A band that can say, “We just write good catchy songs that basically anyone can get into, unless they’re fanatical right wing Christians” is a band I want to know more about.
It’s Thursday night in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane and I’ve got a date with two strangers at a café. To the left is Josh Eckersley, singer in a band, and to the right is Josh Shelton, guitarist / band manager. These two Josh’s (also known respectively as Channel J and i) are the proud parents of Brisbane alternative pop quintet The Black Arts.
You may have heard them on Triple J. The single War On Hurricanes, with its unmistakable piano-hook, acoustic strum, and political satire, was Richard Kingsmill’s pick of the week. If you are not one to be impressed by namedropping, would the nameless masses move you? The delectable War On Hurricanes was also voted onto the radio station’s weekly Net 50 for a number of weeks. Pretty impressive for a little known indie band in Brisbane. You can listen to the track on the band’s MySpace.
Eckersley tells how The Black Arts first came to be, “I was studying music and got quite bored with being a student so I thought, ‘Fuck it. I got to get out and do something different.’”
Something different, in his case, was moving from Lismore, NSW to Brisbane. Before then, the two Josh’s had been writing music individually, and although 300km apart, their work meshed well. Eckersley continues his story, “We were both in bands that split up because they were going nowhere. We both found ourselves with a lot of material and no vehicle to use the material.”
And so they, they recruited Glen Jarvis on acoustic guitar, and leased their rhythm section of Ruwan De Silva (drums) and Denis Hamilton (bass) from Brisbane popsters A Thousand Apoligies. Shelton says of the band’s dynamic, “We’re all positive together. Negatives and positives joining together making happy, happy sounds about sad, sad things.”
“That’s beautiful.” Eckersley says cheekily.
“It’s the best thing I’ve said all day.” Shelton agrees.
Like their lyrics, conversation is witty and wry.
I ask is there significance to the band name, and Eckersley points to Shelton who says, “It was just something that came up when I was in a certain songwriting headspace.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were like a hundred other bands called The Black Arts,” Eckersley remarks, “We may very well get sued some time in the future or we’ll just be told that we can’t use the name. And then we’ll be fucked and we’ll have to think of another name, but until that happens…”
A quick search finds a black metal band by the same name, but they are still small time so our Black Arts needn’t worry just yet.
“Or else there’s like The Scene Queens,” Eckersley offers, “but we thought that was a bit fruity.”
The Scene Queens. That sounds more burlesque influenced glam-rock, by way of the Scissor Sisters, than their grounded pop rock.
“That was kind of a joke band name and I was almost thinking it was good,” Shelton says, to which Eckersley admits, “I thought it was good until Black Arts came along.”
The band list Wilco, The Beatles, The Pixies, and Flaming Lips as some of the big influences on their music. Eckersley describes their music as “rock & roll really. But different.”
“A lot of the songs have a different take on pop rock as they go along. Some of them have a bit more blues influence, and some of them have more pop, and some of them are rockier – a bit rougher around the edges, and then some of them get quite heavy as well,” Shelton says. Even though they span across all genres, the common thread is melodic interplay with pop sensibility.
“I guess each song does what the content of the song requires. It’s always related to the energy behind the lyrics.” Shelton explains their diverse sound. The energy behind the lyrics for the most part is politically minded.
“You can’t help but be political in this day and age,” Eckersley says. “And maybe we watch too much TV. But it’s all suicide bombers this, terrorism that, and it all kind of comes together. Not all the songs are politics but a lot of it is.”
So while normal people watch the news and get depressed by all the horror that’s going on in the world, these Brisbane gents get inspired. Eckersley confides, “War On Hurricanes was written that way. After watching the news, you know, Hurricane Katrina hits America and fucks a lot of poor people up, and Bush is spending trillions fighting terrorism – waging war on a word – and when the American people are actually in trouble and have a serious problem, he doesn’t have any money left to do anything about it. It’s like a satire on the American government waging war on a word of something that doesn’t really exist.
“The evening news is really good for inspiration. Movies are really good too. If you hear a cool line in a movie you can steal it – I think,” He ponders a moment, “We may also get sued for that, but you can get some really good songs that way.”
Shelton believes War On Hurricanes is the best song they’ve written to date, so while there’s talk of an EP later this year, the band aren’t willing to put out another single until they’ve written a better song.
“We’ve set a bench mark, and we just have to keep going over,” Shelton says.
“I’ve got this idea in my head that we haven’t written it yet.” Eckersley says, “Basically I’ve had writer’s block for fucking months so I’ve felt something building up. And sometimes if the song’s really good it just kind of writes itself, I think that’s going to happen any time now. You know, I can kind of just wake up tomorrow morning and go, that’s it. And just write in like five minutes. It might take me longer but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to happen really soon. That’s what happened with War On Hurricanes. It just kind of happened real fast and yeah so we’re just kind of waiting on it.”
Keep your ears out for their next yet-to-be-written brilliant song, in the mean time you can see them live:
January 21 @ The Alley
January 27 @ The Zoo
February 18 @ Spark Bar, Powerhouse
