Sarah McLeod
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Sarah McLeod

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I did one solo album and then took off and lived overseas for about five years,” she recalls. “Then I came back and just kind of started again. I was doing a lot of dance music over in New York and the UK. Then I came back here, I actually had a solo album that I was going to put out that was totally electro. But I just changed my mind, I’ve still got it, I just can’t be bothered putting it out, I’ve moved on!” She laughs. “Maybe one day!”

 

She’s also got a brand new band together, a fiery, all girl three-piece pop-rock outfit called Screaming Bikini, who have released one single and have an album on the way.

 

This is my new passion project,” she states. “This is really fun. The girls are great, we’re just a three-piece, and I’ve always wanted to play in a three piece my whole life. It’s way more fun playing in a three-piece, because each instrument counts so much. Every time you do anything, it’s like everyone can hear it. So, as a muso it’s a really fun band to be in. The songs are really cool, we’re writing new songs, and the new material’s really crankin’. We get along well, it’s really fun. So far it’s been the funnest project I’ve ever been in. There’s been no dramas at all. There’s always dramas in rock’n’roll, but for some reason, none in this one!”

 

It is early days though,” she adds as an afterthought.

 

The band’s single, Easy is an ultra catchy little ditty, very different to the powerful rock sound put across by The Superjesus. It begged the question of what she has been inspired by since her former band’s demise, and if this is the direction she was heading in with the new project.

 

Such a wide, diverse range of stuff it’s almost too hard to describe,” she explains, “I get ideas from anything I listen to. The style of music is not in any kind of pocket, it’s a bit of this, bit of that. I’ll hear four bars, of anything on the radio and I’ll go ‘yeah, I can rip that off!’

 

But that song Easy is not a real indication of where the band is now,” she continues. “We don’t play it live, I might do it at an acoustic show, but we don’t do it live. Our new stuff has gone really four-on-the-floor rockin’. We put that song out in the beginning, we didn’t really have a direction of what we were doing. We didn’t actually have a band together when we put that song out, we just put it out for kicks. Then we put the band together and we said ‘hang on, we know who we are now!’ and we kinda started again.”

 

Yet another thing she has on the go is an upcoming tour with Starsailor frontman James Walsh. The tour takes in most of the Eastern seaboard and Adelaide during mid to late March, and plays the Esplanade Hotel in Melbourne on Friday March 23. It’s a very intimate, stripped back acoustic show, and Sarah can’t wait for it to start.

 

I used to tour around acoustically, almost constantly,” she remembers. “Then I stopped to do Screaming Bikini. This tour came through with James Walsh and I thought a) it’d be fun to play with him and b) it’d be fun to get out and play acoustically again. It’s only been a few months, but it’s always good to do a bit of this and a bit of that, and I like my hand in lots of pies.

 

I really am [looking forward to it] because I like to break it up. Because I’ve been standing up playing electric guitar, it’s nice to sit down and have an acoustic guitar. Have a few wines and chit chat, and play a few songs but in a more relaxed fashion. I’ve got so many songs that it’s hard to choose every night. So every night I play something different and run through my back catalogue. I’ve got a lot in there to choose from,” she enthuses.

 

It’s a very relaxed show,” she describes, “It’s like I’m sitting in my lounge room full of my friends!”