Trouble maker
PHIL JAMIESON’S SOLO DEBUT IS A BACKHANDER TO ANYONE CLAIMING ROCK IS DEAD
Once an enfant terrible of the halcyon Australian 1990s alternative rock era, Grinspoon frontman and actor Phil Jamieson braces himself whenever someone mentions having met him before.
“I think at one stage I was going to write a book called ‘Am I In Trouble?’ because whenever someone says ‘I’ve met you before’, I always say ‘Was I polite?’,” he says.
“And they’ll say ‘Yeah, you were great’. Thank god!”
Instead of the book he wrote a song called Trouble, a preview of his debut solo album, Somebody Else, released this month.
New music has been a long time coming from Jamieson; Grinspoon released their last album in 2012.
While the band took a brief breather in the mid 2010s, Jamieson was a seemingly constant presence on Australian stages, starring in the local production of Green Day’s American Idiot musical and joining mates including You Am
I’s Tim Rogers, Magic Dirt’s Adalita, The Living End’s Chris Cheney and Josh Pyke for national tours paying tribute to The Beatles’ White Album and The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers.
The live work offered a semisteady pay cheque but songwriting remained his creative passion, and slowly but surely over the years, he generated enough tunes to warrant pulling together an album.
His writing and production collaborators straddle his musical past and the present, from You Am I’s Davey Lane to Holy Holy’s Oscar Dawson.
Consequently, the sound of Somebody Else evokes the guitarcrunch-meets-pop-hooks of Grinspoon and the wider sonic palette of the ’90s, its swirls and stomps, its jangles and roars.
Like anyone else who lived through the glory days of Australia’s ’90s festival scene – the Big Day Outs, Livids and Homebakes – Jamieson can hear the influence of that decade everywhere in music now.
The Grinners star alongside
You Am I, Regurgitator, Frenzal Rhomb, Custard, Screamfeeder and other ’90s faves on the Spring Loaded bill, and they will also no doubt absolutely slay when they perform the evening slot on the main stage at Splendour In The Grass on Sunday.
“Yeah, that ’90s revival is a thing now, right? But everyone’s much nicer backstage now,” the cheeky rocker says.
“I remember being such a little
… I was just carrying on, let’s put it that way. I was just very competitive back in the ’90s, I always wanted to be the best! And then I realised everyone was good, so just calm down.
“The only ones we’re we re missing now (in the revival) vival) are Powderfinger and Silverchair.”
Some in the e music industry y may have Jamieson forever frozen as the mischievous, manic, often charming and occasionally annoying character racter they encountered ered backstage at a festival.
But that would ld be b to deny d his hi evolution as a songwriter and music-maker as captured on the songs of Somebody Else.
Jamieson takes songwriting and production seriously but insists the process is entirely fun, as exemplified by the album’s closing track Little Pickle. Nineties Phil
would never have written a song with a 15-year-old neighbour. “I was teaching my neighbour guitar, she was 15 at the time, and I’m at best, a perfunctory guitar player; I can play but I can’t play Jimmy Page or Slash,” Slash he says. “So I wrote wro that song with her while I was teaching teach her; it’s very simple and beautiful, be she came ca up with the t melody. She S got a writing w credit on o it and was really re stoked. “And no, I wouldn’t wo have done that 20 years ago but I wanted to give her the experience that h music i is i powerful, f that you can sit in a cabin studio with very little knowledge of guitar and write something that is going to close a record.”
As the singer who has stood beside Grinspoon guitarist Pat Davern as he busted out some of the most memorable and searing
riffs in Australian rock over the past 25 years, Jamieson could not escape bringing the noise on Somebody Else.
The crunchy guitar riffs of Trouble and Lights On are a defiant middle finger raised at the music gatekeepers who have proclaimed rock is dead.
“The guitars are pretty extreme in Trouble,” he says, smiling.
“Look, genre is dead. You can do anything you want. Davey Lane really helped on Trouble because he wanted us to rip it to shreds and build it back up with this Song 2, (Blur) big, rock, guitar power.
“The title track Somebody Else is a bit more psychedelic poptastic, they’re very different tunes, and they’re unexpected from me. I’ve never (thought) about fitting in … I think if you’re making music to fit in, that’s really weird.”
After Grinspoon’s rock star turn at Splendour In the Grass this weekend, he will head out on the Somebody Else tour on July 27.
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