As the late comer to the red-hot punk-infused sounds of The Scare, bassist Wade K was thrown in the deep end. Soon after joining the band he found himself standing in Heathrow airport, ready to take on England as the then six-piece based themselves in Birmingham for the majority of 2006.
“I didn’t have as much time as the other guys to prepare to leave,” he says, as the band’s overseas jaunt had been planned for long before he joined the group. “Getting off the plane at Heathrow was scary – I had literally $60 to my name and that wasn’t even enough to get me from the airport to where I needed to go. The tour and their plans for overseas were booked and I jumped on top of the rollercoaster.”
And a rollercoaster it has been – in the time that they were in the UK, the band played in excess of 70 shows in less than eight months, a daunting prospect by anyone’s best guess, but certainly something that the band feel not only benefited them immeasurably in terms of developing as a band but also personally. “It was the best time in my life,” Wade trills. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the whole world.”
The initial impetus behind the Scare going heading to Old Dart in the first place was to not just emulate their heroes – with the likes of the Birthday Party doing the same in the early 1980s – but also to challenge themselves. “We could have kept touring Australia,” he says, “and we’d made a little bit of money from record sales and publishing advances and stuff like that, and we could have stayed and buy a good van and some decent gear and build a higher profile, but what’s the point?”
The other option initially was that the Scare could have headed to the UK and simply done a tour – but they wanted something more than that. “I figure we’ve laid the groundwork now, so that when we go back and tour again it will be done properly – the shows will be fun, and big. We thought if we lived there and get through it, it would make more sense. We want to base ourselves there pretty much full-time.”
One of the rumours that has swirled around the band’s overseas sojourn is that it has lead to the band signing a deal directly with EMI subsidiary Parlophone. Wade is quick to hose that fire down. “We didn’t sign any deals,” he confirms. “We got offered a bunch, but we weren’t ready. We went over there with goals – get through it for one, and tour as much as we can, but for a band that went over there with no friends, no fans, nothing, and I don’t think any of us had ever been outside of Australia for an extended period of time. By the end of it we were selling out our local area shows, and the last three weeks of the last tour we did were amazing. We achieved everything we possible could have…except for the record deal.”
Travelling at a hundred miles an hour all the time, the Scare threw themselves into touring. “We had nothing else to do,” he admits. “That’s why we were there. The last tour that we did was the end of the beginning period – laying the groundwork and touring our arses off – and the next phase is to record the album.”
With fingers crossed the band plan to record it in January in Australia, potentially with Scott Horscroft, who recently worked on Silverchair’s forthcoming return release, and also the Sleepy Jackson’s Personality. “We did a couple of stints in the hills of northern France solely for writing,” he says. “So the record’s written. The next step is to tour our arses off after recording the album and get that out there and get elsewhere other than the UK. And get a deal. That’d be nice. But right now we’re concentrating on the music; we want to make a fucking good record that’s just balls-out and as fast and rocking as possible, and the record that we’ve always wanted to make.”
As part of that, the band have stripped back to a five-piece, jettisoning their keyboardist. “We just didn’t want to make music with him any more – there’s so much going on with the guitars. The live show is so much more.”
Losing the keys has altered the band’s sound – whilst not a completely vital component to their sound, they nevertheless provided an extra part of the Scare’s sound. “There’s no disco bits in it anymore,” he wagers. “It’s just punk rock with catchy hooks and the music that we all like. The live set is really dynamic now – the quiet parts are really quiet, and the balls-out parts are as loud as we can possibly get it with five guys.”
The new material best reflects that, Wade believes, with the rhythm becoming a vital aspect of the band’s sound. Without trying to sound conceited, he firmly believes that it’s his input on bass that has lead this, with the band’s early EPs Masochist Mimes and Vacuum Irony not having his input. “There’s a lot of bass-driven songs now,” he outlines, “and the bass is funkier and chunkier than it was ever before. The guitars used to rule all the songs but we lived together in the same house for eight months – at one stage there was six of us in a two-bedroom house – and that comes through in the songs. Every part is important in the songs, and there wouldn’t be room for a keyboard player anymore.”
The Scare are back in Australia now
Thursday November 2: Green Room, Canberra
Friday November 3: Spectrum, Sydney
Friday November 17: The Columbian Bar, Brisbane
Saturday November 18: Berlin Lounge, Gold Coast
