It Looked A Bit Touch & Go, But Bleeding Knees Club Are Alive & Kicking

When Alex Wall answers our call there's no hint of the tonsillitis that has apparently plagued the singer's two weeks spent recording the new Bleeding Knees Club album. He's quietly spoken, which is a mild surprise considering the 'brat punk' tag the then-two-piece were once branded with. Wall also doesn't embellish, nor does he shy away from acknowledging past naivete, but it's obvious he's more than excited to be back in the studio after a hiatus from the band he started eight years ago.

"I think we've just got, like, a few guitar bits to go and then it's off to get mixed," Wall says. "I've had tonsillitis pretty much the whole time - which sucks - but it didn't affect my voice. It's definitely been the longest [time] I've spent on any music stuff. Like, it took me a year to write the songs. Usually I write them all in a month or two.

"I think because it is our first album back I just wanted to put everything I could into it; picking only the good ones that I write and not even thinking about the ones that I have questions about. It's been a really slow writing process, but I'm really happy with the songs we've got. And this recording we spent two weeks on; our last album we only spent five days on it."

Bleeding Knees Club burst onto a hungry Gold Coast music scene in 2010 with hooky surf and pop-punk tunes Bad Guys and Teenage Girls before taking their chaotic house-party shows around the country and picking up a record deal. Work on their first album Nothing To Do saw them ushered them off to New York and into the hands of Dev Hynes, aka Lightspeed Champion, aka Blood Orange. But as soon as their flame burned bright it seemed to be snuffed out again. Wall isn't one to play the blame game, but the cynical part of him admits it was an inevitable implosion caused by clashes with the label.

"Especially when it came around to wanting to do another album," he says. "It was just becoming such a hassle to try and do anything new. From the label point of view to people helping - everything just kept getting stuck at the point where we couldn't do our own thing. I like writing songs and I write songs all the time, and it was so hard to sit on it for two years and not be able to record, so I just had to get away and go and do my own thing and release everything I wanted.

"We had never been in a band before so someone would say, 'Go and do an album,' and we'd be like, 'Well, we have to do it the way they want it.' We just didn't know. But now it's nice to be back and doing it properly again."

Time away in the US certainly did yield some fruitful releases for young Wall; his solo project Wax Witches blending genres and scratching the creative itch to strike out on his own and see what came of it. After a few years away and with original Bleeding Knees Club member Jordan Malane handing in his resignation, Wall's soft spot for his first band saw him return to our shores to pick up three new band members and write a new album, this time in Sydney's Parliament Studios with Lachlan Mitchell (The Whitlams, The Jezabels, The Vines) with hopes of a release later this year.

Rather than wipe the slate clean with a new band name, he insists the spirit of Bleeding Knees Club remains the same even though the members may have changed.

"It's the most fun I've ever had being in the band," Wall says. "I feel like we're in a really nice position, because a lot of people that were into us when we were a buzzy band have grown up and probably aren't into us anymore. We had fans back then and people were waiting for an album so there was a bit more pressure, but now I don't think anyone is waiting for a Bleeding Knees album."