Regurgitator On Their Energetic Tenth Album 'Invader': 'We’ve Never Been About The Money'

Some bands are happy to turn up, play the hits and do things the way they always have. And some bands aren’t. If you came in late, Regurgitator are the second kind, the outsiders who didn’t know any music rule book existed and probably wouldn’t have read it anyway.

The Regurgitator story—they played their first gig in Brisbane 30 years ago—is all about discovering different ways to make music, new places to record, fresh things to say, and finding some meaning in a crazy, information-saturated world.

Risk vs reward doesn’t appear to be included in the calculations. They just know that if they are excited, chances are an audience out there will be excited, too.

Talking as the band prepares to release their 10th studio album, Invader, Quan Yeomans explains how walking on the ledge has worked out so well.

“When you have a bunch of outsiders who all share a similar vision, that’s what has given us the longevity,” Yeomans says. “We’ve never been about the money. We’ve always maintained a desire to play at a certain level. As long as we maintain that, you can have a reasonably successful career.

“It’s not about becoming the biggest or the best or the richest. It’s just about sharing the energy you have with the people that you want to share it with and hopefully elevating their lives a little in the process. We’ve been very fortunate we have that mentality.”

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Key word alert: energy. With Yeomans, co-founder and co-writer Ben Ely and drummer Peter Kostic fired up by their return to live performance, Invader has the exhilaration and creative spark more often associated with a band making their debut album, not their 10th.

For Regurgitator, pop music has always been malleable, but the way they meld and contrast the parts on Invader delivers that rare thing, a late-career album that ranks with their finest early work. It ranges from the hip-shaking ’80s-inspired pop of This Is Not A Pop Song and Cocaine Runway to the supercharged cinematic hip-hop of new single Epic, irresistible synth-laced tunes like The Edge Of Losing It and the frantic punk blasts of Wrong People and Australiyeah.

Most of the songs are wrapped up in less than three minutes, and some in less than 60 seconds, but there is still room for big questions and serious issues, some personal and some national, at the heart of Invader.

Invaders come in different kinds, Yeomans points out, from colonisers to raiders of the mind that divert and entertain us, too. These ideas fuel the searing title tune (“I am invader/I am the black and the white/I am the left and the right/I am the thief in the night”).

“We were looking for an album title that tied it all together, and that came to me, obviously spurred by a horrible year last year for Indigenous people, even more than usual,” Yeomans says. “It’s about what it means to be living in a place that was colonised so brutally and coming to terms with that currently.

“There are other forms of invasion around us all the time—the little things that distract us constantly, the pop culture raids, advertising. And I have been learning about the process called endosymbiosis, where an organism becomes part of another living thing. We are all a result of invasion of sorts, and that’s really what has informed the soul of this record.”

The band’s willingness to take chances is reflected in their career diary. The 1996 debut album Tu-Plang was recorded in Thailand, pop breakthrough Unit in a condemned Brisbane warehouse, and they have worked in spaces from London to Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong. The Band In A Bubble project led to 2004’s Mishmash, recorded in a glass installation in Melbourne’s Federation Square.

While the band lives separated by geography (Ely in Brisbane, Kostic in Sydney, Yeomans in Melbourne), with this album, they were able to spend more time recording together, beginning with a session in The Barn, a rural studio west of Brisbane.

That face-to-face meeting created momentum for the band’s two songwriters. Reading became a crucial part of the process for Yeomans when the band’s manager from the start, Paul Curtis, gave him a copy of The Creative Act by producer Rick Rubin.

“That lubricated my approach and then I wrote quite solidly for the next six months,” Yeomans says. Other influential books included Sand Talk by Aboriginal author and academic Tyson Yunkaporta and Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World.

While Regurgitator has been a mostly self-contained unit, collaborations are a key part of the approach this time. Canadian hip-hop provocateur Peaches contributes to This Is Not A Pop Song, Byron Bay rapper JK47 brings his passionate voice to Dirty Old Men, and Yunkaporta delivers his spoken word poem on The Bastard Poem That Nobody Wanted.

Yeomans says: “I really wanted him to contribute to the record because I was so impressed with his writing, so I sent him an email. He gave me a poem called Ark originally. When I asked him about the title, he said, ‘It’s just a bastard poem that nobody wanted.’ He was open to that title, and the poem was perfect for the theme that was developing for the record.”

Also crucial to the band’s confidence was the response to the band’s live performances, culminating with the sold-out Units 2023 tour and support appearances with Weezer and KISS.

Quan’s relationship with band co-founder Ely is also in a good place.

“As we get older, it gets easier and easier. A lot of the stuff that bothers you when you are younger dissipates; there is a lowering of ego. So, it’s a beautiful kind of family relationship that we have now.

“Part of the success of the band is Ben’s ability to connect people. He found me, motivated me to work with him. I would still be in a basement making music on a four-track; I wouldn’t be where I am now.

“He has really craved the connection of being together as a band. He loves jamming, does side projects for that reason. He’s a great bass player and a great live musician. For me, I think that distance has helped me because I like to get down with my own thoughts and vision and bash it out on my own.”

Time has been the healer in another relationship.

“I was getting out of my car going to a music store in Carlton North and I heard behind me, ‘Is that Quan?’ And [Regurgitator original drummer] Martin Lee is walking towards me. We hadn’t spoken in 20 years.

“I hugged him and said, can we please meet tomorrow, because I was on the way to making a video. We did and spoke for two hours, and it was great meeting as mature adults talking about his experiences. It was a really wonderful way to bury all the hatchets that were long rusting away.”

To Yeomans, the album feels like the result of a perfect storm of events.

“The energy you can hear comes from playing really good live shows to large audiences. We are feeling quite revitalised. When we played at Brisbane Entertainment Centre with Weezer, that was probably the most comfortable I have ever felt on stage in front of 10,000 people.

“I’m in my 50s now, and that was a real revelation. It’s a lot to do with our sound guy and the support he’s given the band. I am having experiences that I have never had before at this point in my career. It’s quite phenomenal.”

Invader is out now via Valve Records/ABC Music. You can purchase tickets to the album tour here.

REGURGITATOR

IT'S SO INVASIVE...TOUR 2024

WITH BEST FRIENDS PARTY DOZEN and more...

FRI 10 MAY - ODEON THEATRE, Nipaluna / Hobart

Plus PARTY DOZEN and THE SUBCULTURE CLIQUE

SAT 11 MAY - FORTH PUB, Wuwinilili / Forth

Plus PARTY DOZEN and THE SUBCULTURE CLIQUE

SUN 12 MAY - DU CANE BREWING, Kanamaluka / Launceston

Plus PARTY DOZEN and THE SUBCULTURE CLIQUE

THUR 16 MAY - BARWON CLUB, Djilang / Geelong