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Love Banana offers up short sharp shots of super-shambolic, super-perky garage-pop on their latest single "Get In." The new tune, resembling The Clean, The Performing Ferret Band, and Tangled Shoelaces, is the first offering from the Gold Coast quintet's forthcoming self-titled EP that will be out July 26th on Holiday Maker Records. Alongside today's premiere of the new track, I chatted with the band to discuss their unique bond and friendship, combining collaborative art exhibitions with house shows, their Venn diagram of music tastes, and how they've evolved as a musical unit to where they are now.
First tell me what you've been up to lately? What have you been listening to, reading, watching, or spending a lot of time doing?
Mikey Clark (drums): The Cat's Miaow Cassette Years '92-'93 compilation! And I've been watching Sex and the City with my girlfriend.
Henry Collins (vocals/guitar): I have been listening to a lot of Guided by Voices especially the Sunfish Holy Breakfast EP.
Paris Rodd (keyboard/guitar): The Beach Boys' Smiley Smile and watching Seinfeld.
Ethan Eyles (vocals/bass/harmonica): Wire's Not About To Die (Studio Demos 1977-1978) and watching Yowie videos on YouTube.
Sam Brown (percussion): Well Lately I've been down at Wallum in Brunswick Heads, NSW. For those of you who don't know what Wallum Heath is, it's a highly diverse ecological community growing on top of Pleistocene sand full of the most amazing wild flowers. Without me going into too much of a ramble, most of the Wallum was destroyed for the urban sprawl that is the Gold Coast, and now only 1% is left. Today the last of what remains is under threat by greedy developer bastards, who plan to flatten it all, pushing 24 threatened species to the verge of extinction. So me and some others have been up to mischief giving those developers a hard time. I can't say too much on the off chance they have a good taste in independent publications like Paperface. And I've been listening to Theee Retail Simps.
Mikey: Sam missed a recent show because he was up in a tree for three days. He also got an early flight home from our mini Sydney tour to go stop some bulldozers. Fucking love that guy.
For readers who aren't familiar, how did you all meet and form Love Banana? Also have you been part of other bands or projects over the years?
Mikey: Henry, Paris, Ethan and I all went to the same school, we grew up figuring out our instruments together. I think that has helped us so much, it can feel unnatural for me to play music with other people now. Ethan spent five years living in New York and I didn't really know him until he moved back to Australia a couple years after we'd all graduated. Our old bass player had just moved away and he slotted in too well, that really set the trajectory for us. I met Sam by trying to sneak into shows together as teenagers, he showed me the trick of walking in with a camera around your neck like you're the photographer, I thought he was the best person I'd ever met. He had sort of disappeared out of our lives for a few years, he got really into farming and forestry and stuff like that (still not exactly sure what he does) and came back into our world to finally complete Love Banana. Other than LB, we all play in a bunch of our friends bands and we've got a really nice community going in the Gold Coast and Northern Rivers—it's nice growing up in a small pond because you get to know all the other fish that you share your taste with. Some of the other bands we've been a part of include: The Sleeves, Pop Radio, Turp, Gardeners, La Lune Medicine Band, Silver Coral, Sky in July, and Speeding Vehicle.
When you five are together, what do you love to do aside from recording music? What are some fun facts about the band?
Paris: We love hanging out with our extended group and all have our own hobbies on the side, Sam gets into seed collecting, Ethan is a pro squash champ, Henry is super into listening to podcasts through his AirPods, Mikey is weirdly good at Connect Four and I like to draw.
Sam: We'll all be in an elevator together, five minutes will go by and everyone's just faffing about. Then you realize we haven't even pressed the button to go up yet. That's kind of how much we enjoy being with each other.
Mikey: We also had a big frisbee phase a few years ago.
What has it been like combining art exhibitions with house shows over the years and how important of a role does that play into the music?
Paris: It's been fun. A lot of time and effort went into planning the "Friends of Banana" art show. Sam Brown and I had the idea and it came to life with the help of a lot of our friends. We have such creative friends, and the idea was to give everyone a reason to share what they can do in a fun way by expressing ideas, taking inspiration from each-other and reflecting on things that spark our interests. Music and art go hand in hand in that way I think, and the community of like-minded people that we can create by hammering nails into our walls and calling up our friends and asking them to play live in our kitchen is pretty cool and special.
Your music is really a true cross-section between endearingly ramshackle garage pop to witty rock 'n' roll, striking similarities to The Performing Ferret Band and Dolly Mixture. What sort of music do you five bond over the most?
Mikey: We don't know either of those bands, shit they're really great though! I love the reminder that you'll probably never know a million of the bands you should. We all listen to a lot of different stuff. We've got a big Venn diagram of music tastes. I feel there would be some stuff in Henry's circle that would scare me. Paris and Ethan once had a two hour argument because Paris said all her favorite songs were instrumentals. Sam loves dancing to Afrobeat and American Soul, but I've never seen Ethan dance ever. Actually when he's been drinking, he's kind of weirdly good at it. I think having our differences is a great thing and keeps us from accidentally sounding too derivative, which is easy when you're young and excited and get obsessed over music. But in saying that, there's heaps of music in the middle of the Venn diagram that we all bond over. I guess a good place to start would be all the early Flying Nun bands and The Velvet Underground. For some reason we once did a Velvet Underground cover set and I reckon it almost broke up the band. Everyone should do a cover set at least once, it's humbling.
What has the Love Banana journey been over the past few years? How has the band evolved from 2020's El Dood EP to where you are now?
Paris: We've had a way of slowly making it happen over the years. Recently, we've been working really hard and keeping up with playing live and meeting new bands. We're all best friends so the journey has been a lot of hanging out and living together and moving around. I think a big shift in LB has been really digging into the Dunedin sound and Flying Nun Records roster. Since then, I'd say we've come to an understanding on the kind of music we can relate ourselves to, since we've been confused by that for so long.
Henry: For a long time the band was just an extension of all this hanging out, naively piecing together hand me down instruments and messing around till something sounded alright. After we had heard bands from that scene, especially The Clean, It gave some context to the jangly guitars and old organ tones. This DIY mindset and realizing the quality of recording that we like, is actually pretty attainable has inspired the next leg of Love Banana. Nowadays we are trying to create as much as we can with a hand in every part of the process!
Yeah I've been really enjoying the new stuff! How do you feel looking back on your catalog? Do you still like or relate to your past releases?
Mikey: We wrote most of those songs as teenagers but were so unorganized that they didn't end up coming out until years later so we were releasing music we had already grown out of. I mean El Dood is just called that because it's Doodle backwards, so that's a good example of where our heads were at. I still love some of those songs, and it's not like we're that mature now either. I just think we've learnt how to channel that child-like energy that created our band into something more meaningful to us all.
Ethan: Listening to El Dood and Cat & Mouse is still nice, but definitely makes us all excited to show the new stuff we are constantly working on! Even though it is always a bit daunting releasing new music.
What was it like releasing last year's EP Cat & Mouse? Did those recordings help shape your forthcoming 7" single?
Ethan: I had started working out how to record and we were messing around with tape machines and old analog desks but not really getting the sound we were after. It wasn't until meeting Eli, who writes and records for Land Lords and Gardeners, that we really found what we were going for. Eli has such a unique and deceivingly simple approach to recording and he is a wizard in the mixing world. I think he has had a big hand in how the sound has evolved over the last few years.
Henry: A while after Cat & Mouse was out, Eli moved down the coast from Brisbane into a house with me, Paris, Ethan and his partner Eden. I think living together and being able to constantly bounce ideas off each other with no delay, really shaped the new songs. We had one of the rooms constantly set up to record and over the few months we had pieced together a lot of loose ideas and demos. With Eli there knowing the sound we wanted and knowing how to actually achieve it, we were able to get the songs ready to be mastered with so much ease. It was a great experience living together with the person producing the songs, it was almost like a five month long recording session. That was the same house that we had the art show in and it was in the middle of Palm Beach—somehow we never got a noise complaint. I think it had been known as a bit of a party house even before we moved in so we got lucky. But like all cool old houses on the Gold Coast, it is now a multi-story apartment building full of Airbnb's.
Paris: We were all really excited to release Cat & Mouse because they were the first songs we wrote together that felt like us. I think a huge part of why Cat & Mouse was so great is because it was Sam's debut into the band, and the percussion, spoken word and energy he brings completes the sound. That same feeling carries on with our new music!
Today we have the pleasure of premiering the music video for the single's second track "Get In." What can you say about that song and how the accompanying music video came together?
Mikey: I got obsessed with watching this British guy on YouTube who walks across Wales in a straight line, every time something good happens he says, "Get In." We started saying it so often, "Get In" became our new "Fuck Yeah." There's this live set of us on YouTube, shoutout Sarah Vision, where people in the comments thought we were British because of it.
Ethan: "Get In" just became a big joke. We got most of the structure during a jam, then figured it out the leads on a drum machine demo. The lyrics are whatever you want them to mean, listening back to the line, "move to the city, hit rock bottom" reminded of the time when a friend said, you don't have to be living somewhere cool to be doing something cool. Which is pretty relatable while living on the Gold Coast. But in reality, it's not about much at all.
Paris: We haven't filmed a music video in a long time so we kind of just hit record and decided to see what we could pull together. I think the split screen idea is funny because the song has very repetitive back-and-forth vocals. I also thought it could be funny to make it look like a dodgy karaoke movie that plays in a bowling alley or something with the bouncing ball. I spent a whole day in bed trying to figure out how to animate that too by the way, using an after effects free trial that I should probably cancel now.
What's the story behind the other single's two tracks, "Tummy" and "Puppet On A String"?
Henry: "Tummy" was a song I demoed acoustically a while ago. It took to bring it to the band to really give it some life! It's a lot faster than the demo and with everyone's little touches, it's grown into its own thing. To me it's about being able to stomach the consequences of our actions.
Ethan: "Puppet On A String" sort of came about randomly. It's a really simple structure that’s been used since the cavemen, but we all got together and added bits to make it sound and feel like us.
Mikey: Ethan's been playing "Puppet On A String" for ages and it became my favorite song ever. We had to convince him to put it out.
Paris, what was the inspiration behind the cover art? How did that come together?
Paris: The cover art came together using some pictures I took of everyone wearing a hat one weekend. I was also flicking through lots of old children's books at op shops around then and that art just came out of me, and everyone agreed with it.
How exciting is it to play these new songs live? What do you enjoy most from it?
Sam: Lately on stage, we've been feeling more comfortable with the authentic version of ourselves. It's been nice stepping out from behind that awkward and nervous facade. We're releasing and we've got so much room to do whatever we want.
Mikey: I love the new ones! We've been writing faster and punchier songs, I'd like to think our live set now compared to a couple years ago is dramatically better. The best part is making friends with the bands we play with. We're a pretty self-conscious bunch, so when someone who's music we love enjoys our set, it's a nice reminder that maybe we're not as bad as we once were.
Paris: I kind of shit myself playing live, my favorite part would have to be when I hit the explosion sound on my Casio-tone.
Ethan: I'm really liking how the set is sounding at the moment and we are all a bit more confident with the songs. I am more keen than ever to play and set up a show wherever we can find a PowerPoint.
Henry: I have been enjoying looking around and feeling grateful and surprised we all actually made it to the gig.
Aside from the new single, what else is on the horizon for Love Banana and the band's expanded universe?
Henry: Hopefully lots of touring! We had our first taste getting down to Sydney and we are really excited to take the Love Banana circus on the road. We have got a lot of demos recorded as well so there will definitely be some more music coming in the future! We keep meeting all these like-minded people doing cool things around Australia and the world. So we hope that Love Banana can be our vessel to keep making these connections and growing this awesome community of people enjoying art.
Ethan: We've been talking about going to Movie World together for years so it would be sick to finally get around to that.
Love Banana's self-titled 7" is out July 26th on Holiday Maker Records.