Back on patrol
After an eight year hiatus, Fur Patrol are back on stage – but only briefly. Grant Smithies asks them why.
The last time I saw Fur Patrol was 10 years ago, through bloodshot eyes and a haze of cigarette smoke in a Melbourne bar called The Rose. It was bloody loud that night, but there was no stage, no PA system, no instruments.
It was just us, shouting at each other in a crowded room across a couple of tables of empty glasses.
Drink? The assembled men and women were thirsty, as I recall. Over the course of many hours, things had degenerated to the point where normal decorum had been abandoned and the conversation had become mired in filth.
Someone invented a game in which you could only leave the table if you were prepared to describe the physical act of going to the dunny in the most graphically offensive manner possible, trumping whoever had gone before.
With a rare facility for pithy metaphors and indelible visual images that had served her well as a songwriter, Fur Patrol singer Julia Deans won every time, hands down.
Assorted other New Zealanders were there, too, including past and present members of such illustrious New Zealand bands as Cassette, Headless Chickens, D-Super, The Inkling and Head Like A Hole.
Many told war stories about the harsh realities of trying to make a living in Australia from rock’n’roll.
‘‘I remember that night,’’ says former Fur Patrol bassist, Andrew Bain, 10 years on and now back in Wellington.
‘‘It was over in Fitzroy, during a pretty strange time in the life of the band. Our guitarist Steve Wells had moved to Paris to become a photographer, and the rest of us were trying to carry on as a trio. I remember me and Simon from Fur Patrol, and Tom from Cassette, were so broke, we ended up putting insulation in ceilings together.’’
He pauses just long enough for me to form a horrid mental picture of hungry New Zealand musicians, lashing with sweat as they crawled around claustrophobic ceiling cavities in the Melbourne summer heat, dodging rats and nesting snakes and poisonous spiders, pushing slabs of itchy fibreglass between roof joists.
‘‘I couldn’t handle it, to be honest. It was really hard work. People say being in a band is hard, but compared to that, it always seemed a lot easier to be on stage.’’
Still, nothing lasts forever. A few years later, in 2008, Fur Patrol called it quits. Wells had established himself as a noted fashion photographer in France. Deans began to write more intimate songs better suited to a solo career. Bain was ‘‘really homesick’’, and decided to jump the ditch back to Wellington.
‘‘It felt like we had given Australia a really good shot. I lived there seven years, Julia was there at least 10, and our drummer Simon’s still there, doing sound for other bands. Really, we were all pretty knackered by the time we went our separate ways, but we were happy with what we’d achieved together.’’
Fair enough. Two EPs. Three albums. A bunch of memorable singles, including the charttopping Lydia in 2000. A reputation as a tight yet raucous live band on both sides of the Tasman. A good innings, surely?
And now, after eight years of silence, a short reunion tour is planned, to play support for incoming British showgaze band, Swervedriver. ‘‘How could we refuse?’’ says Bain. ‘‘Swervedriver is a kick-arse band, and this year’s the 20th anniversary of when we got together in 1996.’’
Every reunion requires an origin story, and Bain gladly delivers. Sly as a fox, he skips over the fact that he and Wells first played together in ‘‘a Christian band with a vanilla popcorn name’’ at Wellington College, a story relayed to me by Sunday Star Times editor Jonathan Milne, who once managed a lunchtime gig in which the student
‘I never felt like we’d entirely broken up. We drove each other f***ing mental sometimes, but at the heart of things, we were family.’ Julia Deans
audience took to pelting said Godbothering band with balled-up brochures advertising the next Inter-School Christian Fellowship meeting.
Bain starts instead in the early ’90s, when Deans was in ‘‘thrashy Irish band’’ Banshee Reel, while he and Wells were in another Wellington band called Svelte.
‘‘Julia got Steve and I on board to record some demos, and we ended up with all these songs we’d spent months rehearsing, so we made up a name and did a one-off gig at [Wellington venue] Bodega.’’
Yes, about that name. There’s a widespread assumption that Fur Patrol was a dodgy slang term referring to some lustful young Romeo out on the town on a Friday night, looking to get laid.
‘‘Yeah, that’s right. We came up with the name in 10 minutes and thought it was hilarious. But it actually came from a magazine article Julia had read about depilatory creams and assorted other hair removal products. It was supposed to be just a one-off, but that first gig went really well so people started booking us for other shows.’’
This was 1996. Within the next few years, Fur Patrol recorded their Starlifter EP, followed by their impressive debut album, Pet, in 2000. ‘‘Both got some traction on student radio, but then Pet’s third single, Lydia, came out and everything just took off.’’
By which point, Fur Patrol had buggered off to Melbourne in search of bigger audiences, new venues, more fun.
‘‘That was weird, actually. Because Lydia had topped the charts, we had to keep coming back to New Zealand to play, and the shows suddenly had five times as many people coming along.’’
So, rather than three crusty uni students and a greyhound on a string, you had what? Fifteen people?
‘‘Exactly, and a whole room full of greyhounds. We had finally arrived! But we stayed on in Melbourne for the next five years, until Steve got sick of living month to month, and moved to Paris. At that point, we took a year off while we worked out how to carry on as a three-piece.’’
Times in Australia were mixed. There were periods spent subsisting on two-minute noodles, but they also scored high profile support slots for Aussie acts Killing Heidi, The Cruel Sea, and You Am I and much-hyped visitors The Strokes and Dandy Warhols.
Momentum was lost while the band extricated itself from what Deans once told me was a ‘‘pooey, absolutely stinky banana record deal’’ with Warners in Australia.
They signed with Universal in 2003, after which came three more
records: Collider (2003), The Long Distance Runner EP (2007), and Local Kid (2008). The sound was now harder and darker, a long way from their breakthrough album,
Pet: less pop, more rock. It’s a familiar progression for New Zealand bands who relocate to Australia, who often arrive back home a couple of years later touting a far blunter version of their former sound.
I imagine this comes from playing big Aussie booze barns, trying to make yourself heard over a crowd of half-interested punters who are waiting for the main act, holding high-volume conversations while drunk and speeding off their nut.
‘‘Yeah, I think so. We went over with a pretty well-developed sound, then got booked for all these tours where you get a halfhour support slot before the headliner.
‘‘It’s pretty demoralising. There’s no time to develop a range of moods on stage, so you just have to blast it out and make as much impact as you can.’’
We are Fur Patrol and we have come for your ears. The best single from this period, 2003’s Precious, careers along on a mean and snarly riff, the bass throbbing like a headache. Shot in LA, the video shows Deans seducing audience members at gigs, taking them back to her hotel room then slicing off their ears as mementoes. Ah, the symbolism! The ‘‘more aggressive’’ songs on
Collider were a reaction to the Australian environment, Bain says. ‘‘But Julia also wrote a lot more subtle things throughout that period, some of which ended up on our last album, Local Kid.’’
And then, with more of a whimper than a bang, it was over.
So, why the decision to sign up for a tour now, eight years on?
‘‘Really, it was just a fluke. We hadn’t even been in the same room together for about six years, then a mate’s studio was getting demolished in Wellington around the time our drummer was coming back from Australia on holiday. We decided to play a few songs at the studio’s farewell party.’’
Big fun was had. Soon afterwards, the local promoter of the Swervedriver tour made contact, suggesting Fur Patrol briefly reconvene as the support act.
‘‘He knew we’d opened for Swervedriver in Wellington years ago, so it felt like a nice circular sort of thing.
‘‘And it helped that I was a massive Swervedriver fan. I love their huge lumbering grooves and big guitar crescendos, and they were a key band for me during that phase in your early 20s when every new musical discovery seems like a life-changing moment that helps form your identity. You hear them and go, Oh, my God! This is who I am! This is me!’’
Bain grew up obsessed with this sort of noisy British indie music, alongside the usual Flying Nun suspects: The Clean, Straitjacket Fits, JPSE, Bailter Space.
‘‘Yeah, and I always tried to inject some of that into Fur Patrol, too. I loved Julia’s songs, but I also thought ‘I’m gonna turn this into a Stereolab song, and this one’s gonna sound like Sonic Youth’s
Dirty, and this one would be great with a big Swervedriver bassline’. Listening back to our records now, I can still hear those subtle references, though they might not be so obvious to others.’’
Before the tour, the trio will get together in Deans’ basement on Auckland’s North Shore for rehearsals. ‘‘We’ll practise for about a week after Simon comes over from Melbourne, where he sits on his arse, living like a king off our old Fur Patrol royalties. Actually, no. He probably only earns enough to buy a half-pint pot of beer once a fortnight.’’
Given that it’s been 20 long years since they got together and adopted that dodgy name, some nostalgia is surely in order. What does Bain reckon was special about Fur Patrol in its heyday?
‘‘When we started out, I just thought we made noisy guitar pop with a cute girl vocal. But in hindsight, we were good at taking a lot of disparate influences and making pop songs you could have a real emotional connection with. Julia was central to that, of course. She wasn’t just some sort of rock chick cliche – she was a great songwriter with an unusually strong voice, and a lot of swagger and stage presence. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was also hot!’’
So hot, in fact, that she picked up the annual ‘‘Female Fox’’ gong at the bNet Music Awards in 1999. ‘‘Yeah, that’s true. But let’s not forget that was the same year [Pumpkinhead/Stereo Bus guitarist] Francis Hunt’s dog was also given a bFM Fox award!’’
A few hours later, I track down Deans in Christchurch, where she’s teaching a songwriting workshop.
‘‘The fox award? Mate, I was totally stoked about that. I think it was me, Shayne Carter, and the dog that year, so they obviously weren’t taking it too seriously. But overall, I got pretty sick of all the ‘sexy lead singer’ questions from male interviewers. I stayed polite, even though I was thinking ‘Please, don’t be dicks’.’’
There were endless comparisons to Courtney Love in the early days. ‘‘It was utterly mystifying to me. It was, like, oh, you’re a chick who plays guitar so you much be like this other random chick who plays guitar. If I had a dick, of course, nobody would be making these sort of bogus comparisons.’’
Deans has no regrets that Fur Patrol folded when it did.
‘‘We were really hungry and excited to give it a go, I’m really proud of the albums we made, and I learnt a lot working with those guys. In the early days, I was pretty pushy about how I wanted my songs to sound, but it didn’t take long to build up trust and collaborate more. At first, you come in with these shaky, halfformed songs and it’s like handing over your children.’’
I imagine so. And what if your bandmates are bad parents? It’s entirely possibly that they will let your songs stay up too late in smokey rooms, or fall in with the wrong crowd, or drink heavily, or take drugs.
‘‘Yeah, or they might just feed them too much sugar! That can really ruin a good song. But in the end I came to really appreciate each band member’s individual musicality, and they made each song greater than the sum of its parts.’’
By the time Fur Patrol wrapped things up, everyone was pretty knackered.
‘‘It had been a rough few years, and it felt right to do other things for a while, but I never felt like we’d entirely broken up. We drove each other f***ing mental sometimes, but at the heart of things, we were family. Those guys are like my brothers. There’s a lot of mutual respect, because we’d been through so much together.’’
Since the split, Deans has undergone something of a musical makeover, from ear-slicing ‘‘rock chick’’ to more serious singer/ songwriter. There have been solo gigs backed by the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, arts festival shows covering Joni Mitchell and Jacques Brel, winery tours in which giant herds of middle-aged, middle-class listeners lounge about among the vines on picnic blankets, drinking pinot and eating prosciutto rolls.
‘‘Have I finally become a proper grown-up? Maybe so. My last solo album came out in 2010, and there’s another one due pretty soon, but in between times, I’m delighted to have gotten some decent paid gigs for a change. It’s a great feeling, not to have to worry about the rent, and covering Jacques Brel and Joni Mitchell has taught me heaps as both a singer and a songwriter.’’
Those attending the Swervedriver shows should expect something a lot more raucous, however. ‘‘Yeah, we’ve always been a lot noisier than people expected from hearing our radio songs. When Lydia first came out, people would come along expecting pretty ballads and get buried in guitar feedback and heavy drums. But yeah, I’m really looking forward to being on stage with Simon and Andrew again, and playing some loud electric guitar, because I don’t really get to do that any more.’’
It feels good, she says, to be doing this short tour purely for the fun of it, without any pressure to write songs together, or do any new recordings.
‘‘Don’t get me wrong – we’re all quietly sh***ing our pants! But when we rattled through a few songs at our mate’s party last year, it reminded everyone how much we love playing together. Also, Swervedriver is probably Andrew’s favourite band, so if we’d turned down this support slot, he would have treated it like an act of cruelty. It would be like putting a tiny puppy outside in the snow.’’