We spoke to Melbourne trio The Grogans about six years of music experimentation, friendship, and their new album

WE SAT DOWN WITH QUIN AND GUS OF THE GROGANS TO TALK WRITING SONGS SHOULDER-TO-SHOULDER, WHY LYRICS DON’T ALWAYS NEED TO “MEAN” SOMETHING TO MATTER, AND HOW ‘STAGGER’ CAME TO LIFE WHILE THE BAND WAS CONSTANTLY ON THE MOVE. FROM KINKS-LACED GUITAR LINES AND LESSONS LEARNED ON THE ROAD, TO LATE-NIGHT JAZZ BARS IN AMSTERDAM AND THE INTENSITY OF TOURING, WE DIG INTO THE NEW ALBUM, THE CHALLENGE OF STAYING CREATIVE ON THE MOVE, AND HOW BEING FRIENDS FIRST HAS KEPT THE BAND GROUNDED WHILE EVERYTHING AROUND THEM KEEPS SHIFTING.

The boys before their gig

ANOMIE: Hey guys! It's just gone six years since your first album. It's a pretty insane debut album, so congratulations on that.

QUIN: Appreciate it!

ANOMIE: You've said that most of your songs and lyrics come together when you're all in a room, and you write a bit more collaboratively, which is quite unique compared to a lot of other bands out there. Most have one person kind of taking the lead on that. After so long together, do you still surprise each other in that space when you're writing, either musically or personally?

QUIN: Yeah, I think so. It's just been such a natural thing that's happened and evolved. When we first started playing music, it wasn't something that we jumped into being like, all right, let's start a band. It was so natural that everything, including the songwriting, has always just been quite fluent in the way it's happened. When we are in a room writing together, I do still feel really blown away by lots of things that the other boys bring to the table. I was actually saying this to Gus fairly recently, but anytime I write a song on my own, it's never really finished until it's in the room with Gus and Jordan, you know. Yeah, it's hard to tell when you're by yourself and writing whether it's actually good or not, because you've got no other ears on it. It's definitely an important part of our process, you know, bringing it to the table and getting everyone's two cents on it.

ANOMIE: You've mentioned in past interviews that your lyrics don't necessarily need to “mean” something to other people, to the listener. Do you think that meaning is overrated in music? Maybe it's better for it to be a bit more ambiguous than directly having a blatant translation?

QUIN: I think it kind of goes case by case. For us, we could be writing a track without lyrics and, come time to actually write them, random crap could just fall out of your mouth and not really mean anything, but fits well with the song and, you know, still have a good feel about it. I think there's also a misconception, and Gus and I have spoken about this before… music in itself and writing lyrics is art, whether it's physical or audible. So, you know, if you stumble upon words that you seem fascinated by or that fit, it doesn't always necessarily have to mean something on an emotional level. It can mean something on an attitude level, it doesn't always necessarily have to be an emotive thing.

ANOMIE: Are these lyrics you jot down coming to you all the time, or are you sitting down very intentionally to write them?

QUIN: It comes and goes. I think when you sit down and try to do it, sometimes it's not very good for your creative mindset. I'll be sitting out by the beach or something and all these cool things are coming to my head and then I naturally bloody forget them by the time I come back home to write it down *laughs*. But yeah, it kind of comes up when you least expect it sometimes.

ANOMIE: You’ve played with Ocean Alley quite a few times, which is incredible. Who would be your dream artist or band to tour with at some point, dead or alive?

GUS: That's a tricky, tricky, tricky question. I mean, Twin Peaks is one of them.

QUIN: Oh, yeah, definitely.

GUS: Yeah, Chicago band. Their energy and their songwriting is everything that I feel like lots of artists try and can't do, you know. They can write a song that breaks your heart, but when they play it live, it almost uplifts you, the way they play it. It's a really strange thing that they can do. Yeah, someone to go tour with… Growlers was always one that we always wanted to do.

QUIN: Yeah. There's probably plenty.

ANOMIE: We hear a bit of the Kinks in some of your music. Maybe it's the guitar playing, obviously you guys have covered them before for 'Like A Version'.

GUS: If we had a time machine and, you know, some friends in the know… Yeah, Stones back in the 70s would have been sick as well.

ANOMIE: When you were last here in Amsterdam, did you get any time off? Did you notice anything about the city or the music scene? Any inspiration? Anything cool?

QUIN: We've had a few days in Amsterdam that, you know, we had no shows that night or anything like that. It's just an awesome city to just have no agenda and just walk around all day.

GUS: There's a couple of jazz bars that we like going to every time we're there. I think it's called Jazz Café Alto. That's always fun, you know, late night jazz bar sessions. Some good pastries in the city. We never really get much time off ever on tour, but for some reason, we've always had a day in Amsterdam. It's always a fun sort of mid-tour break or recoup. It's always a nice place to put things in perspective, I don't feel creative there. I sort of actually feel just relaxed. Like for the first time, we can almost switch our brains off from music when we're there. It's really kind of weird. It's a cool city to have a little break in. It's a nice city.

ANOMIE: You obviously do quite a lot of touring. Just this year you’ve been in North America and then with the release of ‘Stagger’, you've been in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

QUIN: Yeah, we just got home the other day from the UK and we’ve got a bunch of random shows on at the minute. We're off to Bali in a couple of weeks for a show.

ANOMIE: We couldn't believe the amount of Aussies in Bali!

QUIN: Oh, it's ridiculous. Everyone says it's essentially just another Australian state. Like another city, you know, Canggu and stuff like that. It's good fun.

ANOMIE: So with all that touring, you're in so many different places, a lot of changing cities, faces, languages. Do you ever worry that maybe the creative side is being a bit swallowed up by logistics? Or do you find it's more beneficial for writing?

QUIN: No, you nailed that one. The biggest struggle to navigate, I think, in our industry is to propel your band forward and actually try to make some money and make a living off it and whatnot. You have to be on the road a lot and there's that fine line of.. when do you stop touring to actually write a record? Now, we've got our whole year planned out. It's a bit stressful, you have to make time to be creative. It's something that's a bit difficult to just sit and turn on, you know, in like a scheduled time period. I think it's funny because when you're touring so much and you're in the bus, that's sort of when you're not grounded. But when you play a really good show, even though you're playing the same songs every night, and you're on stage and you're really present, that's when I personally feel really grounded. If it's all going well and you're sort of looking at each other on stage, that's when I feel grounded. Apart from playing music, I think Gus really… I wont use the word “forced”.... He helped me start reading more on tour, which was really good because I was never really big into reading. When we toured in America, Gus and I would read our books and then talk about it. That was a really nice way to settle down and ground yourself a bit. Even just being with each other and not talking about music for a bit.

GUS: Yeah, I 100% agree.

ANOMIE: Have you got any book recommendations for ANOMIE readers then?

GUS: I've been reading a lot of Jack Kerouac lately, he's always good, you know, when you're on the road and stuff. I'm actually reading ‘On the road’ right now. Recommend it to anyone so far. QUIN: I'm reading… what's it called? ‘A Million Little Pieces’, it's James Frey. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking you know, it's just crazy… God, imagine, I've got 150 pages left, and I’ve left it on the fucking plane. Sucks. I’ve gotta go buy a new copy.

ANOMIE: Devastating stuff. With touring, are there any lyrics from your new album ‘Stagger’ that hits differently now that you've played it live than when you originally wrote it?

QUIN: With ‘Worry about Everything’, there's a lot of lyrics that resonate. Sometimes when I'm feeling down, all I want to be is at home. Lots of things in that song feel really relevant right now. But that track is also feeling really good live, it's fun. That's probably one of my favourites to play at the moment.

GUS: Same here. I think with ‘All My Days’, it's about being on tour and struggling with the chaos of it all. Singing that some nights kind of… it feels real.

ANOMIE: Australia obviously has quite a thriving surf rock scene, with you guys and then Ocean Alley, Hockey Dad, and others. Does being compared to that scene or slotted in with it ever feel limiting?

QUIN: I think we struggle with it sometimes. We definitely play surf rock and teeter the line between that and sort of garage stuff. I feel like if people really did dive into all of our catalogue, they'd realise that we're a lot more than surf rock. We don't even really know what to call ourselves sometimes, and that's not a big ego type thing, we just don't necessarily feel that places perfectly within our catalogue.

GUS: It's hard… if you call yourself one genre, it almost limits what you're gonna write for the next album. So it's kind of easy to say “we don't know what specific genre that we play.”

ANOMIE: That's cool, you're not putting yourself in a box, creatively or in any way. You guys have obviously been doing this since high school, what do you think keeps you excited to work together musically? And what do you think it is that you three have that makes it work so well?

QUIN: I think just because we are such close friends that, you know, if someone's feeling a certain way or whatever, we can tell. It helps us live together and write together and all the rest.

GUS: What keeps us going as well is just playing so much and the excitement you get from playing new songs to new people. You can't really compare it to anything, even writing has always been a really exciting thing. Once we write a record, we get to this point, which we're at right now, where we're super hungry for the next record. That's why we've put out so much music because we feel like we're never finished. When you do an album, it's like, cool, that's one thing done, sweet, we want the next one to sort of do this.

QUIN: I think that also keeps us really motivated because even if we're feeling shit about a show, it’s still exciting because we're always writing new songs. And then that also keeps us fresh and feeling good. I do think the main thing is what Gus mentioned about being on the same wavelength and like caring about each other, deeper than just like as a band. That's really nice.

ANOMIE: It's really nice to hear people talk so passionately about what they do, you guys are clearly very driven. When you first started playing together back in high school, how did you picture being in a band, and how different is it actually?

QUIN: I think when we started, all we were keen to do was play at our friends' parties and the payment was just a slab of beer or something. And that was like, that was it for us. That was the best thing ever. We felt like we'd made it. Then we started getting offered some shows at actual venues and it just kind of made us hungry for the next. We didn't have any perceptions or desires for what was happening. Like we were never looking ahead at the very start for the first few years, we were just looking at how epic it was at that period of time. Anything that came our way was always super exciting. I feel like that's something that we as a band are trying to go back to at the moment. I feel like that's something that we're sort of missing at the moment because we've got the opportunity to start playing bigger places and touring. I feel like right now, we're trying to find that balance between when we first started and not having any…. we had so many like ambitions, but we didn't really give a shit what they were going to be. Now I feel like it's switched around and we're trying to find that balance. So it's kind of nice to see both sides. And we always say if we had told 17 year old Grogans that we'd be playing to 3000 people in London, we would have pissed ourselves.

ANOMIE: Do you think that being friends first, and band mates second, makes being in a band together easier or more difficult to handle the heavier parts of it all?

GUS: I think it's easier. It's hard to say, I can only imagine us being friends first has helped. I've always said to myself, and I hope it’s the same with the other boys, no matter what happens with Grogans, the priority is to look after our relationship with each other first. At the end of the day, us being friends is going to always outlive being in a band, no matter what size band you are. So I think that's also driven us and pushed us to have conversations within the band about business aspects or creative things that can be quite hard because we've managed to understand that each other are more important. It’s bigger than just the band, you know, because all of our songs and all the touring stuff can only happen if we're all good. Like, we can tell each other to get fucked without feeling awkward about it because they're not like an associate or something, they're just your mate. I think that's important.

ANOMIE: Lastly, when you're older, in your 70s, and you look back on this time, what do you want to feel?

QUIN: Yeah, just proud and knowing that we had a good time doing it, didn't take it ourselves too seriously. We’ve got to remind ourselves every now and then that it is just music at the end of the day and it's meant to make people happy or, you know, sad. You don't want to take yourself too seriously. I want to look back and know that we gave everything that we possibly could in regard to where we got to and that we all gave it the best that we could have with what we had. I think the best feeling is when you know that you gave your best shot at it.

GUS: Hopefully the livers are still intact as well. I mean, that means we did it right, if they're not.

QUIN: Yeah, we might be seriously bedridden by 60.

@THEGROGANSBAND

GIVE THE BOY'S NEW ALBUM 'STAGGER' A LISTEN, OUT NOW