Just A Few Friends Having A Lark

Brisbane outfit Moses Gunn Collective enjoyed a massive 2015, building upon years of hard work on the local scene with the release of their debut album Mercy Mountain. That accomplished collection of dreamy psychedelia gained so much traction — courtesy of hooky singles Back Into The Womb and Hot Mess — that it meandered its way onto the longlist of the prestigious 11th Australian Music Prize. No mean feat.

"It's exciting to see," admits bassist Alex Mitchell. "You put the record out and do your thing and then it kinda fizzles out after a while, so it's good when things keep coming in and the momentum keeps building to keep us excited about it all."

"You're only onstage for 40-odd minutes, so you might as well give it your all and get involved and make the most of it."

The Moses Gunn Collective name has been featuring in gig guides for years now, but it's only relatively recently that the line-up properly coalesced.

"There have been different incarnations, but myself and Aidan [Moore] — the lead singer — we've been playing together for about ten years," Mitchell recalls. "We played together when I first started and he was writing songs, and we had a band together called the Naked Budmen, we played here and there. Then there was another band called Caves, which was heavily synth-driven, with some other guys. It slowly but surely started to develop: [Samuel Sargent] the drummer's been with us for a while, but Lewis [Stephenson] the guitarist — who plays in The Belligerents — he's only been in the band for maybe three years now, and that's when we solidified the sound that we're going for now."

The band's live shows are vibrant and colourful, and Mitchell explains that having fun is all part of the bigger plan.

"We love playing live and I think we try to make that obvious too," he laughs "We travel to these places like Melbourne and Sydney and you spend so much time and money getting there and you're only onstage for 40-odd minutes, so you might as well give it your all and get involved and make the most of it.

"It's really just a little circle of friends — it is a band and a business thing as well, but it's mostly just good friends hanging out. It's good to get a break from the regular life back home and go travelling, and get up and get loose and forget about your regular day-to-day stuff. And it's so much more fun for everyone when you're putting out the good energy."

And this laid-back approach works for them in the studio as well.

"The way we've done all the recordings thus far — all the recent ones anyway, the [2014] EP [Morning Shakes] and the album — have all been live, and we've had a very relaxed DIY vibe," Mitchell offers. "We've done it all mostly ourselves, so there hasn't been that pressure to 'get it right this take', or we're not paying for the time to get it down straight away. It's very relaxed and we try to just have a laugh with it — if it's not too serious it's easy to relax into it and have fun."