Boys Boys Boys!

Fri 25th Sep, 2009 in Features

Power Pop pranksters Boys Boys Boys! first burst from a burger bar some two years back, and have been captivating crowds ever since with their idiosyncratic musical stylings. Erstwhile Boys Dan and Alwyn filled us in on the bands origins, influences, and the current state of play.

How exactly did the Boys form?

Dan: “Well, most of the girls worked – and I worked – at Retro Betty’s in Leederville together. And when we were all leaving, we wanted to figure out a way to…”

Alwyn: ”(interrupting) They needed an excuse to keep hanging out together, which was to start a band, because they liked singing when they were working there. I don’t know if Dan really enjoyed singing behind the counter when he was working there…”

D: “Oh God no. I don’t know how that happened. It was stupid because, at Retro Betty’s, we kept getting our friends in to work, and they were all in bands, and sometimes on a Saturday night five people couldn’t work because they all had gigs. That was back in 04, 05. We properly formed in 07.”

A: “We started playing together in 2007, writing and rehearsing and stuff. Dan, myself and Bridget were in a band before that, so we had that connection.”

How would you describe your sound?

D: “Definitely pop.”

A: “Yeah, pop.”

D: “It’s very simple.”

A: “Yeah, pretty much. It’s kind of rocky, upbeat, with a touch of… Steps? Maybe not something as lame as Steps?”

D: “We just want to make people jump around. We want to make people have fun. We want to write music that makes us laugh.”

A: “We try to write party dance music. When we’re writing, we try to cover a broad spectrum from really silly, two minute, short, sharp dance things, to…”

D: “It’s gotta have good guitar.”

A: “It’s always gotta have good guitar. But it’s all about being hooky, being melodic, and being something you can dance to.”

Who are your key musical influences?

D: “Le Tigre?”

A: “Yeah, Le Tigre, CSS, B-52s. I don’t know if they’re direct influences though, or if we just wound up sounding like them.”

D: “Definitely CSS and Le Tigre. And a little bit of surf rock.”

A: “My influences are like Led Zeppelin, Queen, OMD. And there’s really embarrassing nineties girl pop stuff, like real McCoy…”

D: “Melissa? Remember “Read My Lips”?”

A: ” In terms of music we’ve all got different influences. And then vocally, the girls are drawing on those classic pops like Kylie, Madonna…”

D: ” We do all have brutally different tastes in music. It’s a melting pot.”

A: “Yeah, if you got all those different influences in a room, it’d be like one big WWF rumble.”

D: “Sometimes we really argue about what our music should be, but it all gets resolved in the end.”

A: “In the end, we’re all pretty conscious of making sure it works together. We all want to bring our own thing to the table, but at the same time you’ve gotta make sure you’re not putting too much in to make it too busy.”

D: ” We always argue, but we always end up in bed.”

A: (laughs)

D: “Well, we do. Musically.”

A: “Yeah, musically in bed.”

Who are your favourite bands to play with?

A: “I’m gonna say Voltaire Twins.”

D: “Abbe May is definitely my number one favourite at the moment.”

A: “Sugar Army are really good.”

D: * Who do we have the most fun with?*

A: “Voltaire Twins are always fun. They’re similar to us, in that they’re kind of dancey, their aim is to get people dancing. While the music if different, the ethos behind the music is the same.”

A: “They’re lots of good bands in Perth, but we don’t always play with them.”

D: “We kind of get shoehorned.”

A: “Because of our music we get pinned as a pop band, or an electro band, but it all depends on the angle people are taking. We played Summadayze last year, because people thought we were an electro band.”

D: “They thought we were a dance/techno band, or just a dance band I guess.”

A: “Which we are, but we’re not an electro band so much. We have a lot of influences, and we don’t fit easily on most bills.”

What’s your typical song writing process like?

A: “Bridgette comes up with… I guess all our songs grow up around a kernel, which Bridgette will bring to rehearsal. We just kind of flesh it out without making it too busy. With six of us, it’s hard not to make it too busy. Sometimes you do want that massiveness. Something like “Mountains” for example, you have lots of instruments going and it works really well. Other things, like “Spando Budgie” or “Ticky Ticky Boom”, it works because they’re so simple and so catchy, and the moment you start adding too many layers it loses that catchiness.”

D: “We’re always trying to pare it down to the best bits.”

A: “That’s the hardest part in the song writing, trying to make sure we don’t lose what makes a good song in that process.”

A: “When Bridgette writes songs, sometimes they’re really crazy, like songs about prawns, so we’re always trying to straddle the line between ridiculous and amazing, trying to stay in the middle. So it doesn’t go too bizarre or too serious. We want to be fun, but we don’t want to be a novelty act.”

And finally, apropos of nothing, if you could play with any band, living or dead, who would it be?

A: ” I’m gonna go with Queen.”

D: “Damn, that is a rough question…. probably Real McCoy?”

A: “MC Hammer.”

D: “I dunno, I’d feel overshadowed by those pants.”

A: “2 Unlimited?”

D: “Real McCoy are better than 2 Unlimited, man.”

A: “Jimi Hendrix”

D: “Television.”

A: “Television! Fuck yeah!”

D: “They would totally hate us, though.”

A: “Talking Heads. I’d love to play with Talking Heads. That’d be really cool.”

Presented by Fasterlouder, Boys Boys Boys! will be touring the southwest with Russian Winters next month starting with an all ages gig at the Vault on October 1st, Mandurah on the 9th and Margaret River on 10th.

Watch this space for gunslinger’s chat with Russian Winters…