“We just sucked. It completely whipped us.”
Every band has a story about playing a horrible live show, and for Sydney band The Preatures, theirs is about the first time playing their now hit song Is This How You Feel?
“We played it at Flinders Bar [in Sydney] … and we just sucked,” says singer Isabella “Izzi” Manfredi. “It was a song that was written in the studio and it was built up from the bed and we just put all the bits and pieces on top of it. So to put it in a live setting was like running a marathon.”
With its staccato guitar line and catchy chorus, Is This How You Feel? has been a life changer for the five-piece. Over the past year it’s delivered an immense amount of local and international success – best new track approval from Pitchfork, #9 in Triple J’s Hottest 100, and a cool $50,000 from a songwriting competition.
Add to this a five-album contract deal with Mercury Records (rare for almost any artist these days), tours on the international festival circuit including a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and an upcoming support slot for the Rolling Stones in November, and you have a young band (members aged between 23-28) with a hell of a promising future ahead of them. All this before the release of their debut album.
So with Blue Planet Eyes (said album) dropping and the whirlwind success they’ve already achieved, you’d expect an amount of anxiety or pressure weighing on the band. So, is this how they feel?
“I think we’re just keeping that out of our minds. On one hand I think people probably expect a lot more of us than what’s on the record,” says guitarist Jack Moffitt. “But on the other hand that’s not at the centre of your concerns when you’re trying to work with what you got and trying to make it as good as it can be. It’s not about what other people think.”
Manfredi adds: “there’s this quote I like by Alex Chilton [lead singer from Big Star and The Box Tops]. ‘I know that all these big things are happening but I don’t have time for any of them’. And that’s exactly how it feels.”
Blue Planet Eyes is short – just under 35 minutes – but catchy. Think 80s rock-pop, rolling rhythms reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac, mixed with attitude like US/UK band The Kills. It’s friendly, upbeat, danceable; the type of album you’d listen to cruising down a freeway.
At their industry album launch, the band play their album back-to-back, sounding tight, completely absorbed and looking the part: denim, leather, skinny jeans. Manfredi is energetic, channelling a vibe in the vein of Debbie Harry, Joan Jett or Karen O, making use of whatever she can of the tiny stage – jogging, jumping, moving into the crowd, even doing a handstand. From the spacey, repetitive opener of Blue Planet Eyes, to the bluesy hip-shaking current single Somebody’s Talking and electro ballad Two Tone Melody, they pull each off live as they do on record.
And then there’s the dark, pulsating number Rock and Roll Rave. With lyrics referencing Sydney “dive” venues like Brighton Up Bar and Club 77, the song was written in response to the city’s recently imposed lockout laws and a comment made by the New South Wales police minister, Mike Gallacher, who declared in January: “the live music industry is dead!” He went on to say that during the 70s and 80s “the places were packed to the rafters to go and listen to the music – [it wasn’t] to go and pack it to the rafters for the grog.”
“What a complete subversion of history!” says Manfredi. “For any young person, you hear comments like that and it can’t help but make you feel you’re just very alone and very unsupported in what you’re doing ... and patronised. Like, what a patronising statement!”
Issues like this matter to the band, particularly Manfredi, who has put her name to causes such as the March Australia protests and was involved in an incident in August 2013 during the Vanda & Young songwriting competition since labelled “T-shirt Gate”. When the band won the prestigious award, Manfredi wore a T-shirt that read “F**K Abbott #sexappeal”, in reference to the comments the then opposition leader made about Liberal candidate Fiona Scott. When the publicity photos were circulated the image had been Photoshopped with the word “Abbott” removed.
When I ask Manfredi how she felt about the reaction to her shirt, I am interrupted by a label representative, who asks me to hold off on that question, seeing as it’s been asked countless times already.
Sure, she’s talked about it in the past and it’s old news. But when you’re a successful band with a platform to voice your concerns, taking up the chance to talk about issues affecting young people is important, even if it’s not necessarily communicated in the music or on the same level as the other band members.
“I don’t want people to think that if they come to a show that they need to agree with what my views are. The views in the band are greatly different,” says Manfredi. “My personal view has got nothing to do with the band’s music. I hope maybe one day it will, but at the moment it doesn’t.”
• Blue Planet Eyes is out now on Universal Music
