An Awakening

Perth has certainly been persistent in producing an arsenal of bands that favour the fuzzy riffs and brutal beats over the wailing guitars of some of their notable fellow Western Australian exports. This, however, has not been a problem for McLaughlin and his fellow comrades, who having taken three years to release the second LP, Summertime Heavy, after the first, The Parallels Amongst Ourselves, are hoping to speed up the process this time around.

“We basically jumped straight into writing a new record,” McLaughlin explains. “Once Summertime Heavy was released, it was like a brand new start. We're writing a lot differently. It's not so much a rock record; it's not your traditional set-up. We're experimenting a lot more and that's a different direction for us.”

Despite their hectic schedule, the band will play their maiden Radiothon show this year, having played at In The Pines and Winterfest festivals in previous years. The group are excited to be including two extra members into their live line-up for what they hope will be a bigger and more triumphant sound. Adding to that excitement is the feeling of pride for playing a show hosted by RTR, a station that McLaughlin feels was a huge support for Sugar Army's progress.

“Local stations are important because they'll always give you the leg up before anyone else does and they're the ones who'll support you through your entire career,” he reflects. “That's the great thing about RTR, they'll play your demos, you know? You're not going to get that stuff played unless they're of top quality on your triple js and commercial stations, but the great thing is RTR and other local stations are always open for new things, as long as it's doing something new and pushing it somewhere good. They've always been great to us, so we're always going to be thankful. Every time we put in a demo to them they'd always support it, and they've given us plenty of shows. We couldn't really ask for more.”

Having been so quiet on the live music front for the last few months, McLaughlin recognises that the band needs to get back out there: “I think the second half of this year will mean we really knuckle down and get this thing finished, and then get playing again. We haven't been playing because we've been so focused on creating the new material, so we definitely want to get back to playing more live shows, and to do that we need to figure out where our headspace is at – it's really difficult to play live shows when you're between songs. So yeah, we'll see what happens. Right now's really exciting for us so we're just taking it as it comes and enjoying it as much as we can.”