SPARKADIA - WRITTEN FEATURE

Unlike their fellow contemporaries (Jet, Wolfmother, Airbourne etc…) Sparkadia aren’t afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves and step out of the shadow which AC/DC cast down on the Australian music scene so long ago.
Formed by childhood friends AB (singer/guitarist) and drummer David Hall (drums) 18 months ago they then soon recruited Nick on bass duties and more recently Tiff on guitar duties.
With influences stemming from classic songwriters such as Scott Walker, Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello to contemporary UK band Doves (with whom they share a similar, warm, upbeat and urgent sound) Sparkadia write and feel like a band that have a well honed talent.
Their first single ‘Morning Light’ – released in 2007 – saw them sell 2000 physical copies and become the most downloaded track ever at 32,000 downloads from Triple J (Australian alt. rock station) website.
Having just finished their European tour supporting American band Jimmy Eat World, Sparkadia are in the UK to promote their latest single ‘Too Much to Do’ from their debut album ‘Postcards’ (released March ‘08).

SMHTP's Matt Garrity caught up with the band before their gig supporting Vampire Weekend at Audio in Brighton.  Having taken them on a brief but fun tour of the Brighton seafront, which included a blagged trip to the Sealife Centre, they ended up on the pier where they talked over coffee and Guinness.

Introduce yourselves to anybody who hasn’t heard you before:

Nick - I’m Nick I play bass in Sparkadia

Alex- I sing and play guitar

Tiff – I play guitar and song

David – I’m David I play drums

What’s the history of the band and how long have you been together for?

A – (To David) 18 months?D – Alex and I have known either other since we were 9 years old and have played music together for years.  We started jamming and writing songs and doing some live stuff and things began to elevate much quicker than expected.  When things started to get serious we got in Nick, who’s a bass efficinado.  N – I was playing in a funk band called Lenny and the Johnsons, slapping away.  [Everyone laughs]  D – So Nick’s been in the band now for 18 months now and Tiff for 4 weeks.

Do you have any songs which extend back to your (Alex and David) early days?

D – Ah, no no no no.  A lot of the songs on the album are 5/6 years old, at least half of them are 4/5 years old.

You’ve got your new single coming out “Too Much To Do”, which lyrically seems quite urgent although carries quite a laid back, almost lazy feel to it…

A – That weird thing of time, when sometimes time goes too quickly and time goes too slow.  I think it’s one of those moments where …  You can interpret it how you want but in a way it’s kind of saying you could have enough time to do the things you really want to do but in way it’s kind of a good excuse to have to not do the things you should do.

On your press release it mentions you have Scottish grandparents and on “Too Much To Do” there almost seems a hint of a Scottish accent there…

A – We’ve all got our English or British heritage…

Nick – Technically we’re the prisoners you sent over to our country 20 years ago and this is our revenge!

A – Nick actually has convict relations…

T – I’ve got convict relations….

A – My great grandparents fiddled their way across from Scotland.  That’s how they earned there way across to Australia to a new land.

What are your recent tour experiences having been away for about a month now, any interesting stories…?

A – This particular tour yeah…

N - We’ve stayed in Hostels and there’s a lot of freaky people hanging out in hostels…

A – Nick actually got caffeine poisoning in Berlin… he had like 25 Vodka Red Bulls in the space of 24 hours.

[Nick started freaking out in Berlin and asked the other band members to take him to the hospital…]

A – And what was there diagnosis…? [laughs]

N – I was diagnosed as a fool [Everyone laughs], and that’s in writing!

A – He was like, ‘Check my kidneys, check my kidneys!’ and she felt them and said ‘You’re alright, go to sleep, you’re a fool’ [laughs] a bit embarrassing…

Do you find that with the audiences around Europe you get a completely different reaction depending on the country?

N – Yeah totally, Scandinavia is probably like the best one [reaction] we got.  Culturally they’re so much more free minded.  Certain parts of Germany were much more reserved than others, in the West they were much more relaxed than in the East who were absolutely crazy…

T – We definitely noticed a difference when we came to England in our reception… 

What’s it been like in England so far?

T – From Europe as a whole… maybe it’s in our minds but we were expecting a tougher response and reaction from the crowd as there is so much more on offer.  And we pretty much got that.

Especially perhaps here in Brighton…?
[Last time the band played the Freebutt in Nov 07 there were “7 people in the room, including the band and the soundman….”]

A – I was expecting much worse… I was expecting no claps and bottles and stuff and people clap and listen and they stayed till the end of the set.

D – In England there’s so many fucking bands around it’s like, “Well wadda’ya have to do for me?”, Whereas in Europe it’s like “You’re a band - that’s exciting” and if you’re Australian then you’re more exciting… but then that could be because their music is much more shit we have to kinda rely on other factors.

N – We toured with the Thrills in the UK… people seemed to actually enjoy our music… there’s a more accepting attitude towards musicians I think, whereas somewhere like Melbourne in Australia is the harshest place I think – easily the harshest crowds we’ve played to - they’re the snobbiest.

What’s the music scene like in Australia?  Is it possible to build a career out of staying in Oz or do you find you have to venture out to Europe, the U.S, Japan?

D – You can build a career in Australia, a lot of bands in Australia make perfect careers out of what they do – it’s always more fun to go over sea’s I guess.

A – Yeah

D – There’s still a really thriving music scene, most of the acts in Australia don’t go overseas and bands that are kinda mid-range in Australia do have a lot of success overseas.  There’s a certain thing about being Australian that doesn’t relate over here at all…

Which part?

D – Just the style of music, mannerisms and the lyrics… obviously it wouldn’t make sense over here.

How about in Sydney where you’re from?  How did you cut through the scene to get where you are now?
[Sparkadia’s song Morning Light was the most downloaded song ever from hugely popular rock/indie radio station Triple J receiving 32,000 downloads and going on to sell 2000 copies of the physical single]

A – Yep.  When we started off we didn’t want to be part of the scene, we never really wanted to be cool or accepted by the scene.  We always thought it would be better to do our own kinda thing and to never get trapped with a particular time period like nu-rave or whatever but I think we did these bunch of demos that we didn’t realise would reach so many people.  We gave CD’s out to people and before we knew it we were getting played on local radio stations which led to all these other opportunities coming.  So from the moment go we jumped out and didn’t have to try and be cool or suck up to cool bands so we could be in their scene and play their gigs and separated ourselves.

When I first heard I was going to be meeting you guys and heard that you were from Sydney, I was half expecting another 70’s style AC/DC tribute band, similar to recent exports such as Airbourne, Jet, Wolfmother etc…

N – That’s another reason why we stood out as well cos we wanted to do melodic pop and so many bands are afraid of doing that, I guess people just get scared by having someone actually listening to it a singing along.  We were kinda rebelling against all those kind of bands, like My Bloody Valentine who hide behind that wall of white noise…

A – We all love those bands but it’s pretty weak to not try your best to write a song that means something to you or is actually saying something as supposed to having a jumble of words and distortion or with some big riffs and [Imitates guitar wail].  We got this English connection so early in our career, a year after we started playing, so we were never planning on becoming Australia’s local band or whatever.  We always listen to English and European music and then we got this British connection, which then meant we could be our own entity and not be from a particular country…

How did your label [Ark Recordings] find out about you?

A – The record label guy Jamie came across for a friends wedding and our CD got passed around to him and he loved it and wrote us an email but we didn’t reply because we thought he was kidding and that it was a friend of ours, and then we got another email 2 months later saying ‘Hi, I’m serious, I want you to sign to this record label’.  I came over to meet the guys and they’re fantastic and the rest is…

How did your early recordings compare to those you’ve just completed in London with Ben Hillier?

D – It was kinda Alex and myself in his basement doing it all ourselves really and then we came up to London and went away to this world famous studio, world famous computer and knocked out 12 songs in 20 days – it’s a completely different experience.  Me and Alex used to labour over songs for weeks on end and then we came here and everything was live takes…

A – We grew up a lot in the time since our demos got passed around in early 2005, and we were still working out what we wanted to do, sonically as well as I think the singing’s pretty terrible [on the demoes].  The demos have more of a child vibe to it, abit more of a kid vibe to it and I think we grew up pretty quick after having all of this experience.

Did you find that as a producer he offered any advice on arrangements or songwriting….?

A – Yeah, in a way we did a lot of homework before we came across because we knew we couldn’t rock up and just go shall we put 5 songs we’re gonna create… but he’s done so many great records he knows [what to do], and if he just said we should do that, then we were like ‘OK’.  We fought occasionally…

N – Time constraints kinda took care of that too… so we pretty much had to go with what was what. 

D – The reason why we wanted to use him was because he’s done Blur, Depeche Mode, and so many different kinda styles of music, we had all the songs written and all the arrangements done we wanted them to sound amazing with this rich warm kinda tone and for him to bring his child like mind because everything he has is like pre 1990, he hangs on ebay all day just checking all the adds… we wanted to use him because wanted to use his sounds…

Did you bring any equipment over from Oz?

A – We brought a couple of guitars, some pedals but we went to the studio and for the guitarists pedal wise he said ‘look in that box’ and their were like 500 pedals – all different colours, things that looked like grenade launchers, it was amazing… so yeah that’s why you work with someone that’s fantastic because they come with experience and gear and once we’d worked out the sounds you’re doing 2 songs a day from a live band recording and there’s not much time to switch gear around.

What are your plans for 2008?

N - We’re doing these shows for the next few days and then coming back late April early May and doing some festivals, just coming back and forth between here and Australia.

A – The opportunity to go and hang out in Europe and UK and someone else paying for it is pretty nice.  We got a lot of shows to do back in Australia – who knows we might do some more demos and we’re gonna go back and try and get sane again and have a few days off to sleep…

N – Recoup!