Bluebottle Kiss: Gangster Rock.

Bluebottle Kiss play the Troccadero at Surfers Paradise on Thursday, The Zoo on Friday, Rockinghorse at 2pm Saturday and The Alley Saturday night.

Since their inception nearly ten years ago (sounds like a long time when you put it like that, doesn’t it?) Bluebottle Kiss have been eking out a unique musical voice. Now, for the first time the band are stepping out as a quartet, and their already rich sound grows thicker with the release of their new long player, Revenge Is Slow. If you’re quick you get a bonus disc featuring the radio edits of new single Hasten The Blows, a couple of vids and an acoustic track.

“Just before we wrote this record we were in America for four and a half months. It was kind of, we couldn’t rehearse in America, and so a lot of things were just acoustic guitar until we got home and we built from there.”

“After the time we spent it America I was just kind of bored with the bass, basically. You can make it as easy or as hard as you want to, and I just made it a bit to easy for myself. I started out playing the guitar, so I just kind of find it more enjoyable.”

Explains guitarist, and former bassist, Ben Fletcher, who had also been burning up the fret board in a side project during time off from Bluebottle Kiss.

“I’m in another band called The Devoted Few, and we play around Sydney pretty regularly. We’ve just kind of started doing Bluebottle shows for the album tour last Saturday. We’re doing some Sydney shows before coming up to Brisbane. The single’s been out for a couple of weeks and wanted to tour after people had had a chance to hear it.”

The first taste of the album came with the Gangsterland EP of late last year, a distinctive sounding mix of amped up raw rock and deeply embedded passion.

“That was actually recorded in America while we were over there. It was done by these American guys, so it sounds a little bit different to the rest of the album. I think Hasten The Blows is more indicative of what we’re trying to do.”

“We’ve just released singles forever, it seems. An album like Fear Of Girls had three or four singles on it, and they were all pop tracks that weren’t really indicative of what we were doing, or the Bluebottle sound I guess you could say. It was like people heard the singles and came and saw us live and there were expecting a pop band and what they got was this noisy rock thing. I think we fooled a lot of people, but now I think we’re releasing singles that sound like us live, I suppose. There’s more to it.”

Revenge Is Slow certainly doesn’t shy away from straight ahead rocking out. There’s more than a fair share of feedback and wailing distortion to be found.

“It’s always fun to do something like that. I guess going back to Fear Of Girls as well; there was a lot of feedback on that record. After every song we just kind of did it for as long as we could. It’s fun to do, but it’s not always fun to hear.”

“There’s one track on the album called Let The Termites Eat Our Riches, and I’ve got to basically just make feedback through the whole song, and it’s actually quite hard to do. You’ve got to be able to let Jamie’s guitar and his singing come through, because to get feedback you need to have a really loud sound with everything turned up, so it’s got to be kind of controlled feedback, as much as it can be.”

The track Hello Stranger features a fairly mixed cast of extras, the band roping in some friends to fill out the sound.

“Jamie writes the songs for Bluebottle, and I’ve never really wanted input in it really. It comes across more strongly to the crowd this way rather than having a couple of writers, you know.”

“It was just what was in Jamie’ head at the time. He just had a lot of ideas and we had enough time for the all to come out the way we heard them. We’ve always had a lot of ideas, but never had enough time to kind of get them down. This time we had a couple of weeks to put it all together and a couple of months before that to rehearse. We had a reasonable amount of time to allow Jamie to get all the stuff in his head down on tape.”

Of course, more time in the studio equates to more money. Something that can be a problem for an independent act.

“We’re not on a record label as such. A good friend is kind of investing in the band. We’re his little investment. His retirement package,” he laughs. “He’s a big fan and a great guy. He paid for the recording and some of the publicity. It’s a lot different to being on a major label. It’s tougher to ask for money from a friend, but it’s all gone well. We’re still talking.”