Can't Hardly Wait

With apologies to the citizens of Tanah Merah, Queensland: “We didn't actually know that suburb existed until we decided to call [the record] that,” says Royston Vasie's Leigh Hardingham. “On our last tour in November last year, we were driving somewhere through Queensland and we saw a sign for it and we were like, 'What the fuck?' We never even knew that it existed!

Rather, Hardingham says, “I read it in a book, basically – that was where I sort of first noticed it. Then I googled it trying to find out what it was and found out it's a village in Indonesia and Malaysia. In their local language, it means 'red earth' or 'red land', and myself, my brother [Brad – bass] and Cam [Mitchell – co-vocals and guitar], in the band, we all come from a Melbourne suburb called Mooroolbark, which is Aboriginal for 'red earth'. So we thought, 'Yeah, we'll just go with that.'”

Not that it really matters much; a rose by any other name, and all that. And the upstart foursome's debut, produced by Finn Keane (Midnight Juggernauts), is certainly a rose among modern music's thorns, even though – if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors – it started life as something of an ugly duckling.

“We did it very back-to-front; it was recorded over almost two years,” Hardingham says. “We went to the studio a while ago and we were just throwing down tracks that we had in the back catalogue, and wrote probably five or six. After that, we laid them down and listened to them and thought it was starting to sound like an LP; then we got super busy with shows and other things and went away from it for a little while [before putting] down another six tracks. There are a lot of songs on there that are really old, and a lot of songs that are pretty new. I think it'll be pretty obvious to most people. But it's cool – it's like two halves of the record.”

That sense of duality crosses over into Royston Vasie's live show, too – from their pair of songwriting frontmen with distinct but confluent voices to the way the immediacy and presence of their rock tunes make way for a sense of nostalgia and beer-fisted romanticism that recalls loose nights in backyards past. This tour will be no exception.

“It's gonna be pretty boisterous,” Hardingham says. “We try to turn everything into a house party, almost to the point that you've gotta rock up with your backpack full of booze and all the sort of stuff you took to house parties when you were a teenager – that's the vibe we want to give off. A lot of our sets these days end with a stage invasion, for some reason. Everyone just grabs whatever they can and whack it or throw it and that's always fun. It's the sort of show that builds a big vibe in the room that's just a lot of fun, really.”