The Spitfires

Mon 1st Mar, 2010 in Features

The Spitfires’ Sean Regan is no stranger to controversy. Blessed with the gift of the gab—the man talks at well over 10,000 words an hour—and the relentless nasal drawl of a born Scouser, he takes to the role of British rocker like a fish to water. Catching up for a pint with FasterLouder’s Ben Watson at one of gentrified East Perth’s classy waterside establishments, he certainly did not hold back in his opinions on music, both home and abroad, and of course, about his band’s upcoming sophomore EP.

This is your second EP is that right?
“Yeah that’s correct. The first one Firestorm came out last year. It was cheap’n’cheerful, recorded and blasted out in a few days with our good mate Jerry. With this new EP we’ve decided to spend a lot longer workin’ on it. Approximately ten months, when I think about it. From start to finish it was ten months, but did have a nine month gap in the middle. …Jerry’s a British producer who’s come out here and they got a little home studio… Jericho Studios. We got it mastered at Abbey Road though. They’ve got an online deal going, and what with the piss poor strength of the English pound against the Australian dollar, it only worked out a little bit more expensive than our usual guy, who was busy. Otherwise we would have gone with the Perth guy, but Abbey Road… it’s okay.”

Absolutely, it’s a fine pedigree. Is there a difference in the way you approached this one conceptually when you were writing? The general idea…
“…We’ve tried to make it a bit less of a poppy… ugh, y’know it’s difficult. … We just tried to be a bit more ambitious with the songwriting and worked a bit more on the arrangements, while trying not to disappear too far up our own arses. And I think also with the themes and the lyrics we dealt with some even more uncomfortable issues.”

How do you actually go about songwriting? I’m assuming that you’re the main songwriter and you get the other guys to arrange…
“It’s kind of the opposite. We’re more of a band who has a bit of a jam together and we get a bit of an idea. A lot of the time Alex is the chief source of inspiration, he’ll give us a drumbeat that we’ve never really heard that much before. I can get a lot of inspiration off that. Skeletons was a really strange song to write, we literally had the name of the song and we sat there for months thinking ‘what the fuck does this sound like?’… I dunno, we jam a lot, and the lyrics are often the last things that happen. Vocals go down last. We try and arrange a bit of structure, cause the lyrics [should be set to] some alright music, and I find it easy to do it that way. We all work on a bit of a song and the lyrics may or may not be introduced before we start playing it live. We do a lot of improvised lyrics.”

Tell us about the launch: Who you’ve got playing, where it is, and all that kinda jazz.
“The smashin’ lads Project Mayhem are the big guns we’re bringin’ out to add a bit o’ ballast. And we’ve got FAIM Project as well, who are certainly makin’ a lot of noise themselves. They both cover the punk and the hard rock contingent. We’ve also found a new band, Silent Republic, who are a bunch of British lads. We’ve been rehearsing next to them for a few months now and quite like the sound of them. I thought they’d bring something a bit different to it, so rather than having a completely punk night it’s good to have a bit of Brit-rock on the bill as well, cause we’re a bit of a mix between punk and Brit-rock, so it’s gonna be good. And it’s gonna be at the Rocket Room, [which has] just been renovated, it’s kinda like our spiritual home I suppose. We can’t fill anywhere else (laughs). Although we’re trying for Capitol next.”

You’ve mentioned you’re looking into heading over east, perhaps, do you have any other plans? What do you want to achieve with this EP release?
“It’s hard to say, the EP release is there to give us a bit of traction and raise our profile to help us get some gigs over east. But we did it with the last launch, we got a massive load of publicity, everyone was like ‘oh great, Spitfires, wow!’, and then there’s not a lot we can really do with it while we’re still in Perth because we can’t hit the same market—I don’t wanna say ‘market’, I sound like a twat—[but] we can’t play the same shows to the same people week in week out. We have to go abroad, and the EP should give us something a bit more solid to tour off. Because [it has] slightly better production, hopefully the songs are smart enough to get your alternative radio interested because you can’t just have pop songs. A lot of the time they’re looking for something a little bit more. Y’know, I could happily write three minute punk songs till the cows come home, but I don’t think it’d really help us get out of Perth.”

The impression that I get is that it’s not a particularly good time for punky rock music, in a way. Would you agree with that?
“Well it’s definitely not a great label to have, it’s got a lot of stigma attached to it. And when I say ‘stigma’, I purely blame the likes of New Found Glory and Green Day for turning punk into some mass-produced commercial shite. It’s unfortunate really, cause punk to me is a really good DIY ethos; concentrating on writing enjoyable music and music for the people, not music like… Soundwave and all this fucking corporate shite. I mean, I remember watching a documentary recently called Punk’s Not Dead, and by the time it got to Green Day they had Green Day justifying how they were sponsored by K-Mart. But apparently that’s how they fight capitalism: [by] making a lot of money from capitalism. I thought: ‘y’know, this is really fucked’. Cause punk hasn’t put out any really good bands that have made it mainstream recently. I’m sure there’s a lot of underground ones that’d prove me wrong, but the mainstream perception of punk is Green Day. Which is shite. I hate Green Day, I can’t stand them. Their journey into politics is like me tryin’ to paint, which is crap. I can’t do it. Or Paul McCartney tryin’ to paint, in fact. It’s not what he can do.

Paul McCartney does paint doesn’t he?
“Well, yeah he does, but it’s like, not what he does. Green Day are a pop band who do it about skateboarding. Their attempts to do politics, it’s almost retarded and quite offensive. It’s like Bono, he’s a knob as well, but take [the microphone] away or else I’m gonna start ranting about Bono…”

So what acts do actually inspire you at the moment? Is there anyone around that you think is particularly good? Apart from yourselves orright!
“Oh well, obviously we think we’re good! We’re trying to pull off the arrogant rock star thing. Yeah, bands that we take inspiration off… I really like Glasvegas because they do an excellent mix. The lyrics are really gritty, and really great music, but it’s still pop and yeah, they’re a dark band. Definitely listen to Glasvegas. The Killers, funnily enough, I’m really impressed by them, and I like their attitude. I remember somebody read out a quote by Brandon Flowers from the newspaper, about how their aim was to knock everyone off the pedestals, and just hearing that said I said ‘well I know that’s gotta be Brandon Flowers…’. Cause it’s what we wanna do: We wanna get all the bands that are up there at the moment and knock them off their pedestals, cause they’re not good enough.

I’ve not been blown away at all by the Perth music scene. Triple J’s a pile of crap, y’know it’s like ‘oh, Wolfmother, great!’. ‘Let’s give AC/DC the best album award!’ If that’s the limit of Australian ambition—to give AC/DC the best album award at the ARIAs—it’s like, this is just crap. Just backslappin’. And everyone needs to get their heads out their arse and start workin’.

There’s a reason why the small venues are goin’ under, and that’s because I think a lot of us bands aren’t as good as we think we are and we’ve all gotta work a lot harder to justify having a live music scene. We’re not like the endangered turtle—nobody has to look after us. We’ve gotta actually really fuckin’ pull our weight and sort of, fuck off AC/DC. As much as I love AC/DC, it’s stupid. Like, you wouldn’t give The Rolling Stones like a ‘best album’—y’know, let them go on their big dinosaur rock tour as much as they like, it’s great, I’ll pay to see it, but it’s not the cutting edge.

Who’s the other twat? Empire Of The Sun. What the fuck’s that about? Some tit blasting out mediocre dance music while dressed as a big tart. I mean, let’s face it, if he didn’t have a really famous dad, would he be able to get away with doin’ that? If I walked out on stage dressed like Graham Norton’s nightmare, and blasted out that, y’know, fuckin’ everyone would tell me to fuck right off. And he was famous before he even did a gig! The Sleepy Jackson was alright I s’pose, but um… just, please, take [the microphone] away from me.”

Oh nah, it’s your interview mate, you’re the one who’s talking, I’m just I’m just prompting you…
“Just give me the rope and I’ll hang meself.”

That’s right. So, I mean, you’ve made some controversial observations of the Perth music scene before. How do you feel about things these days? Are you enjoying yourself a little bit more?
“Yeah, I should definitely clarify a bit: when I say ‘everyone’s crap except us’, y’know, not quite everybody. But (laughs)… [Project Mayhem] are orright too. Look, after I did the interview [in X-Press] where I called out the Perth bands for being shite, a lot of people actually came up to me, from around our level and said…they know what I mean. I’m not saying that the guys who are sluggin’ it out at our level are all a waste o’ space, cause I wouldn’t be able to find three bands to play on the same gig with [us] if I thought they were all a waste of space. None of the bands we’re playin’ with are a waste of space. There are good bands out there, but the so-called ‘cutting edge’ of the Perth music scene are just a bunch of has-beens. We’re ready to knock them off the pedestal. I think they play boring music, it’s generic, it’s nothing more than… they’re just coming to the whole dance rock party a bit late, or maybe they’ll play some avant garde shite that [is] mostly there to flatter the intelligence of their audience, who are a bunch of preening scenesters.

And that’s the reason the venues are half empty. What people really want is something enjoyable. And I still stand by every word I say: there’s no bands in Perth that are playing the bigger venues than [the ones we’re playing] that I think are better than us. I think there’s a lot of unsung heroes out there, like Mile End and Minute 36 who are genuinely good, and they’re not the guys I’m slaggin’ off. People who read this article know exactly what I’m talkin’ about, and I don’t think people are gonna mistake me for being an arrogant twat who’s just tryin’ to blow me own trumpet. I think there’s something really, really radically wrong with the Perth music scene. It’s just shit, it’s a joke. But we’re gonna change it.”

So what would you suggest? What do you think is a priority to change?
“I’d like to see a lot of people who aren’t in bands start engaging in the Perth music community, cause when people in bands start tryin’ to run things, think they have an opinion that they have better taste, and they’ll start putting ‘clever’ bands on, when it should be people from outside! Like get the uni students in, and they can start actually picking bands that sound good, not bands that we think deserve extra applause because they’ve played seven, eight times. That’s not what it should be. And if we did that, I’m sure things could change. We need more outsiders, and we just need to fuck off the current crop ‘cause they’re a buncha shite, and probably partly responsible for a lot of venues goin’ down the pan.

And the other thing is that bands need to realise that we’re there for the benefit of the audience. We gotta raise our game a lot and make it either entertaining or genuinely interesting, and not just use these things as a massive ego trip, or an opportunity for self-indulgence. There’s a lot of bands out there with side projects that shouldn’t really fuckin’ be on stage, yet they seem to think ‘well, we deserve a headline show at the Amplifier because our regular band’s good enough’. And it’s like ‘fuck off, lads, you’re not good enough. You’ve got a hobby band, go keep it in your bedroom’. Leave the venues for the serious musicians who are out there to entertain the crowds.”

Is there anything else that you would like to add for the benefit of the FasterLouder audience worldwide?
“I’d like to say thank you (laughs)… When we first started out, a lot of people intimidated us and tried to put us off joining in the music scene because we weren’t hardcore musos, but we’ve got very far considering we’re not that great at our instruments. So maybe more people out there should pick up the instruments and go for it, rather than bein’ put off by a bunch of pretentious wankers with nice haircuts. Like me.”

The Dead? Good! EP launch is on the 5th March at Rocket Room