Bassist Will Drummond, speaking from the band’s rehearsal rooms in Northern Melbourne, is pretty chuffed with what the band has achieved so far, but at the same time believes the best is yet to come for them. “ Every time I stand on stage and there’s people in front of me, we’re ecstatic! When we first started playing we were just four blokes from the suburbs, just playing music because we couldn’t pick up girls, and we needed to try and impress them somehow!” Drummond laughs.
“It’s just been a steady increase. We’ve written songs that we thought were good at the time, and people have liked them, which has been great. We’re definitely really happy with what we’ve done, we love recording and we love writing and we love touring, and we want to do that for a long while yet and continue writing songs that people want to come and see us play.
“As an artist, you always think the best is yet to come,” he says. “You have to remain optimistic, but you just don’t know. You just write and write. I think the stuff we’re writing at the moment is really exciting. I’m more excited by this than I have been for a long time. It’s not that I wasn’t excited about the last stuff, I’ve really just enjoyed recording these songs. They’re not what a lot of people will be expecting from us. I hope that people will be a bit surprised.”
So if people are going to be surprised by the new stuff, exactly what direction is it taking? “To be honest, I find defining music very difficult,” he states hesitantly. “When people ask what kind of band we are, I just say, ‘well, we’re a rock’n’roll band’, and that’s what we are. The music is very much based around us four standing ’round in a room jamming out a song and writing a song. But there’s definitely different sounds on there that people haven’t heard before on a British India album, and that’s all I’ll give you! We’ll leave with some anticipation before it comes out.”
This will be the band’s first real appearance at the festival. It’s an event that they have always attended themselves and very much coveted playing at. Now that is a reality for them, and they simply can’t wait.
“We went there as young kids when we were still in High School. I think Paul Kelly was the headliner back then, and we watched him and since that day…it wasn’t necessarily that it was Paul Kelly, it was just the size of the stage and the size of the festival. For me personally, it’s been a festival that I’ve always wanted to play.
“It’s always a great vibe there,” he continues. “I was at a party the other day, and there was this English guy there who moved over here last January. It was the week before St Kilda fest [at the time] and he said, ‘If this happened every week then I can’t wait to live here!’ So it’s definitely a great festival, I love it!”
Beyond the festival, the band have a very busy year planned for 2012, with a new single to be released shortly, and the band’s fourth full length album to follow, possibly mid-year. There’s exciting times ahead for British India’s growing legion of fans across the country.
“At the moment we’re just writing and recording the album,” he informs us. “Just after the St Kilda Fesival, once we finalise how and who or what will release this album, we’ll be putting out a single, so I’m sure we’ll be playing a few new tracks alongside our ‘greatest hits’ package at St Kilda Fest.
“[The album] is pretty close,” Drummond reveals. “I think it’ll be around June/July. But yeah, it’s definitely taking shape in some form. We’re recording it ourselves, we sort of go in every Thursday into Sing Sing [Studios] and kind of record one whole track. Get everything about 99% finished…that’s in between writing every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday back in the rehearsal room.”
It’s a somewhat unusual way to record an album these days, but the band have drawn inspiration from some of their old school idols who recorded this way back in the day. “You read some of the great biographies, like the Neil Young one, some of the great Stones ones, John Lennon even. They’d write a song and they’d go in and record it, and then release it within a week or something. Whenever they had the vibe, they’d record it. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
