Melbourne’s Loon Lake play indie rock that is catchy as fuck. Fresh off the back of a national Kaiser Chiefs tour, guitarist Simon Nolan sat down to tell us about being in a band with two of his brothers and overindulging in fantails at Groovin’ the Moo.

I caught you guys at The Palace last week. Tight set! What was a highlight of your national support alongside Kaiser Chiefs and Deep Sea Arcade?

Cheers! Thanks for getting down early. It was great touring with those two bands – they are both fantastic live bands. Personally, the highlight for me was probably the Perth show. We played well that night and sound was spot on from where I was standing, which makes a huge difference. We also got the whole day to have a bit of a squiz around Perth, which was cool. We went down to Freo. Nice spot.

Tell us about Groovin’ the Moo. We want the hard-hitting goss.

I can tell you it was a freezing cold day, Mutemath were sick wicked live, and I didn’t know what I was watching when I saw Andrew W.K. He seemed to be banging on about New York a lot. Ate a shit load of minties and fantales from the riders too. Three in the mouth at once.

‘Bad To Me’ really blew up on Triple J. What was your reaction upon realising it had been added to rotation?

‘Bad To Me’ had a bit of success on the radio, which always helps get the band noticed. One thing that I really enjoyed about the process of ‘Bad To Me’ was how fast and easy it was. When we recorded that song, we didn’t even intend to release it. We just had some time left at the end of the recording session and we thought we would demo the half baked idea we had going on. It came together really quick, everyone’s parts basically just happened instantly and we had it down in three takes or so. Usually we have our songs completely formed before we head into the studio and we take a fair bit of time getting it right. It was refreshing just to do it quick and then realise this actually sounds ok.

Your tracks have some seriously infectious hooks. What’s the process behind song writing? Is it an equal collaborative process between all of you?

The majority of the time the bare bones (the chords and melody) of the song is brought in by someone (usually Sam the singer) and then we flesh it out as a group. We usually develop our own parts and arrange from there. I guess you could say the arranging part of the process is very collaborative, yet most of the time the initial idea or spark has to be brought in. We are definitely not a ‘jamband’. Most of the time we all know pretty much straight away, whether or not we want to pursue an idea.

I understand three of you are brothers. Has it always been such a friendly dynamic between you guys?

Yep, there are three brothers and two mates in the band. I’m one of the brothers. We are all close mates, we were before the band started and will be after it ends. I guess you have to be when you’re brothers, you can’t just tell your mum and old man ‘they didn’t like the way I played that F major chord, so now I quit the band and I don’t talk to them’. I think with brothers, you might have a blew or argument, whatever. It’s forgotten very quickly. Being in a band can bring up some testing situations, I’m not so sure on the dynamics of other bands, but we move on pretty quick from those testing times.

We hear you’re scheduled to release an EP in the next few months. Where are you up to with that? Have the songs been penned yet?

Yep the new E.P. should be out within the next 2 months, with the new single being released in the next few weeks. From the music point of view it is completely done, recorded, mixed and mastered. Now we just sit back and wait for the real boring shit to get done. Personally, I really like the 6 new songs we have recorded. I feel our sound has matured and developed from the 1st release. I definitely feel the song writing has improved, maybe listeners wont, not sure. But I’m definitely proud of them. I wouldn’t say our sound has changed drastically or anything like that, it still sounds like Sam singing and Dan playing his guitar, but I would just say overall we thought about it and took our time a little more. I think from the new single people might hear that. Hopefully it’s just a natural progression.

What else is on the horizon for Loon Lake?

Well we have just finished up 2 very busy months with the Bluejuice and Kaiser Chiefs tour, so now we get to relax a little before we gear up for our own national tour in August,which I’m really looking forward to. I think over the next two months we are going to work hard on putting a live show together for this tour and the release of the EP, and also start to write new tunes for our album we plan to release sometime next year. Yeah so that’s about that.

Words: Rach Beaven | Images: Little Old Me Publicity