“There’s definitely a heap of people. You have the whole rich kid, slumming it with the rest of us arty people, but there’s a big hunk of people who play in the music scene in Melbourne from regional Victoria or who grew up without much. There’s lots of really diverse backgrounds and you wouldn’t expect it until you started talking to people.”
Lienhop puts herself in the ‘not cool’ bracket. Growing up in the Victorian regional city of Bendigo, Lienhop realised she had a talent for singing. It was a skill that also earned her praise. “I was, and still am, quite nerdy and quiet and anti-social and I was picked on heaps while I was a kid,” Lienhop says. “Singing was the only thing that I did that got me positive attention, so I thought I’d keep pursuing it.”
After forming her first band at 15 with a school friend, Lienhop moved to Melbourne. She became friends with guitarist Ben Murphy, also a product of regional Victoria. While watching a relatively staid band one night, Lienhop and Murphy decided to form a band that pushed through the boundary between performer and audience.
La Bastard released its first album, The Fabulous Sounds of La Bastard, in 2012. A second album, Ooh La La Bastard, followed in 2014. Along the way La Bastard organised a couple of tours of Europe, where it experienced the legendary hospitality regularly afforded to touring Australian bands. “The last time we went was about two years ago, we made a conscious effort to have a lot of fun while we were there,” Lienhop says.
“The Binic Blues festival fell on my birthday, which was surreal. I had a cake made for me and I was treated like a rock star, which was weird and fun. You can understand why people go over to Europe because the reception and view of bands is so different.”
A third La Bastard album was recorded and mixed in 2016, but remained unreleased pending Ben Murphy’s return from an overseas holiday. “The album before, we recorded it then I went travelling for four months then I came back and we released it,” Lienhop says. “This album, it made sense that we recorded it and someone else buggered off overseas, then we released it. But now we’re back into it again.”
Having the occasional period of downtime has been beneficial for La Bastard. “Sometimes you forget about all the things that annoy you. Then sometimes you also remember why you love doing it,” Lienhop says. She decided to pick up the guitar again, and formed a new side project, Moody Beaches with Jess, her original band mate from Bendigo and La Bastard drummer Julia Watt.
Murphy’s return from overseas was catalyst for the delayed release of La Bastard’s new album, Trouble. Recorded over a few days in early 2016, the album features guest appearances from Chris Russell, Kate Alexander (Ute Root), Joe Cope (Big Smoke) and Rich Davies. “For this album, I think there was a lot more thought that went into the production and also the songwriting,” Lienhop says. “We worked out all the different guitar parts, we played around with horns, how the keys might sound. I think Ben’s a massive Roy Orbison fan, which you might be able to hear in some of the songs.”
The challenge with any band is to find the balance between artistic evolution and maintaining an audience. Lienhop is confident Trouble finds that balance. “I think a band can be reflective of your personality and how you’re feeling. If you’re releasing the same album so many times, there’s only so much of that side of your personality you can express and expose before it gets boring,” Lienhop says. “When bands change their sound, some people don’t like it because that’s not what they were expecting. But people aren’t one dimensional, they have different things going on.”
What hasn’t changed with La Bastard is their energetic performance. “Being able to read an audience is quite a skill,” Lienhop says. “You can give 120% and spread yourself out every time, and you’re always going to have different reactions.”
