Ahead of their first ever Scottish tour, I met up with Sophie and Annabel from Australian Girl band, Body Type for a quick chat – here’s what they had to say!
First of all congratulations on the release of your second EP, I bet it’s totally overwhelming!
Annabel: It feels invisible right now, I guess we’ve been so swept up on the tour but I feel we will get more of a sense of it when we perform it.
Sophie: Actually this is our very first headline show since the EP release so that’s exciting!
What is your favourite song from the new EP?
A: That’s a hard question… ah probably Stingray because of it’s different sections.
S: It’s very hard to pick, I was almost going to say Stingray but Annabel has already said that so I’ll say Uma cause I think that it similarly displays a kind of different side to us and it shows how we kind of go through peaks and troughs throughout our different songs like it punches in with the chorus and I think Georgia is a total poet as well so I like the lyrics!
So how’s the UK tour going so far?
S: so we started off in Leeds on the weekend for a festival called Live at Leeds then we played a show in Newcastle the following night and it’s just been unreal. It’s been so much fun! I think the biggest stand out to me is the people engaging with bands they don’t know. We’ve actually had people in the rooms who had no idea who we were but were just kinda giving it a punch and came up to us afterwards saying that they’ve never heard of us but they loved it!
I think that’s the best way to discover music nowadays, nothing better than going out to a bar and discovering a band is playing that night and I’ve actually found so many bands that I love just by doing that. How you say the UK tour is going so far Annabel?
A: It’s good I feel we are warming up to it!
So how many for gigs have you go, you’ve done Leeds and Newcastle?
A: we’ve got about 13 more shows to do I think. We are playing four shows at the Great Escape so I’m separating them all out. We’ve only done two.
I seen you’ve also organised a home coming tour in Australia!
S: Yes! Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane …
What a great end to a tour that will be!
A: Yeah definitely!
What can we expect from the gig tonight?
S: Well as I mentioned this will be the first headline show since the Eps come out, we were just playing 30 minute sets at the festival but tonight we are doing a full hour so we are going to play everything!
A: EP’s back to back
S: It’s fun when you have an hour cause you know things can get a bit weird and you can take your time more so.
Yeah it’s great when you have the time to relax and enjoy it rather than rushing the set!
S: Exactly … everyone can expect everything!
A: yeah cause usually we go from a bangers set where it’s 90% adrenaline and ten of rest but if it’s a short set I think we can be a bit more greedy with that and exhaust people! Tonight is going to be sculpted!
Who would you say are your main influences in music?
S: I’m going to say each other because I think we all have quite varied musical upbringing and tastes that have evolved through playing and I think we each bring a really different sound to the table and that’s kinda how Body Type songs are formed.
A: Yeah I agree with that and we can reference heaps of other people where we could borrow something from them but I feel like most of the time we direct ourselves.
Yeah sometimes it’s good not to compare yourselves to other people and just focus on your sound. Your music is very different to anything I have heard before – I love the uniqueness!
So how would you compare the music industry in Sydney to the UK? You mentioned before the interview how there’s a problem in Sydney at the moment with pubs shutting early therefore preventing a lot of live music.
S: Yeah this is a conversation that could go on for so long cause it’s so annoying but essentially the government installed these set of laws which is referred to as the ‘Lock out Laws’ where venues have to close their doors after a certain time and essentially a lot of bars that were sustaining themselves with live music or the opposite sustaining themselves with bars – drinking etc have to close their doors because there were no patriots coming through and therefore bands have far less places to play.
A: And the party district has basically shut down – Kings Cross was famous for it’s nightlife but also you know infamous but now it’s pretty much a dead zone and it feels like that’s more dangerous in a way cause it’s so desolate.
Yeah especially if they set those laws to prevent that sort of thing!
S: Exactly, it’s just like killing super culture!
A: yeah it’s hard to know the right way to promote a healthy night life – it’s really unfortunate that some of our favourite venues have had to close down.
S: Although in saying that there are still so many incredible bands and so many amazing artists that are trying to counter that. You can still find a lot of cool stuff to do most weekends it’s just you can’t just walk down the street and pop into a venue to see who’s playing. You have to be more careful.
What would you say about Australia’s music industry as a whole?
S: In terms of ways to access music on radio stations, we essentially have one national radio broadcast which is Triple J. All the amazing community radio stations in every capital city and all in regional as well but their business share is far smaller than Triple J. They are the hype machine – if you don’t get played on Triple J, it’s really hard to get a break. Basically, it’s more difficult to find new music but people are still looking for it for sure.
So we recently interviewed The DMA’s when they last played in Scotland – they played in Glasgow and then more recently in Aberdeen …
S: We love DMAs and Annabel’s ancestors have a castle in Aberdeen
A: yeah Drum Castle apparently belonged to my family
S: Royal blood … she’s our little princess.
Has their success in the UK effected the popularity of other Aussie Bands?
S: That’s a really good question!
A: I feel they have shifted to a more UK based life
S: It’s hard cause we’re on the flip side in Australia so we can’t really feel the hype - Surely!
A: There’s so many good Australian bands going around the world right now like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are one of our favourite bands and I think they’ve done so much stuff internationally but they also still feel very much like a local band, a local Australian band where as I don’t know if DMA’s do
S: Although, they still do so well in Australia too. I would love to hope that the UK would be like cool let’s check out where they are from!
Who’s your favourite Scottish Bands at the moment?
S: so I was trying to read who was historical Scottish .. I know that Primal Scream are from the Glasgow area and Elizabeth Fraser from Grangemouth and The Jesus and Mary Chain – Who would you recommend?
Ohh there’s so many! Right now I’m loving Neon Waltz and The Nickajack Men – I recommend you check them out….
So my favourite song of yours is Free to Air – what was the influence behind the lyrics?
S: Annabel wrote that one …
A: so we all lived in this kind of townhouse together about two years ago and it was a bit claustrophobic and you were lined up against these other houses and everything was just so squashed in like I’d overhear people’s conversations in the courtyard outside my window all the time and you know this one time, these people were up to 3am talking about whatever sexual kinks they are into so I was sitting listening to them for about an hour and then I got up and was like please be quiet haha… anyway so there was a man who lived directly from my bedroom window and I could kinda see what he was doing all the time and it was quite intrusive cause he just had no volume control and I’d just be trying to write music in my room or relax after work and he’d be there terrorising my silence.
S: Well I’m glad that he did
Me too … I was listening to it on the way to work earlier and it’s just one of those songs that kinda make you – without sounding too cheesy – get lost in it. I kinda forgot I was listening to it cause it totally made my mind drift – It was weird – I get too deep about music haha.
A: Well I didn’t really have much faith in it – I thought it was a bit of a joke because of the influence.
What is the most bizarre thing to happen to you on stage?
A: We crowdsurfed once … does that count?
S: That was on stage but it wasn’t during our set – so we were supporting Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever on their Australian tour and at the end of their set we ran out and sang their last song with them and their drummer, Marcel always crowdsurfs but we were all a bit scared too but he was like ‘Go Go Go’ and all the crowd suddenly put their hands up and just wanted us to do it and all of us went out there and it was the funniest thing ever – if anyone reading this gets the chance to Crowd surf … do it!
My last question …. What’s next for Body Type? I know you said earlier you were doing the Australian tour … after the UK tour, are you going straight back?
S: yeah and then we’ve started formulating our debut album – yeah so we are going to spend some time writing and then we’ll be recording and then yeah get that on the way.
A: We’re very excited to start that again …. It’s been three months since we’ve properly had a chance to do anything
S: and hopefully the UK likes us enough to want us to come back really soon because we love it here!
Links
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/album/6cIK2aa71uPxnZLMadgJqR?si=mh2ypqBYS0mb3jswYLSOmA
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/bodytypeband/
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