Plenty In The Tank

Eighteen months on from the release of Kingfisha's long-awaited debut full-length, and Anthony Forrest can only find positives to reflect on. Well received by fans, the self-titled release drew solid airplay from community radio and the national broadcaster, while they played Australian tours and prominent festival slots.

“It was worth the wait making [the record] alright and making sure we were really happy with it, smiles Forrest. “And when we started getting positive feedback and more people at shows it was really cool.

“But we're not a one-album band so there's a lot of music still in us, and for us it feels like it has set a good platform. A lot of the reason why it took so long to get out is because we weren't really sure how to record us – every time we tried it just sounded really live. Now we've got an idea of where we can take it for the future, so it's really exciting.”

Those recording kinks were smoothed out by Paulie Bromley, another prominent identity on the Brisbane rock and roots scene thanks to time spent with Pangaea, George, and more recently Beautiful Girls. “It was really easy with Paulie – he's an old friend and we respect where he's coming from, he has great ideas and really cool input so it works really well.”

Forrest says the band are keen to work with Bromley again on the follow-up – the sophomore release currently in its infancy – and admits the dub/roots act have been experimenting with new sounds during recent songwriting sessions. “Our bass player Shannon [Green] has just got a new bass synth so we've changed the arrangements on a couple of [old] tunes and got the bass synth involved, which is fun for us,” he says. “The synths in the band seem to be growing; we're all into that sound and we're moving in that direction. [With] the last few tunes from our debut we were bringing the synths more into it; I'd say that's where it's going to go more, but still with our roots elements, [just] obviously trying to write a good song.”