Deadline
There’s a great Mitchell & Webb sketch where a scientist searching for a cure for AIDS deliberately infects his lab partner with the disease, because he figures they need a deadline. It’s funny, as they used to say, because it’s true.
It was certainly the case for Regurgitator. After releasing their ‘Distractions’ EP late last year, they swore not to release any more music in the album format, choosing instead to move with the times and focus on digital singles. Well, that was the plan, anyway - turns out they needed the sort of deadline that can only be provided by a good, ol’ fashioned LP.
“I underestimated the the sense of purpose an album gives you,†Quan Yeomans explains. “You get motivated to finish something... The only reason this record exists is because our manager gave us a deadline. He said he'd like to put a tour together by August, and if we could have something to release by then, that'd be great, but he needed it two months before that to press the vinyl. So we thought, 'oh, shit, okay…'
“I had a couple songs that had been sitting around for a while that were ready to be mixed and ready to be fully produced, but because of priorities in each other's lives, we just didn't have that focus. The deadline and the fact we didn't have anything for August made the album coalesce.â€
You could argue that the resulting LP, ‘Superhappyfuntimefriends’, presents fans with the best of both worlds. Not only do we get a new album to treasure, just when we’d come to accept it’d never happen, but the band are continuing to experiment with the format, releasing the new material digitally and on vinyl, CD, cassette (!) and Playbutton (literally a wearable button that plays the album, like an incredibly specific iPod Nano with a cooler design and better sound).
It helps, of course, that the album is great, and arguably their most immediately satisfying listen since ‘Unit’. Even the band themselves, notoriously tough on their own material, seem to like it.
“Yeah, yeah, I'm really happy with how it worked out,†admits Ben Ely. “None of it makes me cringe, listening to it now, which is good. Usually there's always something on there that's not quite right, but yeah, I'm really quite happy with it.â€
The timing of the release is perfect, as the band bask in the glow of ‘Unit’ scoring a Top 10 spot on Triple J’s list of the Hottest 100 Australian Albums Of All Time. Well, ‘bask’ might be too strong a word.
“I mean, we're extremely flattered,†Quan qualifies. “You take that sort of thing with a grain of salt, though. I mean, it's very biased in its own way, and there are a lot of great Australian albums that probably deserve a bit more recognition. But yeah, we were really surprised and flattered.â€
New tracks like ‘Be Still My Noisy Mind’ and ‘Into The Night’ see the group continuing to mine the ‘80s new wave pop sounds they first struck upon on ‘Unit’. Regardless, Quan prefers not to see that album as the start of a trend (even though it predated Daft Punk’s ‘Discovery’, generally credited with sparking the never-ending ‘80s revival, by four years).
“We didn't really think of it that way. We didn't think of it as a trend. Honestly, we just thought we would stick out like a sore thumb. It did stick out for a long, long time, before it became cool to do '80s stuff. It was only cool to do '80s stuff after that record was forgotten, in a way. You know what I mean? It peaked and we disappeared a little bit before bands started doing that, so I don't think we pre-empted anything or started any trends. It just seemed to stand a bit apart from everything else.â€
Which is something - whether they choose to follow conventional release patterns or not - Regurgitator have never had any trouble doing.
Look for a comprehensive oral history of Regurgitator in the next issue of Junior MAG + AT JUNIORONLINE.COM.AU
‘Superhappyfuntimesfriends’ is out August 5. Regurgitator play The Great Northern on August 18, Coolangatta Hotel August 19, The Hi-Fi August 20, Kings Beach Tavern August 21 and an all-ages show at The Edge August 20.