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We are watching the rise of Tube Alloys in real-time. The Los Angeles post-punks thrash through colossal tales of online dating and missing prime ministers on their debut LP Magnetic Point, which came out last year on Urge Records (R.M.F.C., Carnations, Optic Nerve). But beneath the dark veneer is a sense of humor and an unorthodox charm that's in the similar sardonic vein of Magazine, Wire, and Swell Maps. Following a strong set at U3 Fest, I sat backstage with guitarist-vocalist Jai Love and bassist Wes Turner to learn more about the maintenance of their living archive and the release of their new double A-side single Evil Angels / Lizard Kingdom.
At this point, you've been on tour for two weeks. What is your favorite place you've been to?
Jai Love: Oh, Memphis by far. We played Gonerfest and then we played this Gonerfest afterparty at a spot called the Hi-Tone that was really good. It was definitely one of the best gigs we've ever played.
Wes Turner: Good after hours, just rockin' and getting crazy.
So you came from out west and now you're moving east?
WT: Yeah, we flew to Nashville and then started there and now we're working our way back east.
JL: We played L.A. and Oakland with the other Aussies. We're based in L.A., but I'm from Wollongong, Australia, which is like an hour and a half south of Sydney. I grew up with a lot of those guys that we're on tour with. And Alan [Gojak], who plays in R.M.F.C., we run a record label called Urge Records together.
So then when did you come to the states and how did Tube Alloys get started?
JL: I moved to Los Angeles five years ago and Wes, Eric, and I were playing in another friend's group. I had all these songs from back home. There was another version of this that I was going to try to do back in Australia. And then, when I moved here, I showed them. It was very skeleton stuff. We recorded our record during the pandemic. The lockdown happened and for us, it was kind of a crazy thing. I mean it was crazy for everyone but we had so much time to work on this record that we just kind of spent most of our time on it.
WT: We had our little COVID bubble with our band in the practice space. There was no one else in there so we were able to record everything in the rehearsal space.
JL: And then our friend Colin Knight and I mixed it and our other friend Kern [Haug] mastered it.
So you had a lot of those songs on Magnetic Point pre-skeletonized but what's your process now when writing new music?
JL: Wes has a tendency to demo entire songs, which is very sick. It works really well. He'll bring in a song, or, I'll bring in a song, and then we work it out with our drummer Eric [Loftis].
WT: We just kind of jam on it until we find some structure. A lot of it's bringing in riffs and then working it out.
JL: And I spend a lot of time writing the words. We will end up usually making a demo in the space. And then, I'll take it home and record, dummy vocal tracks or something and just write every day, working out all these different words. That's my favorite part.
Speaking of new music, you have a new 7" out for the tour. Tell me about these two new songs.
JL: Both of those songs were recorded at the same time we did our first record. And they were originally going to be on the record but we just had too many songs. We were actually gonna do a split 7" with Dead Finks, who you also interviewed, my dear friends. That ended up not happening, so we were just like, oh, we should just do our own single with both of these songs. We were talking about like just sort of sprinkling them into different things. Maybe it would go in a compilation, maybe it would go on a 7" or something. We had these B-side's, we were calling them. And then this opportunity came up to do this tour, so we were like this is a good time to release it.
WT: "Evil Angels" was a song I think I pretty much had the main part demoed out. And then Jai wrote all the lyrics and everything. "Lizard Kingdom" was sorta a jam that Eric and Jai were doing together.
JL: That's actually a funny story. I was like, Eric, can you play this beat? And it was this sort of Country Teasers/The Fall kind of beat. And I was like, just play that over and over again, and I'm just gonna play guitar. There was no song, essentially. I ended up taking the beat and kind of chopping it up and stuff, and then, writing a whole song over it at home, and then Wes added his bass and stuff. It turned into that song. I quite like it. I think it's one of my favorite songs we've got. It's extremely hard to play live, though, because of the structure, there was no structure.
JL: We never wrote a structure, the changes are very random.
The sample at the beginning. Is that "Da Da Da" by Trio or am I going crazy?
JL: I'm not gonna tell all of our secrets, but it is a machine that I own. I love a lot of that stuff,
They probably were using the exact same piece of gear, literally the exact same piece of equipment cause there are not many things that have that drum. If you do some digging, you can find out definitely what it is.
WT: That'll be an Easter egg for the heads.
JL: For the Tube heads!
The cover art for the new 7-inch, I saw is by a friend back in Australia?
JL: Yeah a mate of mine named Nick Santoro. He's a kind of amazing visual artist. I come from this little beach town in New South Wales. And we just grew up, playing music and skateboarding together. He now is doing a lot of amazing art stuff. I've kind of got a rotation of visual artists that I'd like to use for different Tube Alloys stuff and he's always been there. So I was really stoked that he was happy to lend it to us for this single.
You guys just played your 39th show at U3 Fest, what are you going to do for your 50th?
JL: 50th will be probably in Los Angeles, we don't really know. I'm kind of a fanatic. I archive a lot of stuff and I collect a lot of things. I've kind of been treating the band in a similar way in that I record every single show that we play. It's all designed to someday make something that people who care about the music can go to and feel the same way that I felt about bands that I really love. Sometimes it feels self-important or something, but previously in all bands, I wish I would have done that.
I think it's really cool, and you can add this to it! So you said you're enjoying festival life?
JL: Yeah, I mean this is very different to other shows we've played. Going across America is really surreal for me because of how I grew up. My dad is from America and my mum is from Australia. That's how I'm able to live here. Touring America was always something I thought was a big deal because of my family here and all this other stuff. But it is kind of interesting how hard it is. It's not easy on the body and the food is scary. And you play and play. Last night we played in this cigarette bar in Pittsburgh. Everybody's like smoking inside.
That's rare in America.
WT: Yeah, I think it's a novelty.
JL: Smoking inside in Europe, there's like windows and stuff. This place, it was like...
WT: A shotgun, no windows, a shotgun hallway. We had to take breaks.
JL: We were coughing up stuff all day today, I barely slept.
What is next for Tube Alloys? Going back to the studio?
JL: Yeah, we're making another record. We've started it, but there's a lot more to do.
WT: We've got the groundwork for a lot of stuff, but we need to get back in and really do the work.
JL: We are taking our time with it. We want it to be good. I feel like there's a lot of music now where people don't take a lot of time. I think it's hard now. We're definitely outside of scenes sometimes.
WT: I mean, we're definitely a band that does many different things, which is hard to categorize. It sometimes can be like a little bit of a whiplash for people, especially when we're playing on shows where it's just like a hardcore band or a punk band.
JL: Which I understand, like there's been times in my life where I was like, I'm a hardcore punker, that's all I'm into. But eventually, you branch out. And I think that for us it's tough in LA because it's kind of hard to find where we fit in. But it's interesting because of that too, in the same sentence. I do really like living there. I really like playing there. But it's also weird, people have no idea where the fuck we're from half the time, because I'm from Australia, these guys are from Texas, and, you know, we play this kind of music that is not super geographically specific, but for me, it was so much about being connected to home.
Do you have any final words for our readers? What should they know?
JL: Buy the records, collect the records, become a head. It's tough out here making music as a job. People should buy more records because the digital stuff and the streaming stuff is not lucrative.
WT: It's hard. I feel like the people want you to release music constantly and we just can't do that. We want to put care into it. So, you know, releasing an album every six months is hard.
JL: Here's my final thought: I would say that if you like a band, buy their fucking record.
Evil Angels / Lizard Kingdom is out now on La Vida Es Un Mus Discos.