Mercy Arms are not like the others. Mercy Arms are not all the same. Mercy Arms are the sort of band who could, with their debut album, create something that is so stunningly good that it blows away all the pretenders and declares themselves contenders to be one of the most exciting Australian bands to appear in the early stages of this new millennium.

As a band, the Sydney four-piece have it in them to create something beautiful, something that is both propulsive and rhythmically driven, yet is filled with shining melodies and swathes of sonic tomfoolery at the same time. Frontman Thom Moore is the yin to guitarist Kirin J. Callinan’s yang, the purity of Thom’s voice balanced by the scattergun guitar sounds that Kirin pulls out of his seemingly innocent guitar.

“You might be surprised who’s playing what,” says Thom of the duo’s interweaving guitar parts. “Some times people think I’m playing and it’s Kirin; sometimes they think it’s Kirin and it’s me. There’s a thin line between what’s rhythm and what’s lead.”

Having been together for around two and a half years, it took Mercy Arms some time to release their debut EP, Kept Low. It ended up being released independently after a wave of hype saw them signed internationally to Capitol – and then saw them released from their contract having not even recorded a note. But where some bands would be waylaid by such a setback, Mercy Arms took it in their stride. It’s no wonder: together as one, the songwriting duo of Thom and Kirin is capable of golden nuggets of songwriting.

“It’s changed a lot,” he says of their relationship together. “Our first rehearsals were really good – as soon as we got Jules [bassist] in and the three of us sat down and played a couple of songs I’d written and it WORKED. Kirin’s really good at realising things in his playing style, and making it into something else. Even if it’s a simple melody he can take it and pilfer it and start it up again.”

People have oft cited My Bloody Valentine and Kevin Shields as a reference point for his guitar style, which is something that riles Thom to some degree, as he declares that that particular influence must be subconscious if it is so, as Kirin instead looks to a different English guitar hero as an idol. “He likes MBV,” he says, “but as a guitar player his favourite guitar player is Johnny Marr, but he doesn’t play at all like that.”

Having had their international plans scuttled by what Thom describes as ‘a blue’ (read: internal band friction that he swears isn’t even bear talking about) involving the band making plans as a group and then not fulfilling them, the band are instead focussed on recorded a debut album. There’s definitely a sense of frustration in the angry young man with the chiselled cheek bones, but Thom is keen to not dwell on the past but instead look forward to recording their debut album in late 2007, early 2008.

“I can’t disclose any of that information,” he says when pressed up the who what where and when, save to say that the band won’t be dredging through any of the old material from Kept Low. It’s surprising, to some extent, given that at least 4 of the songs on the 5 track EP are bona fide corkers, and perhaps deserve to be revisited and further explored.

“I’ve been writing consistently since then,” he says of the songs that initially appeared on the band’s My Space before being released on their debut EP, “and I don’t think it’s that different but it’s also not the same at all. I write the songs at home on a 16 track and then generally Kirin adds his thing or takes a part of the song I’ve written and makes it something else. I write different songs at home now to what I did six months ago, but I generally make a CD and everyone listens to it.

“I don’t get protective of it,” he says of the raw demos, “because what can suck is when you really love a song and then the band will be like ‘no, this isn’t the direction we want to go in or what we want to do’. Most of the time it’s pretty seamless – there’s always songs that everyone agrees they want to work on and try to make them far better than they ever were before.”

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