Ahead of their new single and a hometown show at The Catfish, Creature Fear frontman Cameron Graham talks genre, character, and the band's next left turn.
Naarm’s Creature Fear have spent the better part of a decade quietly becoming one of the city’s most reliably entertaining live bands.
Fronted by songwriter Cameron Graham alongside co-vocalist Louise Gaul, drummer Larni Pearce, guitarist Jason Mercieca and bassist Liam Brennan, the band have built a reputation on witty, character-driven songwriting and a live show that’s as much theatre as gig.
With new single Mission To Love You out now and a Catfish show locked in for September 12, I wanted to find out what’s actually driving the band at this point in its life.
Creature Fear
- Saturday 12 September
- The Catfish, Melbourne
- Tickets here
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I asked Cameron Graham a fairly simple question: what actually is “retro pop rock,” and is that what Creature Fear sound like?
“It’s always been so hard to answer what genre we are when people asked, and I guess that one felt like it had a bit of truth in it,” he says.
“We’re definitely not trying to sound retro. But it is what inspires me.”
That’s the thing his answers kept teaching me: Creature Fear aren’t a band that’s landed on a sound so much as one that keeps deciding, song by song, what kind of band they feel like being.
New single Mission To Love You is the latest proof.
It’s a dual-vocal duet between Graham and bandmate Louise Gaul, about two people who keep almost finding each other and never quite do.
“The track is a dialogue between the two singers as they desperately chase each other through the night,” he tells me.
“Due to misfortune and bad timing, they never quite make it eye to eye. They reflect on their on again off again love, and plead that they don’t fall into the trap of being star-crossed lovers.”
It’s a heavier premise than you’d expect from a band whose live shows have a reputation for dogs, witches, and general silliness, and when I put that to Graham, he agreed it’s basically a rule for what makes the setlist.
“The upbeat silly stuff about dogs and witches generally makes the live show,” he said.
“I do write slower songs too, but most of the time they just don’t make the set.”
Mission, though, was built for the stage from the start: “an excuse to get weird, put on a character and jump around a bunch.”
I wanted to know where that instinct to perform, rather than just play, came from, and Graham’s answer surprised me a bit.
“I feel like the extravertedness of the live show maybe originated from not being that confident in my singing, so I felt like well, if I’m not singing well, at least they’ll still want to watch us.”
It’s not the answer you’d expect from a band that’s sold out headline shows, toured nationally, and played festivals like Beyond The Valley, Grapevine and New Years On The Hill alongside acts like Ball Park Music, Killing Heidi and Kingswood. But it explains a lot about why the shows feel the way they do: less “look at us,” more “come play along.”
A lot of that comes down to the dynamic between Graham and Gaul specifically, which he described in a way that made me laugh out loud reading it.
“I feel like Louise and I are subconsciously always trying to make each other laugh on stage,” he said. “Or at least, I’m trying to impress her with how lame I can be.”
I asked him, finally, what’s next, and whether Mission fits into something bigger.
It was the most Creature Fear answer he gave in the whole exchange.
“We are aiming to take a hard left turn and release two folk songs I was originally going to do as a solo thing, but the band liked it,” he says.
“It’s definitely going to be the biggest genre jump for us release-wise, but I’m excited about it. Next year it’s probably back to the rock stuff.”
Ask this band to sit still in one genre, one mood, one version of themselves, and they simply won’t.
That’s not indecision. By the end of his answers it felt more like a genuine method.
Catch it live when Creature Fear play The Catfish on Saturday 12th September, in support of Mission To Love You, out now.
For more information, head here.
