From the outside, it may appear that Camperdown & Out is a fairly typical example of Sydney’s heavily cross-pollinated DIY scene, with members of Royal Headache, Dead Farmers, Raw Prawn and Marf Loth all bobbing up. Roche, in his laconic, thoughtful way, observes that this is down to circumstance than anything else.
“I knew Alex (Kiers, Raw Prawn) through the art scene, and he started playing a few years ago. I knew David (Ackerman, Dead Farmers) and Chris (Shortt, Royal Headache) from going to shows together, going to the same parties – y’know, shootin’ the shit. We were all friends, we played instruments – simple as that.”
So, we’re not talking about the new Seattle? “Nah, it doesn’t really feel like a scene. We just go to the same parties, and like the same music, and some of us play in bands together, but it’s no different to Melbourne, and The UV Race, Dick Diver, Lower Plenty, all those bands – I think those Melbourne bands are better, actually.” As for the name, the band aren’t representing their home suburb, they just know a good pun when they see one. “I’m actually living in Woolloomooloo at the moment, in the derelict housing commission area,” Roche concedes, “Camperdown’s nice, though.”
Camperdown & Out share their lyrical preoccupations and colloquial style with the other bands of their members. Sonically though, the loose, jangly Couldn’t Be Better is something of a departure from the heaviness of Dead Farmers and the scrappy punk energy of Raw Prawn and Royal Headache. There is, however, a distinct resemblance to Roche’s previous project, the now-defunct Marf Loth.
“Yeah, I feel like I’m doing the same thing, but with Alex singing half the songs. That’s why I’m not really worried about whether the band will last, or fail, you always find new people, do something else.”
The logical conclusion to be drawn is that Roche is steering the ship, but he disagrees. “I’m probably the least prominent member of the band – I taught everyone the songs, and let them do whatever they wanted with the recording [process]. Mixing, mastering, I didn’t want anything to do with that, it just takes too long. I always produced the Marf Loth stuff, and it always sounded like shit, so I thought, ‘Maybe let someone else do it’.”
Marf Loth’s lo-fi sound, he explains, was not so much an aesthetic choice as sheer apathy. “I was just a bit too lazy, I wasn’t really invested in it. The only exciting thing for me is when the song is written for the first time, I don’t actually care too much about the rest of it. Recording? Well, you’ve gotta do something with the songs, I guess.”
The Sydney place-names, the broad accent, the jangle – in a lot of respects, Camperdown & Out’s debut is as reminiscent of the venerable likes of Paul Kelly and The Go-Betweens as of garage-rocking contemporaries like the Straight Arrows and Palms.
Roche has heard it all before: he appreciates the similarities, but is dismissive of any direct link. “I understand that all that Australiana, and the New Zealand Flying Nun stuff is big at the moment, and it’s probably cool to be associated with all that. I love The Go-Betweens and Spencer P Jones, but I’m more inspired by Lou Reed, John Cale, Kevin Coyne, Beat Happening, stuff like that. The record probably sounds like it wants to be Australiana, but that wasn’t the intention – my idea for the artwork was actually a photo of fat people on a beach in Greece, something totally un-Australiana…that idea didn’t make the final cut.”
A serious question, though: What do you do in Manly? “Ah, the great gimmick song of 2013! Look, I regret it, that’s all I’m gonna say,” Roche says ruefully of Couldn’t Be Better’s lead-off track, Manly. So it’s not a diss track? “No, Manly’s great,” Roche explains. “They’ve got this second-hand bookstore there, with Peter Van Greenaway and John Fante and stuff…Desire Books, it’s called.” A bookstore so wonderful that it inspired a song? “Hey, sometimes it just happens. A lot of the time, songwriting’s just about what rhymes with the chords”.
BY EDWARD SHARP-PAUL
