Close Counters

We were lucky enough to host Close Counter’s as part of their live Australian tour in 2023. They headlined a sold-out two stage warehouse party, which we threw in celebration of Holy Pav’s second birthday. Five months later they took to the stage at Strawberry Fields Festival, we caught up with them after it all went down…

How was Strawberry Fields for you?

 Finn – We had a great time, it’s our fourth time being there, and we feel right at home. It’s just a great time to see all the local acts and friends play there as well as international quality artists.

Allan – We were chuffed to be playing after Ezra Collective, they’re a world class act. It’s a great location for a festival, it’s a good meeting point for people from Victoria and NSW.

 Finn was saying it was the largest live set you’d done in terms of crew on the stage!

Finn – Yeah it probably was, in terms of the band size. We had eight people, it was a real reunion, we hadn’t done a big live set in a few months since our headline in Melbourne at the Corner Hotel, it was a really nice time to get back together with everyone and play a dusty doof.

 Does it get the heart racing jumping on stage in a format that might not be as tightly rehearsed?

Allan – Everyone we pick are such good confident musicians, we’re so lucky to have such good players. We had Robyn on percussion, we had two really good rehearsals with here, but even if we hadn’t, I’d just trust her wholeheartedly to carry it.

Finn – We’ve played with Lucky, Matt Hayes, Allysha Joy, we had Ryo on guitar, Annalisa on backing vocals and we’re trusted family so we can take those risks and know that it’ll fall in some shape or form. 

That’s wild, a full line-up of Melbourne’s heaviest. Also, congrats on the Music Victoria award a few weeks back, you must be psyched on that!

Finn – Thanks, yeah it was a big surprise. Allan was there to claim our bit of granite. We’re claiming that the Music Victoria Awards is more important than the Grammy’s.

Allan – (laughs) I was lapping it up all week. I had the silliest week of just taking the award with me wherever I went, to the pub and other inappropriate places, I took it on an award tour.

Where do you find the most recognition in music, is it awards or other places?

Allan – We never really set out to win an award. I think doing some of those special live shows and song writing sessions are some of the more ‘pinch me’ moments.

Finn – The award is just helps boost moral really; it also gives everyone that’s supported and developed the project an opportunity to celebrate together. It’s certainly a moment for the mums to share on their Facebook! But our favourite moments are often those of creativity.

And I know it’s a tough one, but can I ask you about your favourite live show? Both on stage and as a punter.

Allan – I’d say Meredith, it ticks the box of the most people we’ve played to, it was midnight, we were after Liam Gallagher which we always laugh about. If I could include a second fun one, we also got to play half-time at the Reclink Community Cup at 1PM to thousands of kids and families. I saw Björk with the Aurora Orchestraat Royal Albert Hall in London. One of the most special performances I’ve seen. 

Finn – I’m gonna go for a completely different vibe, Joe Hisaishi, composer of lots of the Studio Ghibli soundtracks, that was one of the more nostalgic performances I’ve seen. Any fans of those works, Spirited Away or such, it was one of those crazy moments.

Thanks heaps for the yarn, hope you swing down this way again. 

Finn – Yeah, appreciate you touching base, it’s nice to keep in contact and keep the community growing, which is something you’re obviously so much a part of. Hopefully next time we come down we can make the show bigger and better for everyone!

Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird

“Music is a universal way of communicating, but it’s also just making a bunch of sounds. Some days I'll be hunched over a piano, studying some complex jazz theory, and then five minutes later just have this childish notion that I'm just making noises. It’s simultaneously the most complicated mathematical scientific process and the most infantile experience. It can be both of those… so playful and nourishing whether you're writing it or in front of it.”

 How was the EU/UK tour? Any major mishaps?

The shows all went miraculously well for most of us, but Fran has been doing a psychology degree for the past three years and her exam period fell right over the tour. I’d be listening to podcasts or going for a run to explore the city we were playing, and she’d either be in full sensory deprivation mode with her headphones on studying or doing exams at 4:30 in the morning after a show. At stages she didn’t know what country we were in.

Outrageous behavior, what a powerhouse! Does tour fatigue impact motivation for the project, or even to launch into next writing and recording period?

It’s a double-edged sword. It does take a lot out of you. But I’m also deeply invested in the other things that I do – I teach at a creative writing school for kids and teenagers which I adore. I don’t think it’s this eb-and-flow where music’s the big thing and everything else is recovering from that. It’s oscillating between other projects which also require energy. I'm always grateful to be musically exhausted because I have other creative avenues to go into for a few months at a time. 

But then the other side of the sword is, even though touring is exhausting, you’re amongst the band continuously for weeks and weeks, just constantly playing your instruments and sound checking, so it’s a really creative time as well. I'm writing a lot while we’re touring. It's the same when we’re in a recording studio, most of the ideas or the seeds for the next record come out in studio sessions for the current album, because we’re just messing around and experimenting. So it’s simultaneously exhausting, but really creatively, like, lucrative as well. 

True, so a little bit of that new material it can be quite organic?

Yeah it's kind of a mix. A lot of the time the initial seed will come from something I'm just jamming around with in a studio session. I'll be recording a song for one album and then you just like have some little moment and you're like “Oh, shit! Like, that's cool. Maybe that’s something for the next album.” I do most writing by myself at home, it's pretty unromantic. I deliberately don't really keep a studio at home. I just have a piano, like a very simple keyboard and a guitar with virtually no effects pedals or anything. I'd just like to keep it really unadorned and it all faces a blank white wall. Not to take any of the romance out of it, but to me it’s kind of like desk job stuff. It's just like looking at this wall and sketching out the songs in a lot of detail before we then take them back to a studio. 

How has that process changes between albums New Romancer and Smiles of The Earth?

I think a lot of that was just what the songwriting was about. New Romancer was just this heartbroken record, and up until that point I'd just been a really insular writer. I'd been involved with other creative projects and realized I had, like, quite a controlling voice, which is not always like something you want in the room. But for me, that was the initial sign… I need to be writing my own stuff.

I've always had this intense creative energy, you know? I want control of what I'm creating. And that's what drove the first two EPs and albums for Cousin Tony's. Don't get me wrong, the other band members brought a lot to the table, but I was coming in with fully formed songs, you know? But then things started changing. I moved out of that heartbreak phase, started feeling more open, you know, emotionally and creatively.

But that was also a point where that existing line-up had been together for a while. And I was just like, oh, this is definitely Cousin Tony's Brand New Firebird. It's not going to change again. And we've played a lot now. And everyone's just got such a unique voice. I'm not really getting them in as, like, session musicians to bow to my vision. Everyone's got their own vibe, their own style. It was like, "whatever Pete can do with this guitar part, it's gonna be better than what I could come up with, or whenever Fran can sing on this, it'll be cooler than something I'd come up with”.

There was this tipping point, you know? Like, I read this Jack White interview where he talks about wanting to be the worst musician in your band. And I was like, "Yeah, man, that's it!" Pete's a way better guitar player than me, Matt (bass) is like our favorite musician of all time, and Nick and Fran and Ollie, they're just on another level. I was humbled, man. And I realized, it's not about me trying to outdo them, you know? It's about making space for their talent.

So, yeah, there were a bunch of reasons, but I just knew that if I stepped back and let the band shine, we'd create something truly special, you know? Like, the most elevated, transcendent album we could make happened when I got out of my own way.

Yeah, totally. Obviously, each album's going to sound different and feel different to yourself and to the consumer, but I really felt that listening to Smiles of Earth when it first came out.

Thanks, man. And yeah, like, you know, there are some somber moments on that record, but it's generally pretty joyous. And I think that's just the product of six really close friends, it sounds kind of like friendship to me. It sounds like six people having a really good time. And that has always been the overarching feedback from our live shows as well, even though there's a bunch of harrowing Nick Cavey ballads in the middle, everyone’s feedback is just, “you guys look like you're having so much fun singing those songs” and we are! We really, really are and that's how it feels to be in a studio. Genuinely, there's so much love in the band and we let that into the recording studio on Smiles of Earth. It’s not trying to be like overtly happy or anything but there is definitely a lot of joy and euphoria in the record because it just sounds and feels like what the band is.

Any other inspirations for that feeling?

As vague as it sounds, I just like having a “bigness.” I listen to so much different music and I really admire, like, things that are quite minimal and subtle and classical and jazzy, but the music that tends to come out of me is, like, pretty maximalist. It's big. I like big textures. I don't really listen to bands like this anymore, but when I started Cousin Tony’s it was the likes of M83 and MGMT that I was listening to, people that sounded like they were just having a lot of fun in the studio and trying to make sounds that were big and colourful and synaesthetic. 

Hard to argue with that sub-era of music. It was and still is a big sound. Did it play a part in your early journey into music?

It’s probably 10 years ago now, but right before I started Cousin Tony's I was doing an advertising degree but writing music in all my spare time. I was literally crying on my way to Uni because I felt so out of balance with myself. Then I saw Bon Iver twice in one week. They played at Sydney Myer Music Bowl and then Golden Plains two days later. I remember that first show, again with like the “bigness” thing, the amount of textual information in that sound was the closest thing I could ever describe to like how it feels to be me, or how it feels be a human. 

I know that's how a lot of people can feel, but that’s how your favourite music makes you feel. I didn't know someone could articulate this feeling or these feelings so clearly. Seeing that the first time was amazing, and then seeing it two nights later there was an actual light bulb moment in the middle of the show where I knew I’d have to start writing music. That was obviously, like, pretty transformative. It changed the course of my life within like a week. I went and pulled out of my degree…

Oh, shit. 

Yeah. I mean, like I'd been having this conversation for a long time, but then it was just something like in the middle of that show, watching this guy do it. The second time I saw him, I was right up at the front. There was a human quality to him all of a sudden where I was like “I don't think I'll ever get to that point, but you know, this guy is two meters away from me, but I now need to go on this like huge fucking journey for 10 -20 years to get to that stage.” 

And yeah, like literally quit Uni that week and recorded my first batch of songs which became the Queen of Hearts EP. I recorded that in Sydney, and flew it straight to Melbourne like the next day with just like a CD of the raw mixes and submitted that to the VCA as an audition tape to study composition and then got into that course. It all happened within like a month, and I just completely flipped my life around.

That stems from listening to so much music… but that was like as close as I could imagine to having a light bulb moment. It’s a bit of an old example but like nothing's ever really going to top that for me. 

I’d be surprised if anything did! When can we expect a few hints of what's to come?

We're halfway through album number four. We started last year and then began touring half way through. Now we are starting to look at doing the second half. But that'll still take us the next few months.

I feel like we're due for more music, but I really like taking our time with albums and especially with the song writing. I don't know if that’s something I learned. I have always just naturally taken my time with music especially with Cousin Tony stuff. Everything we've done prior to that just took its time and I didn’t really, like, sign off on a song until it was perfect to me. It's fun to relearn that lesson, to go slow and get things right. I've proved to myself that this is my style, and it is the style of the band. you know, and again, it's not the correct approach. The next producer or songwriter might sit down and tell you the exact opposite. But for me, patiently is how I want to do things. And so that's how we're doing this record. 

Can’t wait mate, thanks for the chat!