Dune Rats
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Dune Rats

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In recent years Brisbane’s given birth to a wealth of addictive guitar music. The city’s relatively small size means that many of its best local bands – Violent Soho, Last Dinosaurs and Millions, to name but a few – are closely acquainted and happy to help each other out. Dune Rats have certainly reaped the benefits of this community environment. For example, the band’s Red Light Green Light film clip is a direct nod to homeboys DZ Deathrays, who battled it out with a bottle of Jagermeister in their video for The Mess Up.

Of course, instead of a straight reenactment, Dunies guitarist/vocalist Danny Beusa and drummer BC Michaels opted to choof down bong-after-bong for the song’s two minutes duration. Jansh’s entry into the band was another instance of Dune Rats pilfering from some nearby associates.

“I used to play drums in Bleeding Knees Club,” he says, “and when Bleeding Knees did their album tour, Dunies came along for the whole tour. They never had a bass player, so every night I’d play bass and then play drums. It just stemmed from that.”

Perhaps being surrounded by so many talented local acts explains why Dune Rats – a bunch of so-called slackers – have never been particularly good at slacking-off. Beusa and Michaels formed the band in 2011 and quickly demanded attention with a string of scrappy-yet-catchy pop-punk EPs. Then in March 2013, shortly after Jansh joined, Dunies embarked on their inaugural US tour. Since then, the band’s spent the majority of their time trekking all over the world.

Certain personalities aren’t suited to the succession of late nights and constant moving from place to place that characterises touring, whereas this hirsute threesome seem innately equipped for life on the road.

“The only hurdle, I guess, is getting over abroad,” Jansh says. “Once you’re there you’ve just got to seize the moment. We all figured out that the best thing and the easiest thing in the whole wide world is to just be a person. It would be stupid to shy away from asking someone a question or talking to someone else. That seems retarded on a human level. They could tell you a cool story at the least.”

Evidently, Dune Rats has flourished in overseas territories. In addition to widely traversing America (including back-to-back SXSW appearances) and Europe, the band’s touring itinerary has taken in less frequented locales, such as China and Singapore. As for the trio’s favourite destination? Well, that’d be South Africa.

“Africa blows me away,” Jansh enthuses. “All of us feel there’s something so fucking special about Africa. America too. As soon as we got to America it all fit into place. The only thing is that America has real fucking fat-prick food. Africa’s the spot. I feel in Africa we’ve had the best experiences we’ve ever had with any other people. People are really excited about the future in Africa. That’s exciting in itself.”

Remarkably, all of this globetrotting happened before Dunies had released a full-length album. However, feeling their own excitement for the future, late last year the band took a step back from touring to smash out their debut LP.

Prior to getting into a studio, the three-piece decamped to Jansh’s mother’s home on the NSW south coast for a month-long songwriting sabbatical. Or, something like that.

“I can’t even really recall writing any songs particularly,” Jansh admits. “We’d just sit around and get cooked all day until four o’clock in the afternoon. Then we’d be like, ‘Oh, should we play some songs?’ and we’d pretty much be like, ‘1,2,3 – alright.’ The songwriting process was pretty much just count to three and play what happens then try to shape it around that.”

It’s not a surprise to hear that liberal doses of mind-tickling green stuff factored into Dunies’ album preparations. While the group’s smoking regimen wasn’t always a creative accomplice – “some days we’d just get so cooked that we’d be like, ‘Fuck it let’s not even do anything today. Let’s chill’” – it did mitigate concerns about crafting the ‘perfect’ debut.

“It was just like, ‘Let’s go down and build a vegie garden and fucking get cooked and hopefully we’ll have enough songs to record an album by the end of the month’,” recalls Jansh. “I don’t think there was any time where we reflected on, ‘Fuck, how are we going with the song names and the song numbers?’ It was a really cool process. Even building a vegie garden [and] over a month actually seeing that shit can grow in there. Not just the vegie garden [growing], but the relationships between us as a band or [how] a song can grow in itself.”

Jansh’s account of the album writing process suggests it was entirely bereft of design, which could easily have resulted in an incoherent mess. Conversely, when the 12-track self-titled LP landed at the beginning of the month it was met by almost unanimous praise. While Dune Rats largely sticks with the unkempt hyperactivity of earlier releases – the band’s feel-good mission is succinctly spelled out in opening number Dalai Lama, Big Banana, Marijuana – the record’s not lacking in depth. Mid-paced tracks, such as the consoling Lola and the smitten When You’re Around, reveal a softer side to these proud choof-monsters.

Produced by Paul ‘Woody’ Annison [Children Collide, Cabins] at Melbourne’s Red Door Sounds, the record’s contagious, devil-may-care enthusiasm confidently recalls Wavves, Black Lips and good mates Bleeding Knees Club. Jansh reveals that the most direct influence on the album’s construction came from former tour mates, Los Angeles skate punks Fidlar.

“We went over to Fidlar’s house and they took us into the studio and it was just a fucking warehouse that they built a studio in and recorded that album themselves. It was so D.I.Y. – it was fucking inspiring. After seeing that, it dawned upon us that all the bullshit doesn’t matter.

“When we went into the studio we knew what needed to be done in the time that we had, without compromising or having to think that we had a deadline at all. That seemed retarded, that we were going to work towards a deadline when all we wanted to do was record the fucking songs that we made up together in a shed.”

So, that’s exactly what they proceeded to do. “It was like, ‘Let’s go record these songs so we can listen to them and give them to someone else.’ And that’s enough. I hate the idea of having to work off of stress in the studio. We just don’t work like that. It was the best process of my life; I’m so proud of the whole thing in the end.”

With a substantial product to flaunt, Dune Rats aren’t likely to be resting anytime soon. Before heading back to foreign lands, there’s business to take care of here at home. The month of June has been rechristened ‘Dune’ and right now the band’s showcasing the new record on stages all over Australia (arriving at the Corner Hotel this Friday night). Rest assured, despite scarcely having left each other’s company in the past couple of years, band morale is at an all-time-high.

“The best thing that we all did was became the best of friends,” says Jansh, still grinning. “That’s the reason why we are able to tour everywhere and never at one point be pissed off with each other. There’s no need to be pissed off at each other. It’s better to laugh.”

BY AUGUSTUS WELBY

Photo Ian Laidlaw