“As soon as you say you’re from Dunedin, they say ‘oh yeah, the ‘Dunedin Sound’,” admits Soaked Oats guitarist Henry Francis of a common reaction from overseas audiences when it comes to their music.
It may be 30 years on since the heyday of the iconic Flying Nun sound, but some still assume that if a band comes from Dunedin, then they will inevitably owe a stylistic debt to Kiwi indie pioneers such as The Chills and The Clean.
The young four-piece – who are in Australia this week for a series of dates in Sydney, Melbourne and Wollongong – are certainly fans of the early Flying Nun sound but don’t see see much of connection with their own music.
Singer/guitarist Oscar Mein says the music of that era has not influenced his own writing, although he acknowledges that some of the artists he loves have been influenced by the original Flying Nun acts.
“I met Kevin Morby recently and it was funny, he was saying back in the day was that they just wanted to sound like The Clean,” he recalls. “As a contemporary artist, he is someone I have probably listened much too much to – there was a time when I just wanted to sound like Kevin Morby! So I guess there’s kind of a weird circular thing going on there.”
So what do Soaked Oats sound like then? The band describe their sound as “sludge pop”, a hazy blend of blissful melodies and scruffy hooks that have been captured so far on two EPs, Stone Fruit Melodies and No Slip Ups.
“I guess there is a real breadth of influences and we are still kind of figuring out our sound, but sludge pop is the best description so far,” muses Mein.
“At the end of the day we do write simple pop structured songs that deal with subject matter that you wouldn’t normally get in the pop world. It’s all a bit dirtier.”
Formed at the tail-end of 2016, Soaked Oats came about when Mein – who had only started playing guitar while in the last year of university – hooked up with old school friends Connor Feehly (drums) and Max Holmes (bass), who were flatting at the time with Francis in Dunedin. The aim was to record the first batch of songs he had written but they gelled immediately and Soak Oats was duly born.
Extensive touring in NZ over the past year has seen them develop into a formidable live unit and those skills have been further honed in a 20 date tour of the US before Christmas, which saw them clock up more than 10,000 miles in a 1980s RV dubbed the Driftwood – “It became known as the ‘Driftworld’ because everyone who entered it became caught up on the drifting nature of the band,” laughs Mein. “A lot of things got lost in the Driftworld…”
Their current tour – which will be followed in March with a slot at the prestigious UK festival The Great Escape – coincides with the release of their new single ‘Shuggah Doom’, which offers the first taste of what will be their third EP. Their first two EPs came out in 2017, but for this one the band have been happy to take their time with it.
Watch the video for ‘Shuggah Doom’ below:
“We’ve been playing constantly as much as we can pretty much since we started,” says Francis. “That’s been really good for our playing together, but it possibly hasn’t given us quite enough space to spend that time write and record, which is the nice thing about new recordings.”
Adds Feehly: “We started the without any sort of definite plan of how we wanted to release the songs too. We just had songs and went and recorded them without any idea whether was going to be for album or EP.”
Soaked Oats are now looking forward to sharing the new material – along with old favourites – with Australian audiences.
“We did four shows in Melbourne last year and that was really cool,” says Mein. “It was kind of a similar experience to American and the crowd was really attentive to us. It’s pretty exciting watching people’s reaction to recorded material they’ve never heard – reaction to first listens gives you some sort of validation.”
One of the features of their NZ shows last year was the band’s spangly ponchos but given the weather at the moment they won’t be worn in Australia (“They didn’t get washed for the first six months, so there was a pretty good smell going on,” recalls Holmes. “We had to wash them in the bathtub with a broom!”).
So will they going to the other extreme instead by disrobing, like the band did for an early live session they recorded at Roundhead Studios?
Watch Soaked Oats perform ‘Stoned Fruit’ live at Roundhead Studios:
“I don’t know it could be quite hot there,” replies Mein. “Those sessions were among the first times we had been in a recording studio; I had barely had even played an electric guitar let alone being in a studio. It was way too intimidating. When we recorded the EP, there was disrobing for comfort sake. It’s not a live thing at this but we will see.”
Soaked Oats – ‘Shuggah Doom’ Tour
Feb 1st – Melbourne @ Open Bar (supporting Space Cabanara)
Feb 3 – Melbourne @ Grace Darling Hotel
Feb 4 – Canberrra @ The Phoenix
Feb 6 – Wollongong @ Rad Bar
Feb 8 – Sydney @ Oxford Art Factory
Presale tickets available via each venue, or via Facebook events.
