British India on touring and world domination

British India have stopped by to chat about all things world domination, jinxing bad shows, and heading to Tahiti. The band has recently wrapped an Aussie tour and taking over the site to chat about themselves. They really need no further introduction.

Thanks for taking time out from tour life to have a chat with me. How has the tour been treating you all so far?

My pleasure! Always nice to talk about oneself. The tour has been great thanks for asking. This is only the second run of shows we've done since Forgetting The Future came out last year and the tracks are a lot looser now. It's nice to be able to just roll onto stage and start flinging the songs out one after the other. Sort of like ninja stars but less horrifically violent!

What’s the reception to the live version of your new tracks been like?

Yeah great. The album before this one Nothing Touches Me was a bit of a chamber pop record, which meant when we toured it to big venues some of the songs were a bit strange to play live. Too many vocal parts! This album was meant to be played live and is a lot faster and I think that's what our audience really reacts strongly to.

When doing such a long run of shows, how do you make sure each gig feels fresh?

It's not difficult! Every show has it's own personality, even two shows at the same venue and the same setlist tend to feel different. We absorb our energy through the audience and usually just feel really honoured to be up there doing what we do. Plus there's usually four hundred things that go wrong so you're fighting against that as well!

Is there a venue on this tour that you’ve particularly enjoyed playing or are particularly looking forward to?

We really like playing at the Cambridge in Newcastle, we've never had a bad show there! I've gone and jinxed it now haven't I?

Forgetting the Future was released only a year after your fifth studio album, is this the pace you all are wanting to keep up regarding releasing new tracks?

Oh man that would be the best! We'd be on King Gizzard album numbers in no time! There's a real tension between wanting to put out lots of music and also getting them perfect. If writing was easier than it was we'd release two a year. Crazy to think that's what the Beatles did!

The album has been met with a whole stack of praise, does the band listen to the album once it’s released or is playing it live enough?

No, not at all. In the period between it being mixed and being released I listen to them over and over. Embarrassing amounts! But once it's out in the world it's like it becomes someone else property and I don't pick it up again.

Congratulations on your deal with AntiFragile, what doors do you see this opening?

World domination baby! No, I'm not sure. We're just flattered to be involved. Eagre to see where it takes us.

So many artists choose to move internationally to continue their music, is this something the band would consider?

That would be the dream! I've always loved Tahiti, not sure what the music scene is like but I'll look into it.

Keep up-to-date here.

Perch Creek | Gold Shop

Perch Creek's Gold Shop is an eclectic take on a Dubai heist. One of the more unusual subjects to pay homage to, Perch Creek's own quirks and instrumental strength makes them the an unlikely, but perfect fit for such a track. A frolicking ride with serious vocals, combined with 70s inspired backing, makes this a ride you'll be itching to repeat. The tune rocks along, twisting the intriguing tale of the aforementioned heist, and takes the listener on a journey of seriously epic proportions. Perch Creek is a band easily recognised, and staying true to their individuality is paying off.

You've turned somewhat of a corner with this album compared to some of your previous tracks, did the sound evolve naturally or was it a decision to change things up?

The bluegrass and showy tunes in our live sets had started to feel a bit repetitive, and we wanted to make a bunch of new songs that were different. We set out with the intention of being open-minded and rolling with different ideas that came up while we were jamming. We started writing this album in the middle of a UK tour, in a rented house in Wales. Listening to and playing the songs now I can see how it was a natural evolution too, there is still a similar vibe and spirit there that must be inherent in Perch Creek!

Just to get it out of the way, can you briefly explain where the name Perch Creek comes from?

Perch Creek is the name of a little creek that runs around the property where four of us grew up, in Midginbil, Northern NSW - a place with no shops, and a cow to human ratio of about 5:1. We started out as kids and used to be called The Perch Creek Family Jugband (band name chosen by our Mum: cute!) and a few years ago decided we were officially grown-ups now and it was time to strip it back to a more simple and less limiting version.

The new album is self-titled, why did you decide to release it this way?

We were looking for a title for the album, scouring song names and lyrics, but nothing was meaningful or relevant enough. We then thought about releasing it as a self-titled album and that felt perfect. It's our first release under [our] new name Perch Creek.

Gold Shop is a serious groove, but it's got such an interesting back story, too. Can you explain the concept a little more?

We performed in Dubai a few years ago at the most random of gigs - a shopping festival, in a deserted mall with a pyramid/pharaoh theme; you can only imagine. We learnt there had actually been a robbery there in 2007, complete with stolen Audis smashing through glass doors. This story, combined with the unbelievable bling of the "gold capital", Dubai, got us to writing this song. We let the story expand in a more surreal way when coming up with the video clip. The song is about a gold shop heist, when a moustachioed 1970s dude (singer Eileen's male alter ego) gets unknowingly framed by a sneaky criminal woman (who turns out to be his own alter ego) - it's narrative genius on par with Scooby Doo.

The accompanying clip is very retro, very 70s, and very cool - who came up with the concept and how did it evolve?

We knew we wanted a lot of action, with street chases through the Coburg North industrial area and we knew we needed 70s outfits - [they] were not optional. James [bass] showed us the Beastie Boys Sabotage clip for inspiration and from there we took the concept to Sasha Kane (of Honey Edit), and we worked together developing the script and character ideas. My brother Christi has a [Holden] Kingswood, vintage BMW motorbike, and a Volkswagen Transporter, so we were all set to go with vehicles that looked the part. We asked the owner of a Gold Shop in Preston if we could film there, he said he might be dead by the time filming day came around but if not, then yes. Luckily for us he was still alive and kicking.

The vocals are shared amongst all five members, how do you manage so many voices without the tracks sounding crowded?

The lead vocals are shared between Eileen, Lear, and Christi Hodgkins, however we all sing harmonies in most of the songs. With four of us being siblings, there is a similar sound in our voices that really blends together. I think this helps with it not sounding too angular.

Being a family band, how do the dynamics of being related impact your art?

With our writing process I feel the dynamics of being related  have been really positive and helpful. We wrote this album collaboratively, with musical jams and lots of lyric brainstorm exercises, including stream of consciousness writing. We would take turns reading aloud what we had written, which was really confronting at times. It was cool getting more practice at letting go and braving it with a close group of people - even though we pay out on and often criticise each other's ideas: you know it's a family thing. Being related does mean we can lean towards complacency sometimes, it's easy to make excuses not to rehearse, and easy to slip into engrained roles, but overall we are a pretty good unit.

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Pete Murray on Life, Music, and Making Sacrifices

It’s been fifteen years since his first album, Feeler, debuted and became the marker by which Murray admits he’s been measured against ever since. The album, which is perhaps always going to be the first thing people think of when they hear the name Pete Murray, climbed a slow, 42-week burn to number one. The 2003 release (re-released in 2013) has stood the test of time and it’s what he’s been trying to top ever since. “We probably suffered a bit, Feeler was so just so big, and everywhere. The songs got smashed on radio, and then when the next album came out it got the same thing, so we probably suffered a bit just from overexposure,” Murray says. “It just got flogged to death. By the time the third album came out I think people were just a bit over it.” 

“No one was really saying anything, lyrics or content or anything like that. It was more just ‘oh well, this will be successful. He writes mid-tempo songs and this will just be successful.” By the time Summer at Eureka was released in 2008 (his third studio album) Murray felt like he was stalling. 

 But this new album, Camacho, which was released in 2017, is finally changing people’s opinions. (The follow-up, a remixed version of single Heartbeats is not doing any harm, either.) 

When Murray started work on the album, however, he wasn’t playing for anyone. “I just didn’t give the record label a choice, I didn’t tell them. I was recording the album by myself and probably 60, maybe 70 percent of the album was already done by the time I played it to them.” 

With a six-year gap since the release of his last album, Murray was nervous. After all, not many can take such a long hiatus, come back with a rebranded style of music and expect to stick the landing. “Music’s changed so much, the industry had changed so much. The whole streaming thing had become way bigger. Everything’s so different.” Except that’s exactly what he’s managed to do. Murray has ended the album with both feet planted firmly on the ground. 

“It’s a bit different, but it still has my flavour to it,” he says. “If you turn it up, the album actually has a fair bit of punch to it.” The critics agree, with a majority of positive reviews and recommendations Murray is confident he picked the right direction to take his music in. “It’s actually the same comments I was getting about Feeler,” proving if nothing else, Murray has successfully come full circle. 

Fame in the Australian music industry is a special kind of beast. Its isolation means to have any kind of longevity a move across oceans is warranted more often than not. (Gone are the days of good Aussie rock, with the rise of pop music, the world has shrunk to include the United States and occasionally England.) And that, often without exception, to break into the US market you have be in the country. (At the very least, the right hemisphere.) “You know, I would’ve loved to have moved overseas,” Murray says, with the voice of someone who understands this. “At least if only for a little while.” But life happened, as not even recording artists can avoid, and the complexity of children meant a long-term move became a whole lot harder to fathom. 

Two children from a previous marriage, boys, fourteen and eleven, whom Murray talks affectionately about, are a tie to Australia that he just can’t shake. The difference between Murray and those who make the move overseas is simple: he’s a family man, and music isn’t enough to risk that. His children are settled in their Byron Bay life and shared custody means uprooting them isn’t an option, even if Murray had the heart to do it. “It’s a bit hard,” he says. “I can’t just go and leave them.” 

“My perfect day is probably just getting up, going for a surf and hanging out with my family,” Murray says. “At a quiet a beach, with not many surfers, maybe just [my] mates. And then maybe having a jam at night. It’s all just about family, surfing, and music.” 

Instead, he compromises. There’s potential plans to spend a few months abroad in 2019. (“Here and there,” he says, further emphasising his committed role as father.) Murray doesn’t hide the excitement that working internationally brings, but his family in Australia, and his responsibility to them, never seems to be far from his mind. If he had to list the most important things in his life, it’s obvious that his boys, not his music, would take the top spot. 

 He concedes, too, that a life in Byron is not a hard pill to swallow. As far as consolation prizes go, Murray has done pretty well. 

And of the impacts of his life on his kids: “I think they figured it out pretty early on,” he says, referring to his two sons. “They had to, with kids at school asking them ‘is your dad Pete Murray?’” And their answer? “Yeah. So?” Which is exactly how Murray likes it; to Charlie and Pedro, he’s just dad. 

“It was great actually, a couple of years ago I was playing some shows with Rob Thomas from a band called Matchbox Twenty and I had a guitar change. My guitar techs gave it to my youngest son, Pedro, who would’ve been eight or nine at the time,” Murray says, recounting a previous show his sons had tagged along to. “Next thing I know the crowd starts cheering and I’m like, ‘what’s going on here?’ And there’s Pedro, bringing out my guitar for me. [The guitar] was almost as big as him.” 

Now they’re older, they understand the crowds. But when they were younger they just knew other people said, “Pete Murray” and it meant something to a lot of people. “Now they’re older, they can see the crowds and kind of appreciate what it means.” Charlie and Pedro might be the apple of the apple of their dad’s eye, but they’re catching on that Australia feels the same about Pete Murray. 

Murray got his start in music somewhat by accident. After a series of serious rugby-induced knee injures sidelined his dream of a rugby union career, he was left without any real idea of what he wanted. He did, however, know what he didn’t want: “a normal job.” So, despite studying sports medicine (his more “serious” career option) he started learning guitar. 

The year was 1993. 

Murray has always had a competitive streak (he didn’t get selected on the Queensland Sevens side without a desire to win) and it was this that really drove his music. He was going to be good. 

 Despite having no real desire to be a rock star, he had clear talent from the start. And people noticed. By the time he’d hit 27, he was playing and singing and had started dabbling in song writing. (His ex-wife is alleged to have locked him in a bathroom until he finished writing a song.) “It all started off as being a bit of fun.” 

Then, in the first half of the noughties, Feeler was released. 

Its success shocked a lot of people, and Murray wouldn’t listen to it in its entirety again until eight years later. “I got a text from Darren Middleton (Powderfinger’s lead guitarist and songwriter) saying, ‘I’ve just been listening to Feeler, what a great album’. After I got that text I thought I better give it another go.” 

Murray may not have had a desire to be a rock star, nor to even listen to his own album, but he was heading the right direction. Even after spending fifteen years in the spotlight, his career shows no signs of letting up. As always, he speaks of it with the humility that seems only to be found in the Australian industry. 

“I’ve always been a big fan of albums,” he says, explaining away any speculation he wants to be known for releasing singles. Sure, they get the radio play but music lovers, real music lovers, are in it for the body. And that’s where Murray sees himself: putting out bodies of work that people want to play over and over. Producing the music that he’d listen to, that he’d share with his wife and kids, is more important than Jane Doe hearing it five times on her drive to work. “Probably the hit singles aren’t your favourite songs,” he explains. “It’s just not, it’s the album tracks that are the best songs.”

Above everything, Murray is looking to build a connection that goes beyond the limited lifespan of radio play or streams. “That’s what you really want, something that, for whatever reason, people connect to. They’re the ones that will keep going back to the album.” 

Most special though to the doting dad is teaching his eldest, Charlie, to play the guitar with his own tracks as the backdrop. “They kind of have to listen to my music, thankfully they always have liked it,” he says. “Now I’ve started to teach Charlie some of my songs. He’s starting to get the feel for it.” Whatever Murray is doing, it always seems to come back to love he has for his sons. 

His advice to them is to try as many things as possible in life. “You’ve got to try and do things while you’re young. You just need to do things that make you happy,” he says. “I think the main thing though, is to have a bit of a backup plan.” After the end of his rugby career and realising he didn’t want to work in a medical clinic (“I didn’t want to be in that environment solving people’s problems.”), he went overseas to decide his next move. Murray was ready to give up on music, it just hadn’t been working out. “I didn’t think my music was going to go anywhere, so I was in the process of ringing up school and re-enrolling to finish studying,” he explains. “And then music worked.”

Tour tickets available here