It’s Only Rock’n’Roll

No Through Road’s Matt Banham tells DOUG WALLEN why it’s important to approach his band’s music with a heavy pinch of salt.

Matt Banham started playing solo as No Through Road in 2001 when he towed an errant street sign onto the stage for company.

“I went and saw a band called Home For The Deaf,” he explains, “and it was just one guy who said, ‘Hi, we’re Home For The Deaf.’ The next night I had to play solo for the first time in my life, and on my way home I found a No Through Road sign on the street. I just picked it up and took it with me the next night to the show. I put it on a chair next to me and said, ‘Hi, we’re No Through Road,’ basically just stealing this guy’s idea.”

Since then, the Adelaide-based one-man-band has turned No Through Road into a band proper, releasing three albums including the self-released lark Lo-Fi Sandwich, the Unstable Ape-issued Monkey On A Rock and the reissued Too Much Or Not Enough. The current lineup – Banham with Dexter Campos, Nic Datson, Marcin Kobylecki and Ianto Ware – was memorably mismatched at last month’s Clipsal 500. But they’ve shaken off that disappointment to release the fantastically titled Winner. and its hooky first single ‘Party to Survive’ (both out on Low Transit Industries).

Like so many of Banham’s songs, ‘Party To Survive’ tosses together bracing guitars, alternately slack and earnest vocals, droll lyrics, a rambunctious chorus, and other earmarks of self-reflexive indie rock. Winner. is in the same vein, with lots of heady anthem-making and such insights as “If girls are the devil, then I want to go straight to hell” and “I’m only drinking tonight to get rid of you.” Along the way, No Through Road recalls the snide yet effervescent pop of the UK’s Los Campesinos!, who also look to old Pavement records for inspiration. Banham owns up to a certain amount of irony in his songwriting, not to mention ’90s influences, but that doesn’t mean it’s all just a big joke to him. It’s just that his idea of rock’n’roll might be a bit different to yours.

Why name the album Winner., complete with a full stop?
Y’know, there’s tongue-in-cheek and there’s arrogance and … we had a lot of different album names, most of which were really bad. And then someone just said Winner. [That] was a phrase that was being used a lot by my friends around the time, meaning loser, and I thought it was pretty funny. And we think that we’re a bunch of winners, so what better name to call an album?”

How did the band come together?
I did it solo for three or four years … Then the recordings I was doing became more band-y. Performing it live was becoming impossible, and it was also getting quite boring playing on my own everywhere. So [the band] formed and since then the line-up’s changed quite a bit, due to people moving overseas and my brother getting tendonitis in his arms, so he couldn’t play the drums anymore. But it’s a lot more fun being in a band. When you go overstate and play shows and don’t really know anybody, you can just talk to your friends that you’ve brought with you. It’s like a traveling party.

How do you find the Adelaide music scene?
It’s small and a bit isolated, so everybody knows each other quite well and we all play in each other’s bands and go to see each other’s bands. It’s very supportive. It’s very good for the young bands starting here. It’s pretty easy to get a gig and find likeminded people. I find it almost too easy, because everywhere else seems difficult in comparison.

“I think having some idea that what you’re doing isn’t the world’s most important thing is definitely something a songwriter should consider while writing a song. And I definitely think about that sometimes when I get too astounded by my own genius.”

How did ‘Party to Survive’ come about?
I had the title in my head for about six months. I thought it was a catchy name. I was listening to a lot of LCD Soundsystem and crap that everybody was listening to, and I thought I should write a song about going to see DJs [in clubs]. I struggle to last very long in crowded situations when I’m too drunk or whatever, just because I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to that stuff. I quite often feel like I’m going to spew, basically. That song’s kind of about that, but I wanted it to be fun and poppy. I like those songs where you can just dance to it and sing along until you listen to it and go, “Oh, it’s not quite as happy as I thought it was.”

A few of your songs tackle subjects like women and partying, but they’re quite tongue-in-cheek.
You’ve gotta have a sense of humour and a bit of irony, and a sense that what you’re saying isn’t world-class poetry. It’s just rock’n’roll. It’s just music. It doesn’t have to be extremely poignant to the world all the time. I think having some idea that what you’re doing isn’t the world’s most important thing is definitely something a songwriter should consider while writing a song. And I definitely think about that sometimes when I get too astounded by my own genius.

Do you think people are quick to dismiss songs with a sense of humour?
Yeah, well, it depends. Because there’s joke songs and joke bands, but I don’t think my songs are joke songs at all. They are still meaningful to myself. I think that bands who take themselves too seriously, especially in terms of their lyrics, or talk about it too seriously, bother me and annoy me (laughs). So I guess I don’t want to fall into the trap of ever doing that myself.

I wanted to ask you about the album’s last song, ‘(This isn’t) Rock n Roll’. It’s almost 10 minutes long, and a lot of that is just dissonance.
I think it’s last because it’s probably the slowest song on there. It was written more as a collaboration. The guitarist had this riff and he wrote some of the lyrics. I think it works well for being at the end of a rock’n’roll album, having a song saying that this isn’t rock’n’roll. To me that song sums up why I’m making music, basically. It’s not something that was a choice, almost. If I didn’t make music, I’d go a bit crazy. It’s definitely something that keeps me, and I think other members of my band, sane. It gives us a hobby and keeps us out of trouble. And the noise at the end … we play that song live quite a bit, and at that point there were three guitarists in the band, so they always liked to find any opportunity to wank on for a little while with their guitars.

Right away the band reminded me of ’90s indie rock such as Pavement, and you also do a Palace cover. Is that spirit something you’re trying to continue with in your music?
I think it’s more that that’s what we all grew up listening to – and that’s what we still listen to. Some of us are a bit more stuck in the past than others, but definitely that slacker indie rock kind of thing was popular, and seeing bands like Pavement, watching them and going, “Gee, these guys don’t really know what they’re doing up there, and I could do that. I know about as many chords as Stephen Malkmus. I could work out how to play in a band.” That sort of idea of what a band is and what a band isn’t is something we try to remind ourselves of, but they’re also just good songs. [Pauses] And if you sound like something a bit older, people won’t accuse you of following any trends.

Any recent trends, at least.
[Laughs] Yeah. I’m sure soon enough we’ll be trendsetters.

Have you written any newer stuff that’s a bit different from the album?
Yeah, we’ve written probably half an album’s worth of stuff since then. Some people have said it sounds darker, and I think that means it’s just a bit slower maybe. I think the next album we make is gonna be a bit more home-recorded-sounding and certainly not quite as straight-up pop/rock, but we’ll see. We’ll see how bored we get with what we’re doing now.

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