Them Crooked Vultures

It's the age old question. Where do bands get their influences? Does life imitate music or does music imitate life? The Beatles famously spent their first few years ripping off the American rock'n'roll they'd heard huddled around wireless radio sets in their Liverpudlian bedrooms, only to eschew that technique a few years later when they discovered the likes of marijuana and LSD. Suddenly it was their lifestyles that informed their music and it was what they did that mattered, not what they heard. For Melbourne glam rockers Vultures Of Venus, the drive behind their newest songs has come not from the Bowie and T-Rex records they love so much, but from the alternative lifestyles they like to lead.

“We enjoy going out to full-on electronic bush parties for a few days, like Rainbow Serpent and that kind of thing,” explains guitarist Simon Quinn. “We just went to one last week that our friend held. We took a generator out to the bush and everyone stayed out there for a few days. You can't help but be influenced by that – I played a four-hour DJ set out there as the sun was coming up. I like electro, minimal, breaks, glitch. I like all sorts of music and I think every genre has great artists within it. We like to get inspiration from that sort of thing, you know?”

This is not to say that Vultures Of Venus have abandoned their glam formula. Releasing their debut self-titled album in 2010, a record heavy on stomping Brit-pop, the boys have worked hard to incorporate a multitude of genres into their sound. “We've got about 15 new songs that we're looking at that are a lot more electronic this time around. The glam influence is definitely still there though,” says lead singer Jefferson Morrow. “The latest single (Garden Of Earthly Delights) is a bit like T-Rex in the vocal delivery and it's quite a guitar-heavy track compared to everything else we've been doing, but we've been moving in more electronic directions as well. We've been producing a lot more spacey sounds and really building up from the bridge up to the choruses.”

One reason behind this sea change is the fact that Quinn, Morrow and third member Craigus McVegas (we're starting to doubt the authenticity of these names) have recently started operating without a drummer. Far from letting this alteration narrow their possibilities, Vultures Of Venus have used it to enhance their already infamous live performances. “Now that we don't have a drummer, we've got that space at the back of the stage that we can fill up with fun things,” says Quinn. “We spend a bit of time writing incidental pieces, for between songs in our set to add a bit of atmosphere. I just bought a smoke machine and some strobes, some extra lighting stuff and we work with projections as well.”

Another element serving to spice up the Vultures Of Venus live show is a continued collaboration with a group of ladies lovingly named the 'Venus Man Traps'. Anyone who has witnessed a set by these boys will probably know a little bit about what the girls get up to, but for the uninitiated (or even just the slightly curious) it certainly sounds like something to behold. “The Man Traps are coming along for the next run of shows,” Quinn continues. “It's sort of burlesque performance art stuff. These girls have been doing it for a long time so they're very good. It's like a combination of pole dancing and go-go dancing. They also use bubble guns, which is pretty fun. They choreograph it themselves, so often we don't see the show until we're performing – which can be distracting.”