Sound and Visions: The Bandicoots on their way to the top.
“Crash and the Bandicoot’s” demo CD is blaring in the as I write this. The song is “ Cactus shop”, maybe the most debased, misanthropic love song I’ve ever heard; a cursing, venomous ode to the kind of girl you love to hate and equally hate yourself for doing so.
Greig Taylor’s vocals, haunted with equal measures of love and despair throb menacingly from the speakers as I recall my discussion with the two-man band the previous day. Not to be labelled as any sort of Simon and Garfunkel accolade, both young men have something profound to say.
Dressed casually when I meet them at a local café that day; jeans, shirts and sweatshirts, floppy hair on Greig Taylor which he majestically sweeps to the side occasionally. Rory Milligan, tall and dark gives off a sense of cleanliness and unrumpled freshness, his legs crossed smarty, his hands tapping his lap.
The first question asked discusses the bands sound, a question designed to satisfy our own need for comparison. I figure all new bands suffer from this questionable need for contrast-only yesterday someone asked me what “Crash and the Bandicoots” played and naturally I replied by means of association. I answered, in Milligan’s own words; “They sound like David Bowie beating a good tune out of Donovan.“ Beautifully articulated, but Milligan’s tongue is firmly in his cheek.
“ Well its something we’ve never been compared to before and it sounded suitably shit”.
Both members are understandably uncomfortable with such comparisons, leaving it entirely up to me to pigeonhole their art. Only the most foolish musicians would do so to themselves. Greig Taylor when asked the same question replies “Pigeons are dirty, dove wannabes and holes are for hiding things in”, a predictably cryptic reference to the dilemma of being branded one thing early in your career,unable to escape the shackles forever more. But “CATB” are not the new anyone.
Variously their sound has been described as similar to the acoustic dwindlings of 60’s psychedelic folk rocker Donovan, whilst Taylor’s lyrics seem to mirror the sort of cryptic poetry identified in the ramblings of Peter Doherty, or perhaps the Herald crossword.. But the diversity of many of the bands they are compared to measure the fact that they don’t actually sound like anyone, despite being influenced by everyone.
Q: So who would you say you have been most influenced by?
Rory: I don’t know. Probably early Clapton and John Cale. I like Paul Simonon from the Clash, he couldn’t really play either when he first joined that band. I also really liked my old English teacher for reasons i can't even really explain. Then there are other people and other things . ..
Greig: Personally Pete Doherty and The Stone Roses and I’m pretty inspired by lying on the floor at parties or social gatherings and listening to “music to lie down to”
Taylor is justifiably aghast at a recent report in their school Newspaper describing the group as ‘pop-punk funsters’.
“Where the Hell did they get that from?”, he laments.
And it does seem rather difficult to say. Punk? Occasionally. Possibly. Funsters? Anything but. The band’s music is the antithesis to funsterism, their songs have depth and intrigue, a masked antagonism and several killer hooks which sporadically threaten to thump you spinning into next week. Each lyric has resonance and meaning, with no examples of forced fitting rhymes or Liam Gallagher poetry. They range from high pathos, through haunting isolation arriving somewhere around mild aggression, beautifully illustrated in Taylor’s lyrics.
Q: So what’s you’re favourite lyric then?
Rory: Um there are so many to think of! “I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time” is pretty heart wrenching and “There was a band playing in my head, and I felt like getting high. I was thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie.”, in After the Goldrush by Neil Young. That’s pretty perfect in every way.
Greig: “I am the resurrection and I am the light. I couldn’t ever bring myself to hate you as I’d like“. I like to follow that philosophy.
From the lyrical choice we take a lot of what both members are really like; Milligan is a thinker, a soul man, a cynic, he’s seen it all before man. Taylor on the other hand is a blasé kind of man, so unconcerned he’s lying on the floor man!
The overriding feeling you get from talking to the band is that they are ambitious only in their desire to earn a crust from playing their music. I’ve seen them perform at various stages and receive praise for their music and performance but particularly Milligan seems to take it all in good humour as if unconvinced by the seriousness of the situation. The thought of him swaggering about Morrissey style proclaiming his genius is as ridiculous as it is unlikely.
This is not a group with a marketing department nor a demographic in mind. They are strictly take us or leave us and it doesn’t seem like their musical direction will be swayed or manipulated by attempting to second guess a potential audience.
Even the name ‘Crash and the Bandicoots”, suggests that the band consider themselves secondary to the music they create. The official story is that a copy of their favourite pre-pubescent, time wasting activity was lying on a table in a room where they were practising and the name just stuck. When pressed further, Taylor offers perhaps the biggest insight into the bands attitude, “ A brilliant game was sitting in front of me at the time. In my head I’d like to say something like ‘it represents two young men who are so caught up in an artificial world that they have lost themselves in the real one’ But that’s bollocks and I’d never say that out loud”. He can let the music do that.
