Despite being in existence for a matter of months, The Cherry Dolls are no strangers to Ding Dong Lounge. As Aubry says, “Our first show [earlier this year] was headlining Ding Dong Lounge. We were a bit scared but that was the plan from the start to go straight to try to headline a show – to make a stamp straight away.”
One of the most exciting characteristics of The Cherry Dolls is their ability to adopt a genre-hopping approach while creating a strong and cohesive sound that positively ripples with energy. The band are clearly not going to be pigeonholed into any self-limiting musical or subcultural category. According to Aubry, the band has enthusiastically embraced eclecticism.
“We had the three singles ready to go since we started the band,” Aubry explains. “We just planned out when and how we would release them. Wasted Pearls was our more solid rock’n’roll straight-down-the-line song. We felt like we were getting boxed into a certain genre and image so that’s why we skipped forward and released Stars Above which is more a Black Sabbath/Led Zeppelin type of really heavy rock‘n’roll song as that is what we actually really enjoy. Ain’t Got No Soul is a lot more where we are leading with our sound. The next single coming up has got more of a late ‘60s/early ‘70s kind of Kinks sound.”
The band’s debut single Wasted Pearls was accompanied by a gloriously lo-fi and high-energy video clip recorded by the mysterious ‘Mum’. “Our tour manager Danny is also one of our best friends – we call him ‘Mum’ [as] he treats us like [he is our] mum,” Aubry says with a laugh. “We set up that video clip and realised that we had no one to film it for us [so Danny did the filming and as an] inside joke [we said that] Mum filmed this for us!”
According to Aubry, the clip for Ain’t Got No Soul has “a little bit more production behind it.” You would think that releasing three singles over several months would be sufficient busy-ness for any band but The Cherry Dolls seem intent on remaining admirably industrious.
“We are in the studio tomorrow in Sydney with Wade Keighran from Wolf and Cub and we are going to lay down another single,” explains Aubry. “At the end of the year we are going to release another two singles. At the start of next year we are going into the studio to record a whole album of brand new songs.”
Reflecting on his musical influences, Aubry says thoughtfully, “A lot of videos and visuals of late ‘60s and ‘70s music inspired me a lot but it wasn’t just the music that inspired me but the whole persona of the bands and their images and the way they lived. You can feel the presence from them. Sabbath, Zeppelin, The Doors, Rolling Stones are the main bands that influenced me. And then you have The Kinks and obviously The Beatles.”
If you are in the mood for an evening of stellar home-grown rock delivered with refreshing bursts of swaggering firepower, check the band out at their upcoming single launch. As Aubry says, “Cherry Dolls shows are always unpredictable. Half the set will be new. Our shows are very energetic and we do like to have people lose their minds.”
BY GRAHAM BLACKLEY
