“That was all a happy accident,” says Ceres frontman Tom Lanyon. “When we started the band we almost instantly fell into that kind of scene – the Reverence [Hotel], the old Arthouse scene in Melbourne. It’s so lucky. I don’t really know how; I assume it is because of like-minded sensibilities in the music. But I feel like we just fell into it and started making friends that way, and those friends were also in other bands, including Smith Street and Luca Brasi.”
When you search for the local progenitors of this sound, the likes of Horsell Common, Blueline Medic and Kisschasy come to mind – all of whom seem to have left an imprint on Ceres’ sound. However, Lanyon can’t claim to be an underground music buff.
“We were so green when we started,” he says. “I hardly even went to Melbourne punk shows. I went to see a lot of US bands that came out, but I never really supported the Melbourne DIY scene, which sucks because it’s given me so much back. I feel kind of guilty about it. Every time I play a show I’m like, ‘Oh God, I don’t deserve these people singing these songs back at me.’”
Despite being a late bloomer, Ceres’ well-constructed songs indicate that Lanyon isn’t an utter philistine. He fills us in on what compelled him to start making music. “When I was a kid, Jebediah were my favourite band,” he says. “I was a tragic Motor Ace fan. “They were two big bands for me that really made me want to try and write songs. Kisschasy as well of course, that was a big one.
“I was in Year 12 in 2003 and that was the second wave emo boom,” he continues. “At the start of that was incredible – Dashboard Confessional and Taking Back Sunday and Brand New and all those kind of bands. And that comes from listening to Blink-182 as a kid.”
By the time Ceres popped into view in mid-2012, the second wave of emo had all but dissipated. Nevertheless, after a couple of EP releases, they’d gathered enough interest to nab a spot on the Melbourne leg of the 2014 Soundwave Festival. A couple of months later, Ceres dropped their debut LP, I Don’t Want To Be Anywhere But Here, and thanks to some triple j airtime, plenty of people were waiting to gobble it up. OK, so the record wasn’t a smash hit success, but it certainly struck a significant chord with listeners around the country. However, on the cusp of the album’s release, the band wasn’t feeling massively confident.
“We recorded that in October 2013 and didn’t release it until April 2014,” Lanyon says. “It makes you sick, but you just listen to it the whole time. By the end, just before we were going to release it, I was like, ‘This thing is fucked – no-one’s going to like it, the songs aren’t cool.’ I just had the craziest doubts about it.
“I was super excited to release it,” he adds. “I couldn’t wait for people to hear it, but there was definitely a feeling of being like, ‘Should we just sit on this record and do a new one?’”
However, once he witnessed listeners’ reactions to the record, Lanyon’s doubts were instantly repealed. “It was so crazy that people connected to it the way they did,” he says. “We’ve had people telling us about their favourite songs and how they helped them through stuff. That is the most clichéd thing – I can’t believe I can say that. How many times have you read an interview where a kid’s like, ‘This song helped me through my life, blah blah blah’? But a kid said that to me and it just blew my mind. So the response was ridiculous. The way people connected to it seemed pretty deep and I was like, ‘Maybe this doesn’t happen for a lot of bands. Maybe we got lucky here.’”
Not willing to test the limits of their good fortune, Ceres have kept busy in the 14 months since the album’s release, unleashing the Selfish Prick EP last November and following it up with the single Ceres Is For Lovers earlier this year.
“I wonder what it would’ve been like if it just bombed and no-one was into it except for our mums,” Lanyon says. “But it was definitely like a carriage in front of a donkey, to get back in there. We figured, if people are around listening to the songs, we may as well get them while we can and just keep releasing stuff. Selfish Prick was a scrappy seven-inch we recorded over three days down in Tassie. We wanted to keep it secret and just drop it on people as a semi-surprise. Now we just want to keep recording. We can’t wait to start this new record, start recording it.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
