Track by Track: ScotDrakula

ScotDrakula frontman MATT NEUMANN takes us through the Melbourne trio’s long-awaited debut LP, from insomnia to wendigos.

‘O’Clock’

This was written pretty quickly on the tail end of a low-level manic period. Nothing dangerous, just a ‘hair up on the back of the neck, all things are possible/endless ambition’ type of thing. I hit a wall and started sliding into the buggy introverted mood that usually follows. This song is meant to document the feeling of having one foot in each of the two opposing states. Crazy ambitious energy and simultaneous embarrassment/remorse for it. Had I realised that the theme from The Odd Couple communicated this emotion more clearly than anything I could have hoped to write, I could have saved some time. But what are you going to do, right?

‘Kill What You Love’

I remember seeing footage of Truman Capote telling someone that if you want to create something that is meaningful to you, and you’re creating that thing for public consumption, you have to practise and develop it. The irony of this being that the process of rehearsal and production actually destroys any relationship you have with the thing, which in turn makes you feel like a weird phony for trying to do it anyway.

‘Shazon’

I had a riff that I worked out, which I didn’t really know what to do with. I showed Dove [Bailey, bassist/keyboardist] and Evi [Camille, drummer] and together we sort of figured out how the song could work around it. The song is about viewing the lives of others through the warped lens of our own personal experience, and also, upholstery.

‘Wendigo’

The title (and one-word chorus) refers to a daemon from First-Nations Canadian mythology that can possess a person and force them to commit acts of cannibalism. I heard the term for the first time around 2007, surrounding an incident of decapitation/cannibalism that occurred on a Greyhound bus near where I grew up [in Canada]. Understandably, everyone was really shocked and horrified by the incident. What was strange, besides the cannibalism of course, was the speed at which people began to discuss the concept of the daemon, and how eerily similar the details of the incident were to reported Wendigo attacks in the early 1900s. It actually seemed to be easier for people to get their heads around the idea of evil spirits hopping into humans and running amok than it was to accept that this one human did this horrible thing to this other human for pretty much no reason at all.

‘Booth at the Mall’

I remember seeing army recruiters at the mall when I was a kid. It seemed really strange that you could join the army at the mall. People have told me it pays pretty well, at least compared to the minimum wage, which in Canada is still criminally low. They still call it a ‘volunteer army’. They would actually say, “Armed service is a great way to pay for university” and I’ve always thought that was horseshit. If an activity involves automatic weapons, it’s obviously not a great way to pay for anything.

‘Pig Eyes’

A member of my family was shot by the police when I was quite young. Since then, I get really nervous around cops. This song is about the automatic thought I get when I see a cop that looks nervy or unsettled, like “Oh shit, here we go, this is when it’s going to happen to me, I’m going to get killed.”

‘I Ain’t Going to Sleep’

I have had some trouble with insomnia for some time, which can be pretty disrupting. I try and come up with melodies or songs in my head, which seems to help. I almost never come up with anything worth saving but I’ve found that puts my brain in sleep mode. I came up with the melody and chorus of this song while on the way back from Singapore about two years ago. This wasn’t ideal, as I had to go the airplane bathroom to record it on my phone before I lost it. Got some strange looks from the people waiting in line when I came out.

‘Starter Humanism’

Up until about four or five months ago, I was working a phone/computer type of job. It was the first time I’d ever really seen advertising getting created and it made me utterly freaked out and hypersensitive to it. It was like a switch was flipped in my head and I suddenly saw every single ad in my environment. I felt like I’d been brain-invaded. I couldn’t even tell what any of them were really trying to sell me, yet I knew someone had worked very, very hard under the impression that this image would result in my money becoming theirs. I began to feel like I would rather just eat my money than buy food, just to avoid the commercials.

‘Idlewild’

We came up with this song shortly after I returned from visiting my family in Canada. The title refers to a highway near Saskatoon. I wrote this with the idea of communicating this weird, wild competitive feeling that starts to kick in after being on the road for too long and not sleeping. It’s especially strong along the prairies where there is so little landscape change that it starts to feel like those old Spider-Man cartoons with the looped city background. After a while, without any outside input, your brain starts to sort of eat itself and you get these weird half-formed ideas about how it’s “you against nature, man.” I probably should have pulled over and slept.

‘Break Me Up’

This is a sort of by-product of getting really, really into Tommy James & The Shondells for about a month. I listened to them non-fucking-stop. I got really into the idea of using tremolo to keep the guitar out of the way in the quiet parts. The lyrics just come from the idea of obliteration and how weirdly comforting that idea can be. I’d heard an interview with a woman who suffered a head injury that temporarily shut down the part of her brain that was responsible for language. As a result she lost her internal monologue and was unable to think. She described this state as the single most peaceful experience of her life.

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‘ScotDrakula’ is out now independently on digital and vinyl. Tour dates below, all supporting Bloods.

Wed, Nov 26 – The Small Ballroom, Newcastle, NSW
Thurs, Nov 27 – RAD, Wollongong, NSW
Fri, Nov 28 – GoodGod, Sydney, NSW
Sat, Nov 29 – Curtin Hotel, Melbourne, VIC