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]

10 QUESTIONS WITH CRAYON FIELDS

Geoff O'Connor is the frontman in two excellent bands: Crayon Fields and Sly Hats. In almost every article written about him he is described as a "myopic boy genius", which is an unbelievably retardedly annoying description. Anyway, Geoff rules. We asked him 10 questions:

1. What's your thing?
Music.

2. Where do you see your thing in five years?
Hopefully in films.

3. When you're feeling playfully sophisticated yet nonchalant, do you put on a Crayon Fields album?
Definitely. You’d be a playfully sophisticated yet nonchalant fool not to.

4. Where were you specifically and what were you doing when Princess Diana died?
Never happened.

5. You're in two bands and you write all the songs for both of them. Do you ever feel like telling the other guys/girl to pull their weight?
Not really. I write the songs and then expect the others to come over and make them sound beautiful… and then they have drive me around to shows. I’m the slacker, really.

6. You're a really nice dude. When was the last time you lost it at someone, and why?
I spit and swear at my computer every day. My computer politely deals with so much human rage that it deserves to be declared legally alive, if that’s a good thing.

7. What don't you know?
I don’t know how to operate Paint Shop Pro.

8. What do you think about mainstream pop music these days? A lot of people think there's no one writing songs as good as Belinda Carlisle's "Leave a Light On" or Kim Wilde's "Kids In America", for example. Do you agree?
Yep! Though I only hear contemporary hits in taxis really, so it is hard to judge. That’s the thing with taxis, I guess, you get kicked out just as you're starting to get into it. I love “Leave A Light On” so much.

9. What's your favourite Australian album so far this year?
I love Guy Blackman’s Adult Baby even though I’ve heard it enough to be completely sick of it.

10. Give us 100 words of creative writing.
Without so much as glancing at her, Geoff finally whispered “Sure, you have 2 drinks to seduce me. You can fetch them.” Ingrid fumbled with her wallet, still unable to explain to herself why she was so drawn to the stranger. She could not even find enough to afford a drink for herself. How could the Queen of Sweden be left with only 3 gold coins? By tomorrow she could have the bar, even the whole street papered with Kroner. Frozen with desire, she tried desperately to imagine all the tennis players, actors and ballet dancers she’d made so jealous over the years but none could distract her. “Call the chauffeur…” she urged herself. “Leave while you can…"

[Crayon Fields MySpace]

[Mirror Ball 7” available Dec. ’08 on Chapter Records]

10 QUESTIONS WITH SPOD

SPOD is a handsome gent from Sydney who makes excellent and hilarious electro rock jams. Recently, we asked him some questions. THESE ARE HIS ANSWERS.

1. What's your thing?
Every is my thing for things are everything!

2. Where do you see your thing in five years?
Everywhere.

3. Has there ever been any awkwardness with any of your backing dancers?
Asides from which tequila to drink, it's all been pretty rosy!

4. Where were you specifically and what were you doing when Princess Diana died?
Burritoing in a bus stop.

5. There's a song on Superfrenz called 'Blubberponies'. Please describe a blubberpony in as much detail as possible.

6. Your first album, Taste The Radness, had an ode to your hometown Ashfield called '2131 Ride Wit Me'. If you went back to Ashfield now would your old homies still hang with you?
My crew has totally defected! 100%! So I'd just be going back to the Police Boys Gym class alone... Oh, the painful tears of solo wrestling.

7. How are you, anyway? You don't call, you don't write?
I'm very well! Relaxing for the first time in forever! It's nice!! Super Nice!!!!! About to dive back into things, but for now, I've discovered doing nothing is everything!!

8. After you finished recording your second album your hard drive got busted and you lost all your songs. How do you feel about technology these days?
Well, the drive I replaced it with is dead now too. I'm cursed. But I now know the power of a backup. Technology is a crutch, an amazing crutch for now, but it will be the downfall of mankind as it elevates us towards an unattainable nirvana. I love it, I hate it, but without it who knows where or what I'd be. But humans are technology, so we're our own poison well.

9. What's your favourite Australian album so far this year?
Asides from Superfrenz? Pivot's O Soundtrack My Heart.

10. Give us 100 words of creative writing.
John was sore, physically and emotionally, from the previous night's proceedings. He didn't foresee the impact his speech would have on the unsuspecting patrons, and as such, his own destiny, but as he forged through his corrupting words, he realised the true power of human speech. Contemplating the absurdity of the abstract idea of sounds shaped from wind and meat forming into other words in humans ears, destroying his life, and tolling his demise. As he caught the teary eye of Sarah Patrick, the daughter of his stepfather and the woman he truly loved, he understood his remaining days were scarce.

[Spod MySpace]

[Buy Superfrenz from Valve Records]