Posted on February 10, 2009 - by Mark Zonda

Summer Cats!

Seems like Melbourne is giving indie lovers a lot of sweet surprises recently. “Summer Cats” can’t be counted out of these sweet bands, as “Lonely Planet” has become one of our personal anthems. Let’s admitt it. Just a look at their album covers and you’ll agree that it’s impossible not to fall in love with that coloured band. 3 boys + 3 girls = 1 genuine musical project. Let’s found why with Scott B.

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Mark Zonda: What’s like to live in Melbourne? Talk us a little ’bout being and indie band in there and show us a picture of the  Australian Scene.

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Scott B: Being based in Melbourne is pretty good.  There are a lot of venues to play live and a lot of bands to play with, people are generally pretty good at supporting local bands so you get people coming to your shows without too much hassle which makes it all pretty enjoyable.  The down side to being in Melbourne is that it is so far away from the rest of the World that you only ever get to see the larger bands on tour, chances of some of the small indie bands coming to Australia is pretty much zero unless they’re out here on holiday.

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Mark Zonda: Paolo, from MyHoney Records, hosts a little weekly radio show called “Geek Radio”. Not so rarely he use to air some songs of your  band. Well. Paolo is still in doubt: was “Lonely Planet” meant as a song on the famous World Travel Pocket Guides? And must he pay you credits for airing your songs?

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Scott B: Haha, no it has nothing to do with the famous travel guide books, although they are also from Melbourne so we do have a couple of things in common I guess.  That being said the lyrics were written by Scott S, our singer, and I know he has a bit of a penchant for lifting song ideas from books that are lying around so perhaps he did steal the idea from there, for anyone who has an interest in such things the song ‘Head to Toe’ that appears on our WeePOP! ep was written after Scott saw the Joe Orton book on my bookshelf.  As for paying credits he’s more than welcome to paypal us as much money as he would like, but I don’t really think it is necessar.

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Mark Zonda: Favourite Bands so fare? What about Zebras, The Brunettes and Apples in Stereo?

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Scott B: Hmmmm, yes we do indeed enjoy all of those bands, playing with the Zebras and Lucksmiths was possibly the most fun experience we’ve had from playing with other bands (although I’ve had a few favourite gigs so we could be here a while if I started listing them).  I think if you had to play ‘match the band member to their favourite band’ game you would probably be looking at something like this:

a) Hugh             1) Beat Happening

b) Irene              2) The Byrds

c) Julia               3) Dead Meadow

d) Scott B          4) Einstürzende Neubauten

e) Scott S           5) Razorcuts

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Mark Zonda: Will your first long playing be just a collection of adorable pop songs or are you following a particular inspiration? Cats? Traveling? Traveling Cats?

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Scott B: I don’t really think we’re following a trend in particular but Scott does like to write songs about traveling and food but not particularly cats.  The album is pretty much finished so I can tell from looking through the tracks that there are a few travel songs, a few unrequited love songs and a couple of silly pop songs.  We’re having difficulty naming the record though so maybe we’ll borrow on your theme idea and name the album “travelogue”.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

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Mark Zonda: What’s the story behind your very twee drum’s floor tom?

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Scott B: Julia is basically a super talented artist who will paint on anything you stick in front of her. When she joined the band the thing she was most excited about was painting the drum on her kit, that and working out how often she could play cowbell in each song.  She’s also responsible for the artwork on all our releases so far, except for the searching for the now 7″ which slumberland organised for all the singles, and I’m assuming she’ll be doing the artwork for the album as well, but we’ll have to come up with a title for that first!

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Mark Zonda: Well, that we do expect a sketch for SleepWalKing! Thank you for the interview and let’s hope to see you ’round here. Possibly on a live show.

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Summer Cats – Lonely Planet

Summer Cats – Discothéque

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