Interview & Photos by Keira Zhou
When did you first start playing music? What inspired it?
Eliza: For Kurt and I, we are childhood friends. We both went and saw Coldplay when we were younger, as our first concert. Their shows are extremely huge, massive, so good. I remember that I said to Kurt that ever since I saw Coldplay when I was 11 year old, that’s when I decided to do music for career. He’s like I had the exact same thing. It was crazy. I was in primary school band. Kurt learned music as well.
Kurt: For sure. I’ve never had lessons or anything, just sort of picked things up.
Eliza: Kurt plays the guitar and I’m the singer. And I play a little bit of guitar as well. Tex is our other guitar player, and Ruby is our bass player. Ruby is jazz trained. She’s very into jazz. Tex likes country music. We all have very different backgrounds.
You two are childhood friends, how did you guys meet the other two band mates?
Eliza: I met Tex through university. Then Ruby was playing in a band that was open for us once. She was in our support band. We thought that she was amazing so we asked her to come on tour with us. She ended up being a part of the band.
Who are the bands and musicians that influenced the sound of your band?
Eliza: I think we come from so many different backgrounds. If we got asked what our favorite artists were, I feel like there would be some similar but some really really different. But I think as whole as a band, we definitely like Coldplay. We love Catfish and the Bottleman, The 1975.
Kurt: Even folk music. We grew up listened to Mumford & Sons. They sound nothing like what we sound like but we like them.
Eliza: It’s very interesting cause for the road trips of the band, the car playlists are very different depend on who’s got the AUX chord.
Could you tell us a little more about your music? What are the lyrics about? What is the song writing process look like?
Eliza: With lyrics, it really depends on the feeling. When I’m writing a song that I have certain feelings about, but I could put that one down if I feel something differently. I could start writing something else. You kinda have certain feelings to each song.
Kurt: Eliza and I write together. I feel like we have very different writing styles.
Eliza: It’s a very interesting balance between my style and Kurt’s style, and we find a really nice sweet spot in between. I feel like I can connect to a song if it’s from a personal story.
Kurt: I write from a metaphorical kind of view, like it happened in my head but didn’t really happen in my life, but half way down, it can be related back to certain situations.
Do you guys remember the first time you performed together as a band? How was that like?
Eliza: I remember being nervous that I would forget about the words. I wasn’t nervous about playing in front of the people. I remember one of the earliest gigs, I was in a band, we played three songs, and it was literarily the worst 15 minutes in my life. I messed up every lyric, everything went wrong, and there was no one there. And I saw the video my mom took, I was like “oh no”. But it’s such a cool thing to look back on.
Kurt: Yea, it’s almost like a depressing thing to think back on sometime. You know it’s like a memory from you were like a kid. You think of it, and you were like “why did I do that”.
Eliza: I remember one of the gigs, I had bright pink and purple hair, and I had a Katy Perry t-shirt and I had all different pictures of Katy Perry, and I had these hideous shoes. I just look back, I was like “oh my god…”
Do you guys do music fulltime?
Kurt: This is almost fulltime. We are in that stage that we can’t have jobs. We do other things to get money, but we can’t have actual proper jobs. This takes up most of our time.
Eliza: This (music) as a full time career, I feel like a lot of the bands can relate to, is the fact that, if you have a 9-5 full time job, you clock in in the morning and then you clock out and you don’t think about it. This is like all the time. No matter what time it is, you think about it, you stress out about it.
What can your fans expect in 2020?
Eliza: There are a lot! We are coming on a tour with Silversun Pickups.
Kurt: We’ll be on tour with them from 4th of Feb to 20nd of Feb. It’ll be on the west coast. And some festivals as well.
Eliza: We do have new music coming out as well, which is so good for us, because we haven’t put out new music for ages.
You are from Australia, what have been your favorite food in the New York?
Eliza: We love this little cart, like falafel carts. Halal food?
Kurt: They are SO good! They are the best food in New York.
Eliza: I get a falafel over rice with salad.
Kurt: I get lamb.
Eliza: It’s so cheap and you get so much food.
Kurt: And they are so nice! They are lovely.
Eliza: I can’t believe that we waited for two weeks to try one.
