Article images by Sam Brumby
Having seen Sticky Fingers play to a seemingly endless crowd at Splendour In The Grass, it’s clear that these Sydney larrikins have struck a chord with Australians at large, and are preparing for further domination with the release of their album Westway (The Glitter & The Slums) tomorrow.
The record release will coincide with a North American tour before the band return for several sold-out shows and a more extensive national run in March 2017. We caught up with Freddy Crabs and Beaker Best from the band to talk about the Inner-West, wangs and the creative process behind Westway. See the banter below and make sure you grab the album tomorrow – it’s excellent:
You guys have come off playing a massive sundown set at the Ampitheatre at Splendour In The Grass. How was that?
Beaker: It was probably our biggest gig to date.
Crabs: It was pretty surreal man, just standing there and seeing all those people. You see all these little lights right at the back, they could’ve just been ants or fuckin’ armadillos. It just gets to a point, you reach a threshold and it’s like, there’s just a lot of cunts.
Beaker: There is a lot of cunts out there.
Crabs: I think we were genuinely nervous again as well. We hadn’t really been like that before, because it’s a huge deal for us to play Splendour. We grew up going to that festival, and now going there and playing Main Stage and getting the second biggest crowd – whoever was counting – it was a pretty big deal for us.
One of the bands you shared the stage with at Splendour was DMA’s. How’s it feel seeing so many bands from the Inner-West killing it on an international scale?
Beaker: It’s awesome. Jagwar Ma, The Preatures, DMA’s – they all used to play at The Annandale where I used to work. It’s pretty cool.
Crabs: One Day, all those lads, we all grew up with them . The Annandale – half the band was working there at one point, so we saw them constantly.
Beaker: You’d go backstage and it’d just feel like you were at Marley Bar, because everyone was there.
Crabs: It’s good with the DMA’s, they’re absolutely killing it. We don’t really see them anymore. I ran into Johnny Took actually at Gold Bar at Splendour, and he was like “Man, I swear I don’t see you guys anymore, I just wanna hang out again. Let’s just go out for a milkshake or something and hang out properly again.” I was like “Yeah bro, I wanna do that to but you’re never here. How are we gonna do that?” That was our catch up, Splendour at the Gold Bar.
The cover for your upcoming album Westway features a photograph of your stained glass window from The Lord Gladstone. How did the stained glass window eventuate?
Crabs: We’ve got a studio across from Marrickville Bowlo, and everytime we had a writer’s block – every 15 minutes – we’d just go over and have a schooner and play pool. We saw this stained glass window at this Bowlo.
Beaker: It was this stained glass window of these guys playing lawn bowls, and it looked so good!
Crabs: This is like midday, the sun’s shining down – the stained glass window was at its prime. I don’t even know what it was, but it was sick. And we were like “Fuck, what if we got ourselves a stained glass window?” I wanted to be Statue of David, fully naked with my little wang but that didn’t come through. It was a tight turnaround. I started talking to Paddy (from The Lord Gladstone) and were like “Look, we have this idea, we have a stained glass window and feel it could work well at this pub.”
Beaker: He had a 30 second pause and was like “… Who the fuck came up with this idea?”
Crabs: And he decided to put it at the front of the pub. We never thought he was gonna do that.
You recorded Westway in Thailand. How do you think that affected the aesthetic of the album?
Crabs: We recorded Land of Pleasure in this studio called Rocking Horse in Byron Bay, which was this mad mansion attached to a studio. We thought, “Fuck, we were really spoilt for that, we have to step it up.” Then we found this place, Karma Studios just outside of Pattaya. It was like this Big Brother house, a fortress attached to a studio.
Beaker: We all had our own bedrooms, a backyard.
Crabs: We had maids cooking us feeds, three meals a day.
Beaker: Our washing everyday. It was almost too clean.
Crabs: A fridge constantly replenished with beers. We had two bottles of Jack Daniels there – and everytime we’d finish them, they’d just come back and replace them. It got to the point where we had to hide them from certain band members because we weren’t getting anything done. I guess the actual record is a lot more live, Land of Pleasure is a bit more production. It translates live a lot better… It’s a lot more organic sounding, there’s not too much we’re doing to it. We were a lot more prepared, we rehearsed the songs a lot better. It worked out really well.
You’ve said that this album is a lot darker lyrically than previous efforts. What inspired this change of route?
Crabs: We had some pretty hectic times last year. Seamus and Paddy had broken up with their long-time girlfriends. It was also a lot of touring which was getting the better of us as well. We had about three months to write the album, and it came from a period where a lot of shit was happening… It’s real potent, we haven’t really done anything like this yet.
Beaker: It doesn’t sound like a dark album though.
Crabs: It’s dark lyrics but it’s matched with upbeat music backing, so sometimes you wouldn’t realise it’s a dark song on first listen . This album, there’s a few more ballads, there’s a song called ‘Angel’ on there which is about breaking up with a girlfriend. There’s definitely those moments, but there’s all the extra flavours there that we always do.
Beaker: It’s bigger, better sounding in every way. Bigger drum beats, more guitar solos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ-pnbOxhcY
