PARTY DOZEN RELEASE CRIME IN AUSTRALIA
We are big fans of Party Dozen—their stuff is our go to pump up, get-shit-done music. Their punchy, sometimes intense and gritty sound is something so original and refreshing to come out of the Australian music scene. They do their own thing and do it so well. Their new album, Crime in Australia, proves it; it’s a heavy hitting, fist pumping collection of music that they released a little over a month ago. In the time between now and then we got to talking with Kirsty Tickle, one half of the duo. We chatted about the themes throughout the album, the stories of crime that have been revealed to them from their friends, and making a new pb of over 200 beats per minute in their closing track. Unfortunately, they’ve just wrapped up their album tour in Australia, but are just about to jet off to Europe in support of Amyl and the Sniffers before returning back to Aus for a stacked lineup of festivals including our favourite, Meredith, in December!
WANDERER: Crime in Australia is a heavily themed album and I love the way that you've really played into it. Is giving your albums a theme something that you usually do?
KIRSTY TICKLE: Thanks so much. Our first album, The Living Man, was really just a collection of songs written over the first couple of years of Party Dozen. Since then though we’ve been adding a theme to the records. It helps us get a clear view of the album. Because we’re an instrumental band, we find that themes also give the records more vibe—something for people listening to hold onto in place of lyrics.
You recorded the album in Marrickville and leaned into the crime happening there during the 70s and 80s. Do you usually find inspiration from your environment?
I think we often find inspiration from films and stories. When we were about halfway through recording Crime in Australia we realised it was sounding like an 80s Australian crime show soundtrack. We decided to lean in heavily to this idea, taking inspiration from Marrickville, which is our studio neighbourhood, but also from Queensland, where Kirsty grew up—which has had some crazy years of corruption and crime. We also took inspiration from all the insane Australian crime films we grew up watching: Two Hands, Snowtown, Wake in Fright, Animal Kingdom, Chopper. The list goes on.
Since diving into the historic crime Australia has seen, has anyone shared with you, or have you come across any wild stories from back in the day?
We’ve had lots of Queensland stories thrown at us: old punks who were arrested just for being at gigs, stories of LPs being broken in half by cops in record stores, friends we didn’t know had been arrested in the past—they’ve told us some pretty hilarious stories of being picked up by cops at illegal warehouse parties in Sydney.
What is your typical process when songwriting, do you start songs with a solid idea or jam it out together?
We start by trying to come up with loop ideas. These form the basis for all our songs. So we might start with a shitload of gear just all laid out on the studio floor—guitars, synths, microphones. And once we get an idea we like, we try to come up with a few more sections of loops. Then we jam! We record as we go so you get those magic improv moments recorded straight up and chuck out the crap.
You mentioned a few of your tracks being a little bit dumb, like the 4th track, ‘Les Crimes’. What do you mean by this?
There are clever, intelligent Party Dozen songs. There are raucous, loud Party Dozen songs. And sometimes there are dumb Party Dozen sounds. Like the sonic sound of someone saying ‘derp’, or a dog with its tongue hanging out. It doesn’t mean ‘Les Crimes’ isn’t musically worthy, it’s just sonically a bit funny and a little bit stupid.
You also record, mix and master your own songs, which is amazingly crazy. What's the madness behind this, why do you do it?
We have a studio in Marrickville. It’s tiny, about 12 square metres, and we’ve recorded most of our albums in there. Jonathan is on the tools—he engineers, mixes and masters everything. He’s been doing it for ages and we think he’s pretty good at it. Plus he’s a control freak. Doing it all ourselves helps keep all the decisions in house, which we like because Party Dozen is the fruit of our creative vision and we don’t want anyone else’s filthy hands on it.
In terms of technicality, is there anything you've done differently with this release that you haven't done before?
We went a lot faster on this album. ‘Jon’s international Marketplace’ is over 200 bpm!
You've had huge growth since the release of The Real Work. What do you feel is your greatest achievement as artists so far?
I think our greatest achievement is ongoing…we make records we want to listen to. If no one was interested, we’d still be making them anyway. It’s awesome that more people want to listen to Party Dozen now, but I’m so proud that we continue to stick to our guns and never compromise that side of things.