Interview with Anteaters
Anteaters are a new fuzzy three-piece Alternative Rock band from Western Sydney - consisting of Jamie Xerri on guitar and vocals, Connor Cameron on bass and vocals, and Kelvin Phan on drums. Now playing their first run of gigs around Sydney!
Having played with LITTER and a Descendents Tribute show, what are your take-aways; if any, that you can apply to Anteaters?
JAMIE: LITTER has gifted me with a handful of pretty essential epiphanies and experiences -Firstly, recording the LITTER demos was my realisation that you can record decent stuff in a garage, and was overall a great exercise.
Prior to playing with LITTER live, I’d been something of a ‘rehearse-aholic’. I’ve been playing music for some time but all my experience has been a pretty private affair (writing like a hobbit, recording music at home and preparing material with bands in a rehearsal room) - but I’d never played a real show!
So, finally getting to blow off the cobwebs and seeing how I go on a stage has been a real treat, mostly because my bandmates in LITTER’s various forms and in the Descendents Tribute have been so inspiring.
I adore the chaos and reaction we’ve had at those shows. It meant the world to see that people get what we’re doing and that I can flail around on stage and people don’t mind it.
The Descendents Show meant I got to share a stage with my Dad for the first time, which was a pretty big moment for the both of us.
Getting involved in LITTER also means I’ve become entangled with the awesome Mountains music scene, which has been massive for me! Prior to that, we really haven’t had any contemporaries given our geography and that music (especially weird noisy stuff) is much less of a thing out here in the present.
Hopefully that isolation means something interesting for our music, and that we have something of a distinct sound.
Is the name of some significance or just a name?
CONNOR: Anteaters are just a cool ass animal.
JAMIE: They’re really neat. They’re pretty solitary and weird, and they’ve been on our big beautiful floating space rock for like 25 million years.
A couple of years ago I wrote this song that’s a main-stay of ours called ‘Day of the Anteater’. For some reason the Anteater thing stuck around and I began tossing all the songs I wrote for this project (back when it was still an idea) in a folder called ‘Anteaters’ or ‘Anteater Band’.
I suppose that we’re Anteaters as opposed to the implied THE Anteaters because when we sing our silly Anteater songs, maybe we sing them for lots of different people in the room. In that case, I don’t know if we’d be the only Anteaters in the room.
That was pretty much nonsense, apologies. Really, it just suits our weird music for some reason.
Such early days for the band, what are the short term goals?
JAMIE: I wanna write good tunes and put on a show that people hopefully remember a gazillion years later. Super early days, but I’d be keen to do anything with these guys down the track.
KELVIN: When I joined the band, it seemed like the goal at the time was to polish up on songs that Jamie and Connor had been working on. I've been trying to add my take on the songs but tried not to deviate too much from the songs original feeling.
JAMIE: The idea right now is to have enough shows behind us that we’re able to get ourselves out there a little bit, and to ‘road-test’ and iron out our big batch of songs before we settle everything down enough to know precisely how we want to execute our first handful of releases.
CONNOR: We really just want to play as much music as we can, it’s something we really love doing and we want to share that.
Do you enjoy the autonomy of looking after yourselves or are you interested in engaging professional aspects of the music industry?
I love the freedom we’ve got, and I really hope to do something exciting with it.
Independence is great and it’s more viable than ever! People look grimly on the state of music I suppose, and there’s lots of reasons why the music streaming model is terrible for artists.
However, we’re kicking off in a pretty unparalleled period of time in that we’ve got access to loads of tools and help to operate independently.
This strange social media thing means anyone has got access to promote straight to the world's biggest billboard. The music distribution options mean that people can hear your music at little to no cost to the artist, and you’ve got access to the services of loads of businesses for the sake of producing your own stuff. Previously I’ve recorded an album in my garage with my buddies and assembled the CD’s at home, totally independently.
Engaging with the big industry implies there’s going to be at least some degree of exploitation of the artist and their audience by the very nature of the fact that you’ve entered big business, so then would begin some dissonance between what we’d like to be doing and what we’ve gotta do (the ultimate benefit of independence) - but if we were proposed with an offer of something that’s genuinely going to help us accomplish a goal I guess we’d have to consider it.
KELVIN: Jamie has pretty much been doing the heavy lifting of running social media and trying to make a presence of the band. Other than that, it's still too early for us to decide if we want to venture into the more professional aspects of the music industry.
Is the 3 piece lineup the most ideal for your sound?
JAMIE: I love the dynamic of a 3-piece! In having less musical moving parts, it’s super easy to play off each other and really hear what everyone is doing.
There’s this thing I love about certain bands where they feel less like they’re playing a set of surgically rehearsed material, and more like a living thing where nothing is necessarily played precisely the same from night to night. There’s some improvisation involved, but still somehow everything is intentional and determined by the energy. (I suppose I’d cite bands like Black Midi, Fugazi and Sonic Youth for this effect). I would love nothing more than for people to feel similarly about our shows eventually.
Kelvin and Connor have an awesome dynamic as a rhythm section and are brilliant players in their own right, and I couldn’t be happier in getting to play with them. We go alright at as, and I’m just loving the efficiency there is in being a trio.