Naked On The Vague: Rats In The Ranks

Over potato and leek soup, apple crumble and a glass or two of vino, SHAUN PRESCOTT discusses rodent fantasies, “mid-fi” frequencies and the importance of being earnest with Sydney’s Naked on the Vague.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Matthew Hopkins is making potato and leek soup. Lucy Phelan has prepared apple crumble. Nic De Jong is drinking Guinness and Lachlan Vercoe is late. In the Hopkins/Phelan inner-west abode we’re poring over a shipment of their new LP Heaps of Nothing, which has just arrived from the US. Hopkins and Phelan have recently vacated a house – affectionately known as “the barn” - where a colony of rats had gradually infested the premises. Eventually they came to realise that the rats had nested in their rehearsal space. “The rats were the enemy,” Phelan tells me. “They are bad. They are annoying.”

This explains the rat fixation. Not only are rats a common antagonist/protagonist in Naked on the Vague songs, but they star in an epic vision Hopkins had while mixing the final take of ‘Blank Minds’. In the vision – a potential film clip, he says – masses of giant rats parachute onto Circular Quay and proceed to wreak havoc upon citizens and sightseers, eating people whole. The vision culminates in a scene in a nearby McDonalds where Ronald McDonald himself emerges. While his face unaccountably melts, a rat scuttles from McDonald’s mouth and devours the liquescent emblem whole. All this and more, in a forthcoming book Hopkins intends to release outlining potential film clips for all eight songs on Heaps of Nothing.

“I think it’s good to have things tarnished with noise and unpleasantness. I think it’s important to have your objects or artefacts reference the fact that things are kind of a mess.”

Hopkins and Phelan have vivid imaginations, as anyone familiar with Heaps of Nothing will know. When we sit down to dinner though, Vercoe now in our midst, and try to outlay the finer details of their achievement, we get off to a confusing start. The origin of the album title for example, is up for debate. They toyed with the idea of calling it Too Many Hits, or Heaps of Nothing – Fuck You, but eventually settled with the tidier Heaps of Nothing: “heaps of” being a very Australian quirk of tongue, and “nothing” being what they were achieving in the lead up to expanding into a four-piece.

“We had a whole bunch of songs that we’d written and played when we toured the US [in early 2009 as a two-piece], but we wanted to adapt those,” Hopkins explains. “We always wanted it to evolve to this point, but didn’t know how to get it like that. I naively thought we’d already figured these songs out and we’d just give it to these guys and it’d be like “boom”. But when we got together we realised it was more a process of change, like starting again. Not a smooth transition.”

They did it because, as Phelan says, a two-piece “wasn’t enough to flesh out the songs we envisaged. Since playing with Nic and Lachlan we can achieve the sound we want to. I feel a bit more freed up from not having to play the keyboard all the time as well”.

Naked on the Vague were formed in the mid-2000’s Sydney warehouse scene. Hopkins and Phelan both played key roles organising the regular Chooch-a-Bahn events held at the now defunct Lan Franchi’s warehouse in Chippendale. Five years later, and with several similar spaces having come and gone, Naked on the Vague are one of the few bands from that scene still intact, still evolving and negotiating Sydney’s scarce venue facilities.

“Lucy had some interesting lyrics and had made some zines,” Hopkins says of their beginnings, “and I’d acquired a bit of musical equipment. It really came out of nowhere. We were both interested in music but I felt it was out of my reach because I had never learnt anything. The initial vision was as an experiment, to see if we could do something.”

Vercoe and Phelan were responsible for mixing the album. Vercoe jokes that they were going for a “mid-fi” sound, while Phelan enthusiastically describes the freedom they had to achieve the result they wanted. “In the past we’d recorded with people where we’d be like, ‘Turn up the gain’, and they’d be like, ‘You can’t, you can’t get it any higher.’ But with Lachlan we actually just turned stuff up on the mixing desk ourselves. See, we can do it,” she smiles.

“I always think of what lo-fi means, and why you would want something to sound like that,” Hopkins says. “When I think of what influences us, it’s just as much by clean sounding records like Brian Eno’s as it is influenced by noise music. Philosophically I like the [lo-fi] sound, though. I think it’s good to have things tarnished with noise and unpleasantness. I think it’s important to have your objects or artefacts reference the fact that things are kind of a mess.”

If Naked on the Vague’s earlier recordings sounded like two personalities struggling to channel their true intentions through an ill-fitting template (industrial rock), than the expanded ensemble on Heaps of Nothing is better suited to show their true spirits. Good-humouredly miffed, you could say. Earnest, but playfully so.

“We’re definitely earnest,” Phelan admits, “but each song is different, each song has a different vibe. There’s an element of us making fun of ourselves, but it’s definitely very heartfelt, and because I write the lyrics I can say they come from a pretty deep personal place. It’s like black comedy in a way. It’s not like every song is really negative and sad.”

“We aren’t head butting walls or spilling blood or chanting before shows.” Hopkins adds.

“We don’t want people to listen to our songs and laugh. I want them to enjoy it, and maybe smile,” Phelan continues. “But no laughing out loud.”

Phelan is the primary lyricist, though Hopkins can often be heard chanting franticly throughout Naked on the Vague songs. No one knows what he’s “singing”, or whether it’s aligned with Phelan’s themes or not. He refuses to tell. During the song ‘These Days’ De Jong suggests he’s singing “fuck these dogs and donuts, these days are gone”. Hopkins is happy to let him continue to think that.

“When I first read your lyrics I thought they were kinda like angsty teen poems that resonate with an air of truth,” Hopkins says to Phelan, “like looking back on that angst and realising there was a reason we felt that way. I interpret a lot of our songs as trying to recapture youthfulness, but not in a sentimental or nostalgic way. [It’s about] recapturing those angsty, almost apocalyptic visions. The young and youthful abandon. But it’s not like, ‘I’m young and happy and free.’”

Phelan isn’t sure if she agrees, but she’s willing to offer that Heaps of Nothing contains more than the offhand absurdity the music hints at. “Previously, a lot of our lyrics have been cloaked in a heavy existentialism,” she offers, “but ‘Treading Water’ is about being looked after. It’s a romantic song in a way.” When I suggest ‘Sacred Youth’ is the most depressive moment on the album, Phelan disagrees. “It’s actually quite a hopeful song in terms of the lyrics. It’s about staying up all night in the city, being wild. The rats are the kids.”

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

‘These Days’ was conceived during a walk past the former site of the Carlton Brewery on Broadway, central Sydney, shortly after the building was demolished to make way for apartment blocks. The song was a joke for a long time, something Phelan and Hopkins would sing together in a “mock Nickelback voice”, until Phelan realised that it could actually work as a song. “It sounded like a Ministry song,” De Jong says, “before the full band got to it.”

“It’s about walking around Sydney, and looking at the brewery, and thinking, ‘What’s going on?’” Phelan says. “It’s about the feeling that something has been lost, and feeling alienated as a result.”

A good feed and a few glasses of wine later, Hopkins feels confident enough to reveal some of his lyrical contributions. “Somewhere on the record I sing, ‘You are not alone in this world.’ I’m interested in relaxation and self-help.” Much laughter from his band mates. “I think sometimes Lucy doesn’t always see that in the music, but I think there are elements of self-help, a mock positive affirmation.”

He’s on a roll now. “The songs that mention rats, its like, ‘Who are the rats’? We are the rats.”

• 'Heaps of Nothing' is out now through Siltbreeze.