Operator Please

Fri 29th Oct, 2010 in Features

They might have first appeared as a gang of kids invading our radios with catchy tunes about ping pong, but a few years – and lineup changes – later Operator Please have proven that they’re no under aged novelty.

As the band’s singer Amandah Wilkinson and keyboardist Chris Holland told FasterLouder: “We look at Gloves as being an extra step up in the grand scheme of things. In terms of instrumentation – Gloves has a lot more space in it and instruments weave in and out. Yes Yes Vindictive – was layers.”

The festival veterans have played at Good Vibrations, Big Day Out, Reading and Leeds Festivals, Splendour in the Grass, Homebake, Falls and Glastonbury among many others and will return to Canberra this for the first time since 2008 to play a headlining set at Stonefest this weekend.

Your headline shows in June were your first Aussie headline shows since September 2008 – why such a long gap?
Following those shows in 2008, we spent quite a few months touring throughout Europe, UK and Japan and then rest of the year saw us playing small festivals and shows around Australia. We also spent a good part of 2009 writing and recording our new album Gloves which was something that we took our time on because we didn’t want our second album to be a compromised by time or effort.

How does the current lineup of the band compare to earlier lineups – have you got the right ‘match’ now?
I think we do. Everybody that is in the band at the moment feels like they’ve been in the band from the very beginning. But who’s to say that things won’t change. You never know, because we started the band when we were so young, people grow and change, you never know what could happen – but right now yes we “match.”

As one of the very few pop bands with a violin in the lineup do you ever get caught thinking about adding huge string sections to your songs?
On this album, Taylor has started to use a loop pedal, which enables her to layer and build chords while playing live which provides a great texture to the live sound. Strings however are a fine line to tread, so I cannot see any huge string sections going into our songs for the moment, but who knows? If it sounded right in a new song and felt like it was necessary than sure. It’s all about doing what is right for the songs, what feels right.

Tim Commandeur and Taylor Henderson quit school to stick with the band – were there every any regrets about doing that?
School was always something that they could go back to whereas the opportunities that they were able to undertake were not so. Taylor tried schooling by correspondence for a while, but it proved to be quite tough on the road – having said that if either of them wanted to actually finish schooling then that is a decision they would need to make and we are all fully supportive of – it can always be done in some spare down time but it’s not something I think they regret.

Is backstage more fun now that you’re all overage?
Definitely! In Europe & UK it was never really an issue, Europe their laws are very different from here. You can drink over there and are allowed in bars/areas that would be restricted here at the age of 16. Having said that, it’s always fun to have a few drinks after the show backstage, especially at festivals which is always a great chance to catch up with other bands/friends that are playing.

You’ve been playing Song about Ping Pong live much differently to the album version – how do you feel about the first record now? How does it compare to Gloves?
I think it’s important to keep things fresh and change this that you’ve been doing the same for years. We are actually playing the “Kissy Sellout” remix of our song live. So you could say we are sort of covering our own song. Every record is a documentation of what you are at the particular point in time, so to me it is what we were at the particular point in time. That record got us overseas and because of it we’ve been to places that we never thought we’d go.

A few punters have suggested that the covers medley that was a part of your set on that tour – Lose My Breath, Hella Good, Push It, Milkshake, You Really Got Me – might have been influenced by Glee. Why did you close the shows with the covers, rather than your own material?
Ha ha ha Glee, nice suggestion but no. Whilst a few of us watch Glee that is not the reason for doing what we do on tour. We decided that we didn’t want to play an ‘encore’ as such, so we finished our set with our first single Logic. The bands we took on that tour, Tim & Jean and Chaingang are both good friends of ours, so we thought it would be good to invite both bands on stage once we had finished to do a live mash-up instead of us doing an encore. This live mash-up had such a party vibe to it and was a good way to finish the night. It was good to have our friends onstage with us and all closing the show together.

You played as the Big Day Out in 2008 with Arcade Fire, Bjork, Spoon, LCD Sound System, Battles what tips, if any, did you pick up from the other acts on the bill?
Everyone kind of keeps to themselves backstage – but there is the possibility of meeting people from your favourite bands. Some of them are humble and some not so humble, I think it’s important to take note of that. You ultimately don’t want to be in the presence of someone that is playing the high and mighty card. I think the one thing you can take note of is to keep your head down, work, focus and do what you do whilst being yourself. There is no need for the cliche “rockstar” act that unfortunately still exist. There is a difference between someone having “character” and someone being a tool.

Your Twitter feed reveals a bit of an obsession with Nicki Minaj and Willow Smith – does this mean that the next Operator Please record have a more RnB feel?
Ha ha. We’re all lovers of RnB and have been forever. Who knows? I admire the production behind those two mentioned artists. Minimalist composition, big beats and melodies. The songs that we have written since Gloves have definitely been approached in this vain.

What was it like playing with Powderfinger & The Vines despite Amandah being sick?
It was an honour to be asked to play alongside these two bands and we were very lucky to be able to watch them both play two nights in a row. Watching the crowds react to Powderfinger gave me the chills! It was also great for us to play our songs to what may be somewhat of a different audience than we would usually play to.

Your bassplayer Ashley McConnell has a burgeoning modeling career, do any other members of the band getting up to any extracurricular activity hi-jinks?
Tim & I write in our down time and work on different ideas, he also surfs heaps. Chris is always walking and Taylor reads a lot and as far as hi-jinks go, all three don’t mind a party or two.

You’re headed to Canberra for Stonefest in October. Do you make it to Canberra all that often? And do you have any special plans for the festival?
We actually haven’t been to Canberra since our tour in 2008, so it will be great to get back there and play alongside some of the bands who are also playing the festival. We might play a new cover that we tried out at the Brisbane Powderfinger show. I guess we’ll just have to see.

Operator Please play at Stonefest, University of Canberra on Saturday 30th October. Tickets are $100 GA or $175 VIP.