The Siren Tower are a more or less brand new band, but have grown out of two now defunct profile WA bands, Heavy Weight Champ and Antistatic, so their pedigree is unquestionable. They are also forging musical territory far removed from the heavy rock sounds of those two bands, as can be heard on the more earthy, rootsy, Australiana influenced rock of their debut single Floods . Lead vocalist and guitarist Grant McCulloch spoke to Beat about his epic new project from his home in Perth.
“It’s a relatively new band,” he starts, “formed from the ashes my old band Heavy Weight Champ and Brody, our drummer’s old band Antistatic… we got talking and pretty quickly decided that we didn’t want to re-hash old ground and go back into heavy music again, even though it’s something we both love. We wanted to explore something new so I ended up picking up my acoustic and showed him the stuff I’d been writing that wasn’t really applicable to Heavy Weight Champ, and that was really the beginnings of the band I suppose.”
The band are taking the single across WA and Victoria throughout August, with Melbourne’s The Ox and The Fury playing support on most of the shows. “It’s gonna be awesome,” Grant enthuses. “It’s been three or four years in between drinks for us. It’s a part of the band cycle that we’ve been really looking forward to getting back to. For me, The Espy is going to be exciting, I’ve been trying to play the Espy since I was 14. It’s going to be a huge highlight.”
And of the single? “The lyrics of Floods people can read it in a myriad of ways,” he explains. “People have spoken to us about the song and had very different things that they’ve taken away, which is great. But when I was writing it, the song is about tests of character, I suppose. The idea that you can only find your true measure in times of distress, and yeah, it’s just about those testing moments in life.”
The single has already received a bit of love from Triple J, which is a massive help to any band, let alone one that hails from one of the world’s most isolated capital cities. “Yeah, that’s great,” Grant enthuses, “I mean Triple J, the infrastructure that they’ve built over the last few years is just off the hook, to get a bit of support from the J’s just makes things so much easier, especially being from the other side of the island, so any sort of outreach we can get is always gonna make things so much easier, so getting involved with those guys is awesome. We’re hugely appreciative of their support.”
