Luca Brasi

Hailing from the East Coast of Tasmania, Luca Brasi have been delivering sincere, honest melodic punk since their 2009 inception. Currently on the road in support of latest album 'By a Thread', Killyourstereo.com caught up with frontman Tyler Richardson to chat about the record and tour.

You’re three dates into the album’s launch tour, how’s it been so far?

It’s been a lot more than we expected. It was our first time in Canberra on Friday, we expected nothing and it just blew us away, it was rad.

I caught you guys on the Saturday night and one thing I noticed was you kept thanking people for being warm towards the new songs, have you found that to be the case? People have been quite receptive to the new stuff?

Definitely. That was kind of the biggest thing for us as a band, to try and introduce the new songs at the moment. It’s always a weird thing to do - you don’t want to go see a band and have them play a whole new record. As much as it’s great to see bands’ new songs, the whole experience isn’t really there when it’s just all new songs. It’s kind of hard to blend in the mix of old and new, but it was great.

How was playing Beatdisc on the Sunday? I know shows there can be pretty wild, ‘cause it’s such a small space you know?

Yeah, definitely. I met Pete [Curnovic, Beatdisc] on the Saturday night and he said “I think tomorrow’s going to get a bit crazy”. We’d never been there before, we got there and thought it was going to be pretty nuts. It is a very small room, and it filled up before anyone had even played, and there was a fair amount of people outside. It escalated pretty quickly, for sure.

'By a Thread' is out now, how was recording that? I know you worked with Nic White and Linc Le Fevre again.

It’s so great to work with those guys, just because they’re really good mates and such good musicians in their own right. We’ve known those guys for a long time and played shows with their respective bands, so it was a really familiar environment. In the past, we’ve always had to sort of break up recording days - a weekend here, a weekend there - but this time, we didn’t want to do that anymore. We were like, we’re going to spend the money to get the studio for the whole time, we’re going to do crazy hours and just do the whole thing properly. It’s a way better experience, you actually feel like you’re totally immersed in the whole thing until it’s done and then you’ve got a product.


From a lyrical perspective, I notice a few recurring themes throughout the album, was there anything in that respect you wanted to try and tie the album together with?

We all come from the same town, and we all had to move away to get jobs and live further, and a lot of my lyrics, without realising it, end up being about distance and trying to figure out what you can do, and what you should be doing that fits you and your life.

You toured late last year with Bodyjar. How was that? I know they’re a band you’ve talked about growing up listening to.

That was such a great experience, seeing guys that had such a big influence on us being the most unassuming guys. They just want to have a good time at this point, I guess. They’re at a point in their career where they can kind of pick what they want to do, they’ve all got families, they all work full-time jobs, and now they just want to tour when they can and just have a good time. They’re not worried about anything, and it’s just so rad to see. 20 years on, just four dudes that want to play shows, it’s unreal.

When I think about bands like Bodyjar, as well as you guys, a lot of bands on the Poison City roster really - bands like The Smith Street Band, The Bennies - the thing that always comes up is this sense of being this sincerity and genuineness; both in terms of the music and just as people. Do you think that’s part of why acts like you guys have had that level of success?

I think you’re totally right. For me, it stems from the bands that we’ve always listened to and loved. Bands like Hot Water Music - just dudes who play music and not worry about stuff like like wearing the right clothes and looking cool. Bands like that, and Poison City in general. It’s almost kind of a reaction to “this is what’s going to look cool, this is what’s going to get this person to the show”. It’s more about being who we want to be, and getting as many people involved as we can, and not having to deal with the bullshit side of things.