For The Love Of It

There seems to be something in the water supply down Geelong way just now. For some reason, the kids are getting heavily into the garage-rock sounds of 1965/6 with a fervour not seen since, well, 1966. Right now, the most exciting exponents of that “perfect '60s garage-punk” sound, as far as the majority of punters and critics alike seem to feel, are The Frowning Clouds, five young friends who, in just four years have released two singles, a cassette and two albums – 2011's Listen Closelier and 2013's Whereabouts – both locally on their own Anti-Fade and internationally on an obscure Spanish label called Saturno Records, as well as doing two European tours.

So committed are they to the whole 1965 aesthetic, they even cut the first track off Whereabouts, All Night Long on a four-track cassette recorder in the lounge room of friend Owen Penglis of The Straight Arrows, barely five minutes after writing it. None of this digital recording bollocks for The Frowning Clouds! They even release on vinyl.

Still, Whereabouts does exhibit a few influences from the years just before and after 1965/6 – a dash of surf guitar here, a wash of psychedelia there.

“It's a different drummer from our previous recordings and stuff,” Zac Olsen begins, by way of explanation. “So I guess that kind of opened it up a little and sort of exploited his talents. It keeps the inspiration going, it was good fun.”

Olsen's inspiration is as much the other two writers in the band – guitarists Nick Van Bakel and Daff Gravolin – as any of the obscure '60s gems they might discover in the dusty corner of some op-shop.

“Nick or Daff will come in and show me a song that they've recorded and that makes me wanna do one and I'm assuming it'll just keep going around – I'll show them an idea and that'll make them wanna do a song. So that and all the great old music that we like listening to. It's a vicious cycle really! Everyone in the band is really capable of making great songs and they've got other side projects that they'd be the full songwriter for and stuff. We can trust everyone's judgement a lot, so it's easy to get songs finished.”

So what is it about music that was made a good 30 years before the members of The Frowning Clouds were even born that so captures their collective imaginations?

“When The Frowning Clouds started and we were learning our instruments, all the music we were listening to was this era of music. We couldn't really play anything before we started the band – we just wanted to start a band – so now it kind of naturally just comes out, in the way I play at least anyway.

“It's not really so much a conscious thing, 'trying' to write a song that sounds '60s – I've learnt that way. I listen to all sorts of other stuff, from all decades and that, but I guess by way of the gear that I own and just listening to it, the way I learnt to play guitar, it just sort of comes out that way.”

Olsen informed The Music that the Monday before this interview, The Frowning Clouds had completed their third album, so you'll get to hear a few new songs at the inaugural Panama Festival down in Tasmania.

As for that Spanish label, it turns out that the debut Frowning Clouds single, Lovin' You, was actually also their debut release. Olsen just happened to be chatting to a guy on MySpace (remember that?), who had similar tastes, mentioned he was in a band and the guy's friend turned out to be setting up a label.

“They keep putting out our stuff and we put out theirs,” Olsen explains. “It works for us – we've had the opportunity to go over there a few times and play. There's not really much more you could ask than to be able go over and play gigs and stuff. There's a real sort of super niche, I guess, '60s market over in Europe but while we do obviously love the '60s and sound very '60s, I think, when we go over there, people were kind of surprised. A lot of the bands there like go into the clubs and pretend like it's 1965 or whatever and they fully believe it is, while we're not trying to make believe or pretend – it's just that we really love the stuff – we just make music that's inspired by it.

“Like the next album, sure it's definitely got '60s sounds and harmonies and stuff, but at the same time, the songs probably aren't… I don't know; it's hard to explain, but I think the sort of diehard '60s crew were a little disappointed when we got over there and played this last time, for some reason, compared to the first album, which was way more… I mean, we were 16 or 17 and pretty much trying to sound like The Rolling Stones,” he chuckles. “So we'd kind of grown up by the time we went back there. But there are a lot of good bands there that are doing a nice, sort of modern, refreshing twist on '60s music, which is more in line with what we're trying to do. It's not just real throwback niche market.”