Total Giovanni’s aim is simple: they want to bring people together, make them dance, and hopefully lose all inhibitions in the process. You walk into their show with three friends and there’s a good chance you’ll leave with three more.
The Melbourne-based five-piece, who have a penchant for wearing ridiculous costumes or not much at all, make infectious 80s house anthems and colourful Italo-disco jams that are all about generating positive energy and creating an atmosphere fit for total hedonism. Their vibes are very good, basically.
While they’ve been playing together for almost two years now, it’s only in the last six months that people have really started to catch on.
Total Giovanni are arguably Australia’s most talked about rising band right now, following their career-making set at Golden Plains in March where they hit the stage on a calm Sunday afternoon wearing their trademark white robes and put on what was easily the most fun and memorable set of the weekend.
Simply put, they killed it. When the rapturous ‘Can’t Control My Love’ hit its mid-point refrain, the backed-up crowd transformed into a dancing sea of raised boots going as far back as the eye could see. It’s a story that will be passed down at the Supernatural Amphitheatre for years to come: where were you when Total Giovanni stole the show from their disco elders and festival headliners, The Village People?
Post-Golden Plains, and as a result of the quintet’s new cult following they just had to add a fifth hometown show onto their first ever headline East Coast tour. Word is getting around fast.
Today the clan’s charismatic frontman, Vachel Spirason, is moving house. He’s making the bold sea change from Northcote to Coburg, and at the moment he’s squeezed into the back of a ’97 Toyota Camry crammed full of boxes. “There’s a lot of shit,” he assures me.
There’s plenty of heavy lifting to be done, and so Spirason is multi-tasking throughout most of our conversation. It’s not exactly an ideal way to be spending a day off, but the charming singer-guitarist is still in high spirits.
Tone Deaf: First let’s talk about Golden Plains. I’m not sure if you’ve read the reviews, but pretty much everyone agreed it was the surprise highlight of the festival. At the latest Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People panel, even [organiser] Woody McDonald described it as a special moment.
Vachel Spirason: That’s very kind of him. That means a lot, and as we mentioned on stage, we’ve been going to Meredith and Golden Plains since we were underage, so for him or anyone to describe it that way is very significant, and I actually don’t know if it’s sunk in for us yet.
Still when I watch that video back – which I’ve done only a couple of times – it’s amazing to see how in shock we are as well that it’s happening, in terms of people being there and responding in the way they did. We didn’t anticipate that at all.
It was just a really beautiful thing.
TD: The atmosphere in the crowd was electric. I’ve never seen so many boot salutes. You made my friends happy cry. What can you remember from it?
VS: I was surprisingly calm before going out. Even though it was such a massive gig, for some reason it felt like playing in your living room. Something about knowing what the vibe was, having spent so much time out there on the couches and what not, so I think in that respect we felt so comfortable.
TD: Your live shows are very visceral and theatrical. They get pretty rowdy, and I think that’s because you lead by example. At Paradise especially there was lots of licking and gyrating. How do you prepare to go all out like that?
VS: Well we have a little huddle. We do that onstage as well. We start the beat of the first song and come in like we’re in a footy team. It’s important to have a little huddle, and often back stage we’ll have a little rev up speech about what we’re trying to achieve today.
You’ve got to approach it that way. It sounds dumb – and we do it with tongue-in-cheek, like we’re taking the piss – but since we first started playing it is about doing that, and to energise the space you’ve got to amp yourself up.
I think early on we used to get really high to play — not all of us, some of us are more well behaved than others – but me and Jules enjoy getting in the zone by using, you know, whatever. I think we were just nervous early on and you try to lose your inhibitions to do that.
TD: You’ve all been friends for years, right? How far back do you go?
VS: Yeah, a lot of us were school friends.
Wait – we’re about to get out of the car and we’re about to unload, do you mind if we do this in two halves?
TD: No worries, I’ll call you back in twenty?
VS: Just because I’m with my girlfriend and I don’t want her to have to unload this car on her own, but we can pick up exactly where we left off. Cya, bye!
[20 minutes later]
TD: Hey again, how’s the move going?
VS: [Laughs] Yeah, it’s getting there.
So my life has been chaos the last few days. We’re trying to move house and we’re about to go to Sydney tomorrow because we’ve got a show on Saturday, so it’s been a bit of a frantic time. Happy frantic. The best kind of frantic.
Anyway, thank you for accommodating. I’m sorry to do that.
TD: All good. I got to have another lunch break, so thank you.
VS: Right, and that’s important. It’s exhausting talking to me.
“We’re not trying to take ourselves too seriously, really, because we don’t as people and we don’t as a band.”TD: I think we were talking about The Origins of Total Giovanni; how you came together.
VS: In different ways. Jules is the other body mover in the group. I became friends with him in high school because he was the only other guy who would dance around at the school social with me. So he was the only other boy who would dance with me at parties and things, and that’s how we became really close friends, and we’ve been best friends ever since.
So that’s kind of the nucleus [of Total Giovanni] – especially when it comes to dance energy. We just, as long as we’ve known each other, really enjoy trying to get that kind of energy going wherever we are, and so now we’ve got a massive platform to do that. It used to just be house parties, and people would think we were annoying and we’d just go dance in a corner.
Some of the other guys I’ve known for a very long time. We’re all in our late 20s now, so many of us have been close mates for 10 years, going to gigs and all that sort of stuff together, so we’ve got a lot of shared history, and a lot of shared musical history.
We’ve all got very different record collections, and a lot of overlap, and I think that really makes for what ended up being that band’s sound as well.
TD: What would be the pivotal records, or sounds, that have shaped Total Giovanni’s aesthetic?
VS: Well, dance music in all its manifestations. And it’s hard because that word means different things – people think of ‘EDM’ when you say ‘dance music’ now, which is a shame – but music that’s made for dancing. That’s a better way of putting it. That ranges anywhere from tribal percussion, like weird world music stuff, to disco and uptempo soul, to new wave and early house.
Again, I think ‘house music’ has become a bit of a dirty word because it’s become this commercialised fuckin’ mutant thing. But early house music at its core – like late ‘80s house and early Detroit techno – these things were really out there, underground, and utopian things that were about people from different backgrounds coming together and dancing all night, and unleashing those possibilities. And the same with early disco – disco, again, became a commercial venture which ended up with all this naff stuff, but at its core was really subversive.
[include_post id=”440259″]
TD: Right. Most dance sub-genres started as socio-political movements; ways for minority communities to come together and celebrate.
VS: Totally. And I think that’s what interests us – not that we’re trying to be political, or anything – just that genres at their core were all really about bringing people together through the power of rhythm and music. That’s the kind of energy we’re trying to channel, and it’s completely surprised us at every turn how much enthusiasm that’s been met with. We didn’t set out on a mission to spread the gospel or anything.
TD: I guess it’s just a coincidence then you kind of look like Jesus with those white robes.
VS: [Laughs] That’s true. Maybe I am, maybe I am.
TD: What would be the ideological pillars of Total Giovanni?
VS: Universal love. A complete lack of judgement – don’t judge anyone about anything. We do it all the time, from what someone’s wearing; what kind of music they’re into; what kind of music we think they’re into based on what they’re wearing. All that kind of shit – that’s the shit you’ve got to get over. So I guess the idea of trying to bridge over that by being super ridiculous, maybe?
That’s the advantage of having the sense of spectacle: it’s a little bit outside time, as well. We’re not just trying to fit in to a contemporary niche. It’s a bit “none of the above” and with a sense of humour. We’re not trying to take ourselves too seriously, really, because we don’t as people and we don’t as a band. I think that’s important, too. We’re being cheeky with a lot of it.
TD: Post-Golden Plains, those four sold-out Melbourne shows sort of demonstrate the hype in real, tangible terms. Has it been weird adapting to this growing buzz?
VS: Totally. I mean it’s exciting, and it’s a bit daunting.
I’m here with Dave now, the bass player, who just rocked up and he’s just finished his day of being a tradie, so we’re still doing our day jobs thing and that’s about the sum of it.
You know what I mean? It’s still very abstract for us, because we’re all pretty poor and trying to hustle day-to-day.
TD: So, how far off is this debut EP?
VS: The next round of recording we’re going to be doing in a couple of months and that will be out in Spring, so like September-October. But we’re not sure if it’ll be an EP or a whole album because we’ve got a lot of new material, so it’ll be about picking what we want to put into the world.
TD: How do you go about capturing that energy of the live show and putting it into your recordings?
VS: That was the first challenge the first time we were recording: how do we capture that live energy?
We’ll probably approach recording a bit differently this time. We’re all playing a lot more live instrumentation and the songs are growing a lot more organically from the whole group, so I think that’s really good. Just based on the rough takes we have of these new songs, the sound is maturing into something that’s uniquely us and less a combination of different influences.
On the first few singles, because they were a bunch of discrete singles, we were trying out different things for size. ‘Can’t Control My Love’ is more of a house banger; ‘Human Animal’ is a polyrhythmic, Talking Heads-esque sort of jam. So each one is slightly different, whereas I think the next batch of songs sound more coherent, like they’re all part of one thing.
TD: There’s certainly lots of people hanging out for it.
VS: It’s a bit of a runaway momentum thing. We want do something worthy of that hype. I guess in some ways it puts pressure on you to make something good – like if people are going to be paying attention to what you’re doing, you’re going to make sure you’re making something good to do it justice. That’s the next challenge for us.
TD: Can I get a final update on the move?
VS: We’re going to swap the Camry for Dave’s ute. It’s a really exciting time.
Total Giovanni East Coast Tour 2015
Thursday, 2nd April Parkside @ Waves, WollongongSOLD OUT
Saturday, 25th AprilGoodgod Danceteria, SydneySOLD OUT
Saturday, 2nd MayBendigo, Groovin’ the Moo (DJ set)SOLD OUT
Friday, 8th MayGasometer, MelbourneSOLD OUT
Wednesday, 13th May
Gasometer, MelbourneSOLD OUT
Thursday, 14th May
Gasometer, MelbourneSOLD OUT
Friday, 15th MayGasometer, MelbourneSOLD OUT
Thursday, 21st May
Gasometer, Melbourne
Tickets: The Gasometer
