Blank Realm: ‘There Is A Bit More Daylight’

Brisbane band Blank Realm have made their cleanest and most melodic album to date. In turn they’ve been rewarded with the best reviews of their career. Daniel Spencer talks to TIM SCOTT about ‘Grassed Inn’, growing interest from overseas, dodgy boat cruises and a formative year of Krautrock.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] With the release last month of Blank Realm’s new album Grassed Inn, it’s like the Brisbane quartet forgot their backpacks or bike helmets at a backyard BBQ. Such is the seemingly quick turnaround after last year’s well-received Go Easy album that it feels like they never left the party.

But they return in slightly newer shirts. Grassed Inn further expands on the bent pop that started to appear through the fractured psych on the last release, and their Australian label Bedroom Suck claims it veers towards songs in the manner of later-era Big Star, The Zombies or Echo & The Bunnymen.

Siblings Daniel Spencer (drums, vocals), Sarah Spencer (synths, vocals) and Luke Spencer (bass), with Luke Walsh on guitar and production, have made the hazy and arty rock album that you can play both at a house party and late at night when the lights are dimmed.

‘Falling Down the Stairs’ has an amazing start. The guitar melody is familiar but I can’t place it. The Church, The Clean, The Chills. Some other band that starts with c? How did the melody and song came about?
Crazy Town? That song is a bit of a mystery, we just sort of started playing it. If you go back and listen to the tape of the first time we played it, it was pretty much the same as it is now, aside from the words.

“We finished ‘Go Easy’ and were worried that was all we had in us.”

There’s footage of you playing it back in 2011 on the Brisbane Star Cruise – Brisbane’s premier party boat!
It was actually the first thing we wrote after finishing Go Easy, which was made of all these songs we’d had for years. We actually finished recording Go Easy in 2010 and were really worried that was all we had in us, that we’d never be able to write anything else. So ‘Falling Down the Stairs’ came along at a nice time.

It ended up coming out before Go Easy because Brendon [Annesley] from Negative Guest List wanted to do a single. The pressing plant stuffed the record up and pressed the B-side all wonky. A lot of people really like the wonky B-side, but it wasn’t really sellable because the record made the needle skate all over the place, and would probably have done permanent damage if you played it more than once. Brendon passed away before the whole mess got sorted out with the pressing plant, so we decided to leave it for a while.

In truth we were tempted to let it lie forever, but it seemed so much a part of Grassed Inn, and part of that period in our lives, that we had to chuck it on there.

Then there’s the chorus/refrain: “Who’s falling down the stairs tonight?” Haha. Is it saying “Who’s up for a big night?”
Ha, you are not the first person to say that, but I wasn’t really thinking of that when I wrote it. Without giving away too much, I guess the song is broadly about relationships and how crazy they get, how they are kind of their own little worlds in a way. It’s not about a real incident though, let me make that clear! I’ve never fallen down the stairs or caused anyone to fall down the stairs. Touch wood.

I like your interpretation though: just a completely demented party anthem. One time I’m going to sing it as though it is that, see how it goes over.

And is the Star Cruise Brisbane’s premier party boat?
I’m not sure the Brisbane Star is Brisbane’s premier party boat; I think I’ve been on better ones, no offence to the Brisbane Star and her crew. That boat cruise was so funny; a lot of people were on acid, but I only found that out later.

From time to time people organise these boat cruises in Brisbane. Weirdly, you can’t go to any of the scenic parts of the river because of noise restrictions, so you just have to cruise to the part of the river where no one goes. You get to listen to bands while sailing around near riverside factories and oil refineries. It’s pretty strange. Naked on the Vague played that night too, but they got cut short because the boat docked and the captain ordered everyone off.

“We’d turn everything up insanely loud and play in the dark.”

I like that with Blank Realm there is movement on stage. Not in any contrived “Oh look, we have so much energy” bullshit, but just the rhythms of the song seems to make you move. Has this always been the case?
No, it definitely hasn’t always been the case. In the early days we didn’t have drums and we all sort of sat hunched over our instruments on the floor. We used a lot more electronics and pedals and that sort of thing. We definitely wanted the focus to be on the sound; we’d turn everything up insanely loud and play in the dark where possible.

One time early on we played a show in Byron Bay, I looked over at Luke S and he was just drinking an Ice Break during the show and not even touching his guitar. After that we kind of decided it was time to stand up, and gradually we just kind of let ourselves go a little more on stage. We are always crazy exhausted at the end of a show these days.

There was a lot of discussion around the change to more melody on Go Easy. The new album has been billed as “catchier and more traditional” than your previous work. I find that you have always been able to write ‘songs’ even amongst the proggy and fuzzy noise on earlier stuff. Was there a deliberate approach to this record?
I think so; we wanted this one to be a record that people could play at all times of the day. I feel like most of our other records are quite nocturnal; something you might put on after midnight in a certain mood.

We wanted this one to maybe be something you could play at breakfast, or driving to the beach, but we also wanted to have enough chaos and depth for all the late-night burners who might stumble across it in their hour of need. It’s still pretty nocturnal, but there is a bit more daylight.

In his review of Grassed Inn for The Wire magazine, Jon Dale positions Blank Realm as a “signal group” between “the thumping, at times dissolute, raunch of the groups associated with Negative Guest List records or the slumping sharehouse pop of Bedroom Suck or Chapter Music bands.” What are your thoughts on this?
I’d have to go back and read what Jon wrote for the context, but I guess those labels have definitely become associated with certain sounds. But I’m sure that will change in time. The labels we have had the most to do with, like Bedroom Suck and Negative Guest list, are mostly just representative of the taste of their owners. I don’t think Brendon and Marriah [Geles of Negative Guest List] or Joe [Alexander of Bedrom Suck] ever made any kind of sales projections before pressing up a record. Maybe that’s a bad business model, but to me those are the most interesting labels.

Some of the bigger indie labels seem to pick bands based on their level of blog buzz, and while it doesn’t mean these records are bad, it definitely makes their roster, as a whole, less interesting. I definitely have a soft spot for labels that stand for something and don’t go for the sure bets. I feel like there’s quite a lot of those in Australia right now.

‘Bulldozer Love’ has a really driving, Kraut-y pulse, then the closing ‘Reach You on the Phone’ has parts that sound like it could have come off a recent Kurt Vile record.
That’s cool. Krautrock is pretty foundational music for us. Can, Faust, Amon Düül II, Guru Guru, Popul Vuh and all that stuff kind of changed our lives in the way that I think hardcore did for a lot of people I know. I mean, we like hardcore too, but I think there was about a year or so where we didn’t listen to much that wasn’t Krautrock. I guess we can’t really shake that influence, and we don’t really try.

I like Kurt Vile too. We opened for him once and it was really cool, although I feel like the audience was just thinking ‘Hurry up and put Kurt on’ during our set. Fair play though: they didn’t pay 40 bucks to see Blank Realm.

You are heading to Europe. Any festivals?
We are pretty excited for that. We are playing some festivals, yes! I probably shouldn’t say which ones though, in case it all falls through, as these things sometimes do!

You are a band who developed an international audience quite early and over the years have released stuff on Not Not Fun, Digitalis, Siltbreeze and Fire. And bands such as Mad Nanna are recognised overseas more than perhaps in Australia. Why do you think this is?
I’m not really sure. It’s really hard to say. I guess you also have things like the Lost Domain stuff only now finding an audience overseas, many years after the fact. Early on we traded a lot with people overseas, and I became a pretty crazed collector of small-edition noise and punk stuff for a while. I guess that’s when we sort of got in touch with Not Not Fun and those kinds of labels, just through emails, ordering records, sending stuff around.

“These few weirdos in each town can constitute a sizeable audience.”

There’s all these odd little networks where vaguely likeminded people just sort of find each other through the internet, or mail-order catalogues and fanzines in the old days. Through the internet, these few weirdos in each town can actually constitute a sizeable audience, and it just grows from there. But I’m really not sure why a lot of these bands do better overseas. Mad Nanna are great by the way.

I really enjoyed your cover of Alex Chilton’s ‘Hey Little Child’. Any more covers in the works?
We work on covers all the time, but most of them never make it beyond the practice room. The Alex Chilton one would never have made it to wax if Brendon hadn’t insisted on it.

Lately we’ve been trying to do ‘Still Doin’ Time’ by George Jones. Our version is really messed-up though; maybe too off. We are a bit scared to play it live. I love the guitar riff on that song. We’ve talked about doing a 60-minute cover of ‘Desolation Row’ with loads of extended instrumental breaks, just to really piss off the people that say our songs go on too long.

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‘Grassed Inn’ is out now through Bedroom Suck in Australia and Fire Records in the rest of the world. Read Max Easton’s review. Launch dates below.

Sat, Feb 8 – The Underdog, Brisbane, QLD [w/Four Door, Lucy Cliche, Sewers + Thigh Master]
Sat, Feb 15 – Boney, Melbourne, VIC [w/Constant Mongrel + Miss Destiny]
Sun, Feb 16 – The Toff, Melbourne, VIC [w/Terrible Truths, Full Ugly + Ela Stiles]
Fri, Feb 28 – The Square, Sydney, NSW [w/Ghastly Spats, Ela Stiles + Knitted Abyss]
Sat, March 1 – Secret Garden Festival, Sydney, NSW [w/World’s End Press, Straight Arrows + more]