structured song, we will still go over it and figure out how to make it work best and change things accordingly. I wouldn't want to be in a band where I would be calling all the shots too much. You also want it to fit. And a big part of that, I reckon, is everyone feeling happy, feeling that they’re all part of it.”

It seems natural as well, for the other band members to have more fully-fleshed out roles in the songwriting process, given that they - Matt Schulz on guitar, Alicia Salvanos on bass, Thea Martin on violin, and latest edition Hari Starick on drums - are all such talented and inventive musicians.

I suggest to him that I would personally classify Twine’s music as alternative country songwriting couched in noise rock. The majority of Twine songs, I feel, could still ostensibly be performed in an acoustic songwriter setting.

He agrees. When he’s songwriting, he says, “I’m trying for it to be like a song that I would like to listen to. A big part of that is, I like more alt-country, or that sensibility of songwriting anyway.”

Part of “leaning into the alt-countryness” for Katsaras came from the fact that he “never felt like a confident singer. But then there’s people like Will Oldham who are croaky and shaky as hell and I love it. Instead of trying to fix it, you just, like, lean into it.” 

Twine’s debut full-length album, recorded at interim recording studios, is slated for a December 6th release. It’s a project they’ve been sitting with for a while. He believes the fact that Twine is a “good live band” is part of the reason that they were able to so consistently tour over the past few years on the back of quite a limited catalogue of music actually accessible on streaming platforms.

“It took longer than we thought…I just want to get it out,” he says. “I feel a lot better about songwriting these days than I did six months ago. I’m just a lot more keen to work on new songs.”

“I am excited,” he says of the imminent album release. I’ve gone through lots of phases of hating it, then liking it. “But I’m back to liking it again. I’d love to listen to it objectively but it’s impossible, there’s no way.”

Sipping at the dregs of his beer, Katsaras starts to more broadly meditate on his decision to pursue music - a decision he almost appears to be somewhat baffled by. “It’s just the weirdest thing. Being a singer is so cringe.” He chuckles. “I don’t know why I do it.”

Does he feel like a natural frontman?

“I don’t feel like a frontman. I don't get a kick out of it. I enjoy performing. But I don't relish being a frontman. I hate the extra attention. I fucking hate talking onstage.”

He goes on to clarify his current stance on being a musician. “I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been a confident person but with music I’m now at a point where I accept it, I accept that this is what I do and I might as well just do it.”

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The band will be going on tour at the end of the week to promote Sleeping Dogs.

“It’s very tiring but I do love it,” he says of touring with Twine. “It’s very immediate. For those short periods of time, life is very focused. It is really hard. You spend so much money, and you’re missing work so you lose heaps of money,” he acknowledges. “Touring to me feels like an expensive social outing…You’re all doing the same pursuit: the cringe pursuit of music.” He laughs.

The name of the band came about when Katsaras was living with multi-disciplinary artist Christina Lauren in Norwood. He talks about a piece of wisteria that was “tethered to the pole with a piece of twine.”

It seems fitting that a noise-rock band with an almost groundbreakingly sensitive sensibility for the genre owes its moniker to a flimsy piece of thread that was holding a flowering plant aloft.

Sleeping Dogs will be streaming everywhere tomorrow.