Shitgaze. It’s a musical genre that you probably haven’t heard much about, unless you’ve trawled the Wikipedia pages of bands such as Psychedelic Horseshit, Eat Skull, and Times New Viking. This might be because, as Times New Vikings’ keyboardist and vocalist, Beth Murphy, told Tone Deaf’s Dunja Nedic, ‘It’s not really real’.
‘The shitgaze thing, that means nothing to me. If I were to pick that apart and say what shitgaze could possibly be, then I would have to say that there’s a shoegaze element to our music, which there’s not,’ Murphy asserts. ‘I think the only reason that that thing exists is because it’s kind of funny and the band that happened to come up with it, as a joke, was a band that we were close to in our home town.’
Shitgaze isn’t the only name that Times New Viking has often been paired with, however, with the band garnering constant comparisons to fellow Ohioans, Guided by Voices; a comparison Murphy is far happier to accept.
‘I understand why that reference is made – we’re from the same state, a lot of the same qualities in the sound, so I can’t blame anyone for making that reference. We just recently got to go on a long tour [with them] and we just kind of realised how much they are a formidable band for all of us so I don’t think we’d ever complain about that particular comparison, no.’
Times New Viking toured with Guided by Voices in October of last year, but getting on the road certainly isn’t an uncommon occurrence for the band. Earlier this year, the band did a rather thorough set of dates across Europe, the USA and Canada over a two and a half month period. Following their dates here in Australia, they are set to head back Stateside for a few gigs dotted around the place before coming back down under at the beginning of October to support Marnie Stern. Murphy explains this relentless touring schedule is a necessity in the current musical climate, particularly for bands that don’t supplement their income with a 9 to 5.
‘It’s definitely the only way to make money as a band right now at our level…our album sales aren’t what they used to be and we’ve kind of got used to it because we’ve toured so much.
‘It has been weird to be home for long periods of time. So luckily we’ve enjoyed it so far, it’s also kind of a necessity now, we have to tour to make any kind of money.
Longtime fans of Times New Viking will know that on their latest LP, Dancer Equired!, their fifth full length release since 2005, the band elected to use a studio in contrast to the DIY recordings they did in the past, which cemented their sound as more authentically lo-fi than some of their peers.
‘We got home from tour and we were very much ready to record an album and the way we used to do it was kind of out of the question at the time, a lot of our equipment was broken. We had an opportunity to try something new without doing something drastically different.
‘The studio we chose was in Columbus, Ohio, and we got a friend of ours who’s been with us from the get go to help us with the physical aspects of recording, and we thought it would maybe change the sound a little bit for the better but without being too drastic of a difference.
‘We were still very much in control of how it sounded when we were there producing the thing, it wasn’t like anything was outside of our hands, it wasn’t like we were going to a big scary studio and we didn’t have any say. We weren’t there to sound too clean or sounding like something that didn’t sound like it came from us I guess, we always knew we could tweak the sound until we were comfortable with it.
‘How we record things is just what makes the most sense at the time, what we have available to us.’
Although they’re only been around for a few years, there have naturally emerged some patterns and routines given their experience in both recording and extensive touring, but Murphy’s rather cautious about giving too much away about their pre-show rituals.
‘Jared does a bunch of shots, I usually smoke a bunch of cigarettes…[but] anything ritualistic I probably wouldn’t be at liberty to disclose.’
Thursday, August 25 | Tone, Surry Hills, Sydney
Tix via popfrenzy.com.au and moshtix.com.au
Friday, August 26 | Woodland, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
Tix via moshtix.com.au
Saturday, August 27 | Northcote Social Club, Northcote, Melbourne
Tix via northcotesocialclub.com
