The Basics - Old standards and setting new ones

Whether you like a band or not, you have to give them credit for amazing feats of promotion. Here's an example, for four weeks a band does a residency. Not unusual. But how about three different residencies… now any manager or music professional will probably tell you that this is overkill and people will get very sick of you very quickly and that you wont be able to pull any decent crowds. Well in that case, how about doing each residency in a different state. Now that makes sense, do a residency for four weeks in one state then move on.

Four weeks of April The Basics did such a series of residencies but with a slight twist; Sydney on Tuesdays, Brisbane on Wednesdays and Melbourne on Thursdays. Just to be clear that is three gigs, in three states every week for four weeks. Some may say that’s absurd, I say its impressive and as guitarist Tim Heath expounds "I call it crazy". But this shows the dedication this band has to getting you up on the dance floor shaking your arse. If you read any live reviews one thing that'll get mentioned a lot is that the band and the music makes you wanna dance. There's no un-needed fanciness, it's straight down the line rockin’ and a rollin’. But this isn't a live review, no, this is an interview; an interview about their debut long player Stand Out / Fit In, which the vigorous touring has been in aid of. And to perform this interview, I was lucky enough to be invited down to drummer Wally de Backer’s place for the afternoon whilst the band finished off and listened to some demos for their second album.

Second album!? Yeah that's what I thought, aren't they just releasing their first album now? I asked them why they'd be working on a second album whilst still trying to get the first one out into the publics' hands and the response was keeping with the vibe with a three states a week residency. These guys are serious musicians; in the old sense where you didn't just play some music for fun on the weekends, you play music for the love of entertaining.

The obvious thing that comes to mind when you see The Basics, be it in person or in publicity photos, is that on the surface at least, they appear to be the archetypal 1960's band albeit in a 2000’s setting. Lets start with the suits, which Tim reveals had somewhat dubious beginnings, "We all looked at each other and just went, Oh my God what have we done?” and lets not forget the matching guitars. It could be easy to write The Basics off as yet another retro throwback band, but I can tell you after spending a good part of a Saturday afternoon hanging out with these guys, there is nothing surface about them; The Basics are not trying to be a gimmick, they aren't trying to be cute and retro - this is simply who they are.

Its clear that their music is not simply down to having eclectic record collections (and grey suit fetishes) rather it is an logical conclusion of a band simply playing whatever the hell they like; and doing it bloody well by all accounts. Moreover, being an independent band they have the scope to create music without record company imperatives, despite the fact it seems that according to the mainstream ‘retro’ now equals big dollars. When pressed as to what delineates The Basics from these acts (who shall remain nameless and whom, let the record show The Basic’s have nothing against, the bias is certainly on the interviewers side here), Wally is refreshing forthcoming “The adulation of rock and success isn’t what we are about on stage and hopefully we can capture that on record” adding “We are more about writing songs that reflect our actual experience in life and having fun shows”.

The band, if anything represents the concept of ‘Tableau Rasa’, or if you will excuse the pun, getting back to basics, as bassist Kris Schroeder explains “The idea of what were doing at the start was to strip everything back from the early beginnings of rock and roll and make our own path from there and moving through those stages” adding to the band’s philosophy “You have to get to a point where a band can take a complex song and make it a masterpiece rather than try to do too much too soon”. This exploration results in a pastiche of sounds from a variety of genres and is anything but basic.

If you listen closely to their debut Stand Out / Fit In you will hear it clearly . For example in ‘Memory Lane’ there are almost classical piano sounds in the same song as a guitar riff that with more distortion could've fitted into a Black Sabbath song. Couple this with the ska tinges surrounding recent single ‘Looking Over My Shoulder’ and you have what Tim describes as ‘a weird record…the mix of songs and the sounds are different to a lot of what is around at the moment”.

Its clear that in the world of The Basics they place no limits place on themselves nor as to what they will do in the future, although as Wally expounds, don’t wait for them to ditch the three piece construct and their instruments just yet, "I don't see us going the way Radiohead have, but it could happen". Although as Kris points out, The Basics is a cannon of work rather than just a band, guaranteeing “In three albums time, some of the songs that are waiting to be recorded and others that are waiting to be written will sound a lot different to what you have heard”.

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