Having just dropped what we think may be year’s best album, we caught up with Byron Bay-come-Berlin indie-rockers Parcels to see how they are dealing with their ‘next big thing’ tag.

Chocked full of infectious melodies, intricate harmonies and funky grooves, Parcels self-titled debut was not something that happened merely by chance. The five-piece’s dedication to the craft of songwriting and moulding themselves into a cohesive musical beast has taken years of playing together and hours of rehearsal.

Moving to the artistic capital of Europe provided the stimulus for the group to dig in and become ‘serious musicians’, and lead to their well-documented Daft Punk collaboration, which lead to their Conan performance, which lead to bigger shows, which lead to more fans, and so and so on. It’s a journey that they had never expected, though, listening to Parcels it’s undoubtedly one they deserved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kEVUSDCCb0

Currently completing a run of sold out US shows, before heading over Europe, the group will be touching down in Australia for a national headline tour in January (info here), and if their live rooftop performance is anything to go by, you won’t wan’t miss it. And check out our interview with keyboardist Patrick Hetherington below:

You guys recently performed on a rooftop in New York, which is quite an iconic thing for an artist to do. How was that for you guys? Was it special? Was it just another show?

No, that was really special. We definitely wanted to reference the Beatles, and being in New York and stuff, its so iconic being up there. It was a pretty funny day. I remember we got to the place where we were gonna shoot and we rented all this gear, and then we took it up the elevator and then the elevator stopped, and then we met the people who were filming, and they said, “yeah, we’re gonna film it up there,” and pointed at this roof with this tiny little ladder leading to it.

We just looked at all of our keyboards and stuff, and thought, “how the fuck are we going to get everything up there, that’s just impossible.” The next three hours was us, with this big crew, hoisting these keyboards. It took forever, but we somehow did it without injuries.

It was amazing, and then what’s more, just as we were finishing the session, it fully started to rain. We were stuck on this roof, stuck on this crazy roof, with all this expensive gear and no way to get it down. It was a wild day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQz5l55qtsY

How has being in Berlin kind of shaped your sound? What does Berlin offer to you that Byron, and Australia in general, couldn’t?

Musically there is obviously this techno, electric, thing going on here. We did take from that, I don’t think we can deny that influence right at the start. But, the main thing was simply being here. Finding ourselves in Europe with no money, and no prospects, and just being like, fuck now what do we do? We’ve got to practice every day, all the time. We’ve got to make this work. That really kicked us. That was the big thing, and after that it’s being able to access all the festivals and being able to spread out here like we can’t in Australia.

What’s the deal with the no spaces on the tracks on the album?

When we started, I had all the demos of our first songs on my computer and my space bar was broken. And yeah, it pretty much we were bouncing out the logic sessions, with no spaces. And it stuck. I started having fun playing around with the words to make them work as one. Now it’s kind of just like a message of unity, you know? You can take it in a bigger metaphorical sense, but, it’s a space bar… it’s a broken space bar.

There’s no shortage of upbeat dancey numbers on the record. Who is the most impressive dancer for the band?

There’s different styles, like Toto is a gentleman who’s got his Berlin-techno, he’s spent the most time in the deep techno world, so he’s got some great techno moves. Jules’ got old man funk. Noah’s got a cute little bum-shake, that he does. I think we’re pretty well-rounded dance crew.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ChDvhmRUY

Is choreographed dance moves something you guys might be looking to in the future?

I mean, I don’t want to give away too much, but yes. [laughs]

Does it feel like your success has happened quickly?

It’s been a rush. It’s been pretty crazy the last two years and it’s like flown by, and we’ve kind of gone further than we ever thought. Things are moving so fast that we’re always running to keep up with things, and before we have time to take in the fact that something’s going well we have to suddenly head this crazy big tour and then we have to do an album… So we’re so focused that we rarely get a chance to reflect on anything.

Recently we’ve been forcing ourselves to sit down occasionally and just be like, “wow this is super cool, we’re doing what we always wanted and that’s really nice.” I mean, we have a long way to go, and we don’t feel like we’re the successful band that we wanna be yet. But, yeah it’s moving really fast.

What about the Australian tour, what are you looking forward to? Is it going to be somewhat sentimental for you guys coming home for a run of headline shows?

Yeah totally, it’s really special. All the shows are going to be really special. In Melbourne, there’s like this huge crew of ex-Byron people, which is really nice, so that shows gonna be great. The big surprise last time we were there was Brisbane. It was like one of the craziest shows we’ve ever done. The crowd was like loose and in a good way, in a listening way, but just like really partying, so I’m excited to go there.

Then of course Byron. That’s really special and also kind of funny. It’s a funny feeling playing at a beer garden with all the parents there and stuff, it’s going to be really fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5By1c47GUsY