Interview: Michael Fitzgerald of The Vasco Era

Are you one of them?
I wouldn’t call myself a surfer – all I know how to do is headstands on longboards.

That’s a pretty neat trick, though.
Everyone who has seen me do that sort of looks at me and goes ‘You must be really good,’ but it’s not true. Ted [O’Neil], our bass player actually surfs every day.

I have never been able to. There’s something about balance and equilibrium that doesn’t agree with me.
Me too! I don’t understand how it works – like the science of it. Because you see these pro surfers doing these big airs, and I don’t understand how their feet stay on the board. There’s no glue there. Six beers ought to fix your equilibrium problem – it helps with mine.

So you guys have an album coming out!
I’m so excited, man. It’s our third album, and of all three albums we’ve recorded, this is the only one we’re still listening to. With the other albums, after a period of time we’d stop listening to them after we realised they were pretty shit. But with this one it’s different – it’s been a solid couple of months and it still holds up.

Do you have that ‘tortured artist’ moment when you’re listening to your old albums?
Sometimes. Sometimes I’ll put one of our old records on and it will link to exactly how I was feeling when we were recording at that time, or I’ll hear something that really bugs me. I always go: ‘Oh, this is pretty shit’, but I actually really like the stuff-ups on this new album.

I like this album because it finds a middle ground between the first two records. It’s not as edgy as your first or as sullen as your second. Do you agree?
I think that’s exactly true. The first one was pretty deliberately raucous, and on the second one we were trying to experiment a lot with different sounds to showcase softer side to the band. Actually, not softer. Do you know what I’m saying?

A cleaner side?
Perfect! A cleaner side to our music. Anyhow, this new record his right in the middle and has a bit of both.

It sounds like you guys are just in a room having fun playing music.
Good. I’m glad that you said that, because that’s exactly what we were trying to do. That was one of the big things on this album, other than writing great songs. We wanted it to sound like we were enjoying playing, and having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously.

Was there an element of taking it too seriously beforehand?
Yeah. But I don’t think that was our fault. We were all pretty young when we first started, and we came from a small town so we were pretty naïve, and we were told a lot of things about how big or huge we could get if we did this or that; that if we played our cards right that was what was going to happen. With that came a lot of pressure to impress and please people, and to do the right thing, and it got a bit heavy. So we made the move to go independent with this album, and we’re enjoying it more.

My impression of this album is that you weren’t trying to please anybody other than yourselves, and I think that really works in your favour.
Yeah, me too. Like, one of our big influences on this record was a band called Pavement. Have you heard them?

On my notepad, I have written a big capital-letter memo that says ‘Sounds Like Pavement!’
Yeah! They were one of our biggest influences because they’re almost as unprofessional as a band as we are, but they still make great rock music. So that was a big aim of ours – it doesn’t matter if we get big or famous or any of that because we’re having fun and not giving a shit, and that’s what Pavement are renowned for.

Did you catch them on tour this year?
Don’t get me started! I missed it. Sid [O’Neil, guitar/vox] saw them, and he’s more than happy to talk me about how fantastic it was. Ted and I were away. It’s such a big shame.

You got to work with Steve Schram on this album. He’s had his hand in a lot of great stuff this year. How was that for you?
He’s actually really really good as a producer. We got along with him very well and he really knew how to get this album into gear. Like he has with a lot of other bands – he did that first Little Red album and the last Cat Empire album as well as ours. In all of the work that does he finds this great way to match the sounds that that particular band makes with the songs that they’ve written, and that’s exactly what he did for us.

I loved the Eagle and the Worm record that he did.
Good times! That’s such a good one and a really good example of what I mean. All of those vintage sounds, combined with the horns, all of that stuff just sits perfectly together on top of their songs. He’s a pretty smart dude, and he’s also a good guy. All producers have those sorts of tickets on themselves, but he doesn’t talk about it too much.

He just knows it.
Yeah! He’s more than happy to say that he’s the best producer ever and we’re more than happy to give him shit, but I think he’s really good and we’d be interested in doing another one with him if the opportunity arises.

What prompted you to release this independently?
It’s pretty exciting, I think. I don’t know why, but it seems like there’s a lot less pressure on us. It’s because there aren’t as many big, corporate machines behind us, so it feels like it’s more ‘us’ than the previous records are. We borrowed from our parents to pay for it and we put all of the sounds down ourselves in our own time. When we were on the label, they were great and generally very accommodating, but times change and you find differences and they were happy to let us go and we were happy to go. It makes us feel like this album is one unified project. Our project.