This is the sound of living fast, dying young, and leaving a pretty corpse… Local fans are already scrambling to get their faces in front of them and industry types are wanting a piece of them
This is the sound of living fast, dying young, and leaving a pretty corpse… Local fans are already scrambling to get their faces in front of them and industry types are wanting a piece of them, but Melbourne five-piece Dead Actors Club are keeping their heads down in the lead up to a debut EP. First thing’s first, according to guitarist/vocalist Rob Amoruso, who claims the band’s only priority right now is studio work.
“Things have blown up a lot for us in the last six months,” he agrees. “But I don’t know if it’s so much about people wanting to get a piece of us a lot more, or whether it’s more so that we feel that we’re ready for it now. Maybe that’s why we’re doing so much more recording and shows.
“We spent a good year before this just jamming and having a good time and discovering who we were before we were going to let anyone else into our little circle.”
As it happens, Amoruso’s ‘little circle’ almost never even happened, according to the guitarist who claims it took 10 months of coaxing on fellow guitarist Aaron Wynd’s part to even get Amoruso to the rehearsals. Ah, blame it on the summer holidays…
“About three years ago now, Aaron gave me a call and said, ‘Dude, I’ve been jamming with these guys who sound pretty good, you should come down to the rehearsal studio and see what you think’… To be honest, I was like, ‘I can’t be bothered’. It was the middle of summer and I just wanted to go to the beach and party and work on my tan and just fucking chill! But he kept calling and wouldn’t give up for about 10 months! So finally one day I went and I was like, ‘wow, these dudes are fucking tight, sweet, maybe I’ll have a jam with them after all’.”
And all was right with the world. It took less than 12 months for Dead Actors Club to come up with some New Order-esque tunes that are now seeing them launch debut single Hearts Hearts Hearts, not to mention stepping up and supporting the likes of Stereophonics. No doubt these days Amoruso is certainly glad he gave the band a shot.
“We wrote a bunch of songs throughout the winter and then put them through a massive filtering system,” he says of the upcoming EP. “We were really picky because we wanted songs that would stand the test of time. Very soon we’re going to release an EP of brand new stuff, which is just us experimenting a lot. We’ve found that the more we write, the better the songs actually get.”
For those who haven’t had the chance to see or hear the band live yet, Amoruso says Hearts Hearts Hearts is the epitome of the band’s sound in every shape and form.
“It’s a dark pop song, it’s got a bit of a New Order kind of synth groove to it,” he explains. “At the same time it has a really good energy about it. If someone was to ask what Dead Actors Club sounds like, I would probably show them that song first. It sums up everything we’re about.
“We’re lucky in that we have a common ground on a few bands that brought us together in the first place, even though we still have varied backgrounds. Artists like Prince and Blondie and the early stuff from INXS… Oh yeah, and we have this thing with Earth Wind And Fire… It’s one of those things that it doesn’t matter what we’re listening to or what kind of mood we’re in, but as soon as a few drinks start flowing, Earth Wind And Fire gets cranked.”
Yes, it may seem fairly random, laughs Amoruso, but then that’s just the way Dead Actors Club work… Take the band’s very name, for example.
“We got to a stage that we were making some pretty good songs and were about to start doing gigs, but it was like, ‘Guys, we should probably get a name’,” Amoruso chuckles. “It got so bad that we made it our homework for the week to come up with a list of names and bring it to rehearsal the following week. Then it’d get to like Monday night and you’d be at home going, ‘Oh shit, I haven’t done anything!’, and you just smash together random words like… ‘foot-lamp’ or something! Kind of like at school when you do it at the last minute.”
Finally, one night as Amoruso and Wynd lounged around while sharing their common fascination with movies, the two guitarists had an epiphany… Well, more like a mental image, actually, as Amoruso laughs.
“We were just sitting around and smoking a bit and kicking back,” he sets the scene. “And we thought, ‘how fun would it be to invent this New York-style club in a little dingy alleyway. There would be this doorway which is completely blank except for a little tiny flap in the door and as you approach it, a big intimidating Russian or German voice would speak through the gap and say ‘password?’…
“We literally had the whole image mapped out, right down to the style of the walls inside the club and what kind of drinks would get served… We just hit the nail on the head that night. Amazingly, the imagery matches the sound of the band.”
DEAD ACTORS CLUB launch their excellent new single Hearts Hearts Hearts at Revolver Upstairs this Friday October 29. Check out deadactorsclub.com for more info.
