10 Questions: NO THROUGH ROAD

No Through Road, from Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, recently released their fourth album, Winner. Perhaps moreso than any other album released this year, Winner. can best be described as "boss". Fuck, BBC Radio One's Steve Lamacq made opening track Berlin Wall one of his tracks of the month, and since he's the BBC's go-to old guy since John Peel died, I guess that's a big fucking deal. I emailed NTR frontman Matt Banham some questions, he emailed me his responses. Enjoy.



1. What's your thing?
If I had to choose one thing to do for the rest of my life it would probably involve a lot of lying around in a half awake/half asleep state. I hate actually going to sleep cause I feel like I’m wasting time, but then I seem to just spend that time not sleeping doing completely pointless things that are of no use to me. My dreams are pretty entertaining a lot of the time. I had this dream the other day where one of my friends just started wearing an enormous pirate earring. He looked ridiculous! I told him so and he thought I was being stupid. Shows what he knows!!

2. Where do you see your thing in five years?
Well, if I finally get punched by someone for being a jerk then maybe I'll be in a coma having awesome dreams about my friends wearing ridiculous items. More likely I'll still be pretending to be a musician in some bar full of jerks. How boring!

3. Basically everything that’s ever been written about Winner. references 90s indie rock in one way or another. If the 90s were so good, why didn’t you marry them?
Can’t you hear the broken-hearted lyrics?! I asked ‘em to marry me and they turned me down. The 80s kept saying I could marry them but the 80s get around a bit too much for my liking. Why buy the decade when you can get the stupid clothes for free?

4. People are always talking about how Perth’s ‘the most isolated city in the world’, but when it comes to music, Adelaide’s actually kind of more isolated because the Adelaide scene isn’t constantly having smoke blown up its arse. Would you agree with this statement?
True dat! Perth music gets all this money from the government. They have the WAMI's. We get nothing! Where the hell are my awards?! I should be covered in trophies by now. I would use the biggest ones for my soups and the medium-sized ones for my bed pan. Do you think I could win a WAMI somehow?

5. Where were you specifically and what were you doing when Princess Diana died?
OK, this is true. My Mum had put all the washing in a huge pile in the middle of the lounge room and I was trying to find a pair of jocks amongst it to wear. My sister came into the room as I was searching through the pile and said "Princess Diana just died". I didn’t believe her and was very happy to find my fave pair of undies. Turns out she was telling the truth and I had a fresh pairs of jocks on. Swings and roundabouts, y’know.

6. This is a fun record to listen to. Where do you stand on fun?
Fun is all well and good. I’m glad people have fun listening to this record. That’s the thing about drums. Drums make things more fun. Especially if they get played fast. Slow drums = sad, Fast drums = fun! People should remember that formula when they are trying to write music.

7. What don't you know?
I don’t know why people like the Matrix movies. Sure, sure, it was great they were filmed in Australia, it’s good for the farmers, but seriously – how could that movie blow anyone’s mind? I know I’m probably complaining about this years after the fact and I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I heard people talking about it on the bus this morning and I wanted to slap them.

8. Winner. took three years to make. What’s the number one thing you learned while making it?
That making 'proper' albums takes FOREVER! Next one we’re gonna do home style and it will probably take us 6 years. Win win!

9. What's your favourite Australian album so far this year?
It would be a close tie between the Mum Smokes double album and the new Wagons record. I’ve bought more Australian albums this year than ever before. Not really sure why, just kind of enjoying stuff from here more so than overseas at the moment. Maybe it’s because I hated the last Weezer album so much that I had to avoid the rest of the world for a while. I just got the Jack Ladder album the other day. 15 bucks! Bargain!

10. Give us 100 words of creative writing.
Tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis tennis. Golf.

[No Through Road MySpace / Twitter / Facebook]

[Buy Winner. from Low Transit Industries]