STREETS AHEAD

The Smith Street Band have taken a bit of a detour, but are headed back to Hobart next week, as Kane Young reports

AFTER a year of upheaval, Melbourne folk-punks The Smith Street Band are loving their current 30-plus show Australian tour like “a big family holiday” — without the arguments and whingeing children.

“We’re about two-thirds of the way through, and I think it has been my favourite tour that we’ve ever done,” frontman Wil Wagner told Pulse from sunny Cairns yesterday.

“We drove from Brisbane up to Cairns, which was a really fun experience — it felt like a holiday, going up the coast with a bunch of mates.

“I feel like this is the tightest we’ve been as a band and as friends, maybe ever.

“It just feels really good to be on stage with everyone else, smiling and laughing with each other — except when I fell over at one show and everyone laughed at me. But I probably deserved it.”

The Smithies — who have won a legion of fans around the world thanks to songs such as Surrender, Young Drunk, Death to the Lads, Birthdays and Passiona — are back at their best following an interesting year, which included the (somewhat mysterious) departure of founding drummer Chris Cowburn, and the addition of new drummer Matt Bodiam, Jess Locke (guitar, vocals) and Lucy Wilson (vocals, keyboards) as permanent members.

“Jess and Lucy are both really old friends of ours, and they both sing on numerous Smith Street releases, so it made sense to get them to play with us on tour,” Wagner explained.

“We thought we’d try it for one tour and see how it went, but they quickly became important members of the band and I’m working on new songs with both of them in mind.

“We’ve been a band for a long time, and we didn’t want to become stale. With my songwriting style I’m very conscious of not becoming predictable, because I seem to only be able to write about three different songs, then repeat them in different ways.

“This was a way to freshen everything up for us, and also freshen up the sound.”

Between the end of their current tour and the start of a European jaunt in October, the Smithies plan to bunker down for the winter and work on the follow-up to their fourth album More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me, which debuted at No.3 on the ARIA charts last April.

Wagner said “it’s really hard to tell at the moment” how the expanded line-up would change the band’s sound on the new album.

“I feel like our albums have

gradually become more full sounding — the latest album has a choir on it, and all these different keyboard, organ and synth parts,” he said.

“That’s always something that I hear in my head when I’m writing, but with the help of [producer] Jeff Rosenstock we’re all getting better at getting those ideas from our heads on to the record.

“We also have more time to do stuff. Now that we are able to afford a bit more studio time and have that luxury, we can really flesh out songs.

“I really want to start doing more harmonies, and I’d like that to come out a bit more on the new record. I’ve got to learn how to sing, basically — so much of our stuff is just me yelling.

“I’d love to have more harmonies and more fully developed vocal parts, rather than me just obsessing over the lyrics and not worrying so much about the singing.”

The Smith Street Band, Bec Sandridge and Press Club play a licensed/all-ages show at Hobart's Odeon Theatre from 8pm next Saturday (May 5). Tickets are $44.90, go to

www.oztix.com.au for bookings.