Your punk lyrics sound rather tongue in cheek next to the folk tunes. What made you choose to go for this effect?
Our lyrical content is very important to us. It might come across as tongue in cheek but the message isn’t always as light-hearted as it seems. We just like to be honest and sing about things that are easy to relate to.
Which song on Folk is Dead was the most fun to record?
Probably “Quit your job”. It’s fairly humorous.
What song do you most enjoy performing live?
“Swords” is great to play live. More often than not we have a bunch of friends who know the lyrics, jump on stage and sing along with us.
What was the inspiration behind the music video for the song “The maths”?
The concept was drawn from the opening lyrics to the song and finding out that Santa Claus was fake. It kind of represents the loss of a childhood innocence and becoming angry and full of angst due to being discarded.
Can you give us a little insight into your creative process when writing songs?
It’s different every time. Jon writes most of the initial song ideas. Sometimes it takes a few hours, sometimes it takes a few months. Then when there is something worth working on, we work on it as a band and figure out what is best rhythmically and instrumentally. Then the lyrics are refined and we work on any backing vocals and then we have a song.
Are you planning on taking a break after Folk is Dead, or will you immediately start working on the next album?
No ways. Life’s too short to take breaks. We’re going to push The Shabeen hard. We’ve already got some new material which we’ve played live, but we’ll tour this album at least twice locally and once overseas before we start properly writing for a new one.
Photo: Tash Montlake
