On Defending Carol’s Honour, Dancing In Aqua Lycra Bike Shorts & Self-Googling

If you were lucky enough to be at The Age Music Victoria Awards last year (yes, it was open to the public), you would've seen Blake Scott performing Carol, sans guitar, backed by The EG Allstars (Pete Luscombe, Ash Naylor, Bill McDonald and James Black). Scott spat out lyrics with trademark venom, The EG Allstars had mad grins plastered across their faces while performing this track and we thrashed around, glowing with pride about our local music scene. Scott acknowledges he was "very nervous that night", adding, "Especially when I was looking at Stewey [Rayner], the bass player, and he just had this look on his face: 'Don't fuck it up!'" he laughs.

A dude in our office even has a Carol ringtone; people are obsessed over that song! On Carol, Scott reveals, "There was people who were really misconstruing the sentiment and the lyrics of that song, which was disturbing for a while, but... that seems to have passed." Scott recalls "one particular gig" where shit got completely outta hand. "We were getting a lot of people yelling out, 'Ah, fuck Carol! Carol's a slut!' or something like that... We stopped and it was like, 'Look, there's absolutely nowhere in the song - that's not the sentiment of the song at all. It's actually probably more about you than Carol!' You know?" he laughs.

"We were getting a lot of people yelling out, 'Ah, fuck Carol! Carol's a slut!' or something like that..."

Many fans that are ridiculously attached to Tales will probably reach a little tentatively for the play button when preparing to digest its follow-up, Joy. "It's a very different-sounding record," Scott offers, "Yeah, look, I prefer it [laughs]. I find myself listening to this one whereas I probably struggled with Tales a bit - it's not one that I listen to myself - whereas, with this one, I've found it a lot easier to sit down and reflect on the album." The Peep Tempel recorded "this one" around Easter and Scott observes, "I've had a bit more time to, yeah! Not be forced to listen to it. So it's been good to do it in my own time and go, 'Actually, you know what? That's pretty cool.' And now I actually feel like a listener as opposed to, you know, someone who's in the band."   

Joy's lead single Rayguns should go some way toward convincing you that you're gonna love it. We do need to know whether the aqua bike pants that Scott sports in the clip were 'model's own', though. "Um, no they weren't," he chuckles before giving "Savers Cheltenham" a plug. "But I really was planning for Steve [Carter, drummer] to wear those," he laments, "and, yeah! I wanted to wear my Fitzroy jumper and somehow I ended up in the fucking bike shorts, and Steve got to wear the cool Fitzroy jumper! Yeah, bit of a bummer; I think I got stitched a little bit on that one. But, look, I haven't thrown 'em out so, you know, I do actually intend to wear them again... I'm actually at Elwood beach right now thinking, 'Yeah, next time I'm down and it's warm enough I'm gettin' out in the bike shorts.'"

"You're like, 'Do you hate us? Why have you made me dance around in bike shorts?"

Although Scott found the experience of shooting this music video "fun", he admits it was also "very, very strange"; especially when they were watching it back and the director was asking, "What about this? What about this?" Scott says, "And you're like, 'Do you hate us? Why have you made me dance around in bike shorts?"

Constable is another standout track on Joy and it features the sound of an engine purring. "I had an old diesel van that I'd done about 4,000 ks in or something and I was getting close to the point of selling it, and I just always liked the way the engine sounded," Scott explains of how these sounds wound up on the track. "So I just went out there one day and had a couple of beers and turned the car on in my ProTools and put a mic in there like a fuckin' nerd [laughs]." After previously trying to incorporate the engine samples on a couple of songs, Scott thought to try it on Constable since "they're talking about going out to Keith in that song, in South Australia". "The long drive" can make one "introspective", Scott posits ("you're alone with your thoughts and the engine and a bit of radio"). 

Given that a lot of The Peep Tempel's songs are so character-driven, we have a mental picture of him lurking near people, eavesdropping and taking notes. "I guess I just absorb," he ponders, "I'm always sorta watching what's going on around me. I could never walk down the street wearing headphones," he shares, "I don't understand how people can do that. I just always need to sorta know what's going on and who's around and what's happening so, yeah!... a bit of a voyeur."

After confessing, "I'm not shy about the old self-Google every now and again," Scott tells us he's well aware that he shares his name with a fashion blogger. So would he consider blogging? "I dunno about a blog, I dunno," he hesitates, "maybe a cooking show or something, ha ha, you know, a homemade povo one in the bike shorts."