A conversation with Jack McEwan about the creative process, history, and new projects of Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

Transmission 109: Interview with Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets burst onto Perth’s music scene in 2014. The five-piece band—Jack McEwan, Luke Parish, Danny Caddy, Wayan Biliondana, and Chris Young—creates music that twists rock into new forms, mixing fuzzed-out guitars with gritty rhythms and kaleidoscopic sonic turns. Each album, from High Visceral Part One to Fronzoli, pushes their sound further, with Shyga! probably one of the most interesting psychedelic rock albums in recent years. They balance catchy hooks with experimental edges, making music that grabs you and surprises you.

How did growing up in England and then moving to Australia influence your music style and preferences?

Massively. When I was in England, indie music like Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, and the Libertines was coming out. So when I was learning to play guitar, I was learning Arctic Monkeys songs and Nirvana tunes.

I moved to Australia when I was 13. I had a gap at school where I played a little with friends when I came here, but then I got more into music by listening back to those English tunes. I grew up with bands like Kula Shaker and Oasis. Moving to Australia, when I saw the local scene, I thought, ‘Wow, this is kicking off here.’ That made me go back to those older tunes to move forward.

How did the members of Psychedelic Porn Crumpets first meet? And what drew you together to start making music?

I met Danny through one of the old bands we used to play in called Neutral Native. Our friend James was the singer, I played bass, and Danny was on drums. I met Luke by going to the Corner Gallery, a local venue around the corner from where we lived. They were playing a show there, and a band called The Floors was headlining—a really good Perth band.

I saw Luke and approached him, asking if he wanted to have a jam. He’s still saved in my phone as ‘Luke Jams’; I haven’t changed that. We ended up having a couple of jams. I brought my guitar to a mutual house we had, along with a drum kit and a little amp. We used to play when we’d go around to our mate’s house, started jamming, and began writing together. I’d go to his house because he lived a minute away from me.

We started recording in the barn and managed to get Luke Reynolds, who was the bass player at the time because he was known for being a good bass player. We’re still good friends; we still talk, but unfortunately, he’s not playing with us anymore. I think I’m going to the casino with him this weekend, so it’s still friendly.

Then Chris came along afterward. Chris was playing keys. I saw him playing a Guitar Hero guitar on stage once; I thought that was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. He wired it up somehow so the buttons made noises, and he could play keys as well. We originally got him in to do High Visceral Part One and Part Two. We had to play a whole gig that was basically the entirety of our back catalog at that time, so we wondered how we were going to get strings and all this. Chris can play keys, and he’s been playing with us ever since.

How would you describe the atmosphere of the early music scene in Perth when you first started out? How did the local music scene and community support and influence your growth as a band?

Hugely. I don’t think we would be a band without that. We were the generation behind Tame Impala and Pond. We’d heard of this band Mink Mussel Creek growing up and saw them a few times, but I think they only played two or three shows; I can’t remember. I think one was at The Bird.

Tame Impala just took off, and everyone after seeing them play wanted a fuzz pedal. So you had this ’60s revivalist sound crossed with Ty Segall, crossed with Temples coming out from England, and a band called The Wytches that I really liked listening to. In Perth, there were so many bands: Hideous Sun Demon, Red Engine Caves. There was an insane amount of music; every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you’d just go out and there’d be a gig on. You’d scrounge up your pennies to try and get in. It’s funny now that I realize I’m so old. I’ve talked about it a lot—the old music scene—but now it’s like a proper memory. I can still go out, but I haven’t seen anything in ages.

High Visceral Part One was your debut album. Can you tell us about the creative process behind it?

Yeah, so that was all my songs up until I started playing in Porn Crumpets or made it a band. Songs like ‘Cubensis,’ ‘Marmalade March,’ and ‘Cornflake’ I wrote for a university project. The task was to brand pretty much anything, so I decided to brand a band—some musicians. I came up with a stupid name, which we now still use: Psychedelic Porn Crumpets. That was a ‘shoot yourself in the foot’ moment.

I really enjoyed it and showed Jamie, who was at the time a manager, but this was before then. He showed me some of his tunes, and I showed him some of mine, and we talked about music. He had an art gallery where we used to put gigs on, and it was brilliant. That’s where I went and saw Rish.

From there, I kept recording in my spare time. I was working on a building site until probably 21, and then I worked at a bar so I could have more free time in the day to record and work at night. High Visceral was coming home and trying to put every ounce of energy I had into writing. I still think it’s close to our best work, or myself in writing. At the time, I only thought I’d ever write one album, so that was like, ‘Here you go.’ The cheek of it, calling it Part One, looking back now, because there was never going to be a Part Two. It just carried on, and I was like, ‘All right, here we go.’ Now, six albums in, working on a seventh album at the moment, so it was a good move.

What new ideas or experiments did you bring into And Now for the Whatchamacallit compared to your early work?

I went really ham on the shiny guitars. There were lots more poppier tones and writing styles that, looking back now, some are so cringy to play, but people still like them. Some of the songs I love, like ‘Native Tongue’ and ‘Dezi’s Adventure,’ and the bits we don’t play. But ‘Keen for Kick Ons?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, why did I write that?’ It’s still a good song—a good pop-rock song—but moving forward, I would have rather gone with that ‘When in Rome’ kind of vibe, and then it went a bit darker after that.

But Whatchamacallit was just testing. We got a new manager who used to manage Royal Blood, so I thought, ‘If he’s got all these contacts for radio, I’ll start writing some radio tunes.’ That was how my brain worked, and it did well; it was on the charts. But now I’m just writing. If I’m writing to aim for something, it defeats the purpose of the enjoyment, and I think that’s what people come to the shows for: hearing something that has been 100 percent written in this room here, not trying to be chart-busting or chasing top 40 hits. It’s just fun music. So I think Whatchamacallit was that.

During the creation of Shyga! The Sunlight Mound, what was the most challenging track to complete and why?

Oh, that first song… What was that one called on Shyga? Oh no, that was in… Was it Shyga? I think now we ended up putting in Night Gnomes, ‘The Terrors That Come Created.’ But in Shyga, I remember there was one that I’d lost and couldn’t find, so I had to re-record it. Might have been ‘Glitterbug,’ I think, and I wrote that song before. Yeah, that was it. What’s it called? The one before ‘Glitterbug,’ like track five or six. It’s about gardening or something like that. I really like it, but… Oh man, what’s the song called? See, I can’t even remember my own songs. But that I’d lost; it’s the one before ‘Glitterbug.

Hats Off to the Green Beans?

Hats Off to the Green Bins,’ that’s it! So that song I’d lost, and I was so close to finishing writing and mixing that I decided to just throw in the demo. You can hear it’s so tinny. I gave it to Jelly, our mixing engineer, and he was like, ‘What is that? It’s like an MP3; it’s not even the files of all the bits.’ I asked if he could do something with it—it’s going to sound like shit. I said, ‘Yeah, but it’s a really nice song and it goes into “Glitterbug.”‘ He was like, ‘All right.’ I made the executive call to go with that. I should have just re-recorded it, but at that point, I had no idea how to play it or what instruments were in it, so we just went with that.

What are some new musical influences that impact your songwriting and creative process for Shyga!?

Shyga! was the album I recorded just after the lockdown, so it was that post-COVID period when I was at home with a bunch of time to write. It was a bit moodier. I’d just moved house, moved in with my now-wife. We got a North Perth house, and I had this huge room. It was when rent used to be cheap, like five years ago, so we managed to get this double-story house with a fish tank in the wall. I don’t know how we could afford it; I couldn’t afford it now.

I had the master bedroom as my recording studio, and we slept upstairs in the second bedroom. I had a tiny setup—pretty much a desk and two speakers and all these empty walls. If I made anything too big or out there, it already had this reverb to it. So I started writing bigger pieces. That first one, ‘The Terrors That Come Created,’ I wanted it to be epic. I think I’d watched too many Denis Villeneuve movies where I wanted to be epic. Some of it gets there, some doesn’t.

The process was going in with a creative idea rather than just writing songs. It needed to go somewhere, be part of it, and ebb and flow a lot more than the other records did. I’ve listened back to a lot of those songs because they were more recent, and the production takes a step up from Night Gnomes and the following records as well.

What happened when the farmer interrupted your concert during the Levitation session?

That was so hectic. We were recording for a Night Gnomes video at a place called Gnomesville, funnily enough, just south of Perth. We drove down there, started filming, set up among the gnomes. It took hours to set all the lighting up, plug everything, get a generator. My brother was there; he’s a sparky running generators.

We got there at 2 p.m., started filming around 8 p.m., and it was freezing—it was the middle of winter. So lucky it didn’t rain. We’d set up, and then two songs in, this guy comes down and tells us he’s going to flatten all our gear with his bobcat if we don’t clear off. We were like, ‘Nah, surely not.’ He called us ‘a mob of morons,’ and we always say that to each other now: ‘You mob of morons.’ It’s so funny.

How did the recording sessions for Night Gnomes differ from your previous album in terms of atmosphere and process?

We recorded the drums differently. The previous record, we recorded the drums with our friend Sam Ford at Tone City, where we did a lot of stuff in his house in Scarborough. This time, we went back to where we recorded the drums for High Visceral Part Two with Dave Parkin at Blackbird Studios. He’s epic. From then on, we’re just going to record there because he knows everything about recording.

It’s the first time I’ve worked with anyone other than myself. I usually just plug in and go, ‘Yeah, that’s all right.’ He knows what mic to use, what cymbal, how to tune the drums so they fit the key of the song—things I wouldn’t have thought of. When you work with him, he’s like, ‘You should do everything with me.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I should,’ but we’d end up spending tens of thousands of dollars. So we get it to the point where it is now.

He made us think about frequencies. Before, I’d layer guitar on guitar and put the bass and vocals through the same guitar, and you’d have limited space for everything. You’ve got all this room to work with, so he showed me how you can cut guitars and make them poke out, have bits and pieces come through. Less is more a lot of the time. But I like making huge trifles, and the songs are so packed with sound that I have to find where it’s going to sit. I have Dave Parkin to thank for that.

How did the themes and concepts for your latest album, Fronzoli, come together? And what was the creative process behind it? And also why is it called Fronzoli?

Yeah, that’s an Italian word, isn’t it? It was on Word of the Day. I think I was just reading through dictionary.com to find some words. And it’s like, what does that mean? And then it was like Word of the Day was Fronzoli. I was like, that’s absolutely brilliant, because that sounds exactly like what I try to do. Just this mess. But it’s sort of organised and you’re just adding more for decoration. So I thought, all right, I need to label it that. And then I started writing. 

It was on Word of the Day. I was reading through dictionary.com to find some words and saw Fronzoli.’ I thought, ‘That’s absolutely brilliant,’ because it sounds exactly like what I try to do—just mess, but it’s organized, and you’re adding more for decoration. So I decided to label it that.

I started writing. Fronzoli was a carry-on from Night Gnomes, an ebb and flow record where you want the listener to journey through. Rather than writing the same song repeatedly, I wanted to keep carrying on. There are some beautiful songs on there—’Captain Gravity Mouse Welcomes’ and ‘Bread and Butter’ from Night Gnomes. I love those songs, two of my favorite slower tracks.

I’ve recently done a slower album because I like that acoustic sound—the drums and bass. It’s kind of going back to Bowie; you can hear everything because it’s acoustic. Rather than plugging in a DI, it’s got more atmosphere. I tried to emulate more of that on the recent record I’m working on.

It’s always trial and error. I’m writing as much as I can and then pick the best songs. At the moment, I’m going through a different process where I’m like, ‘That song sounds good after this one,’ and then I need to write a song after it. If it doesn’t fit, I have to scrap everything. I’m making sure each song flows perfectly rather than just… I should be good at it after six records, you’d think, but there’s still lots of work.

The more you think you know, it always gets harder. Every time I listen to the previous record, I’m like, ‘What was I doing? What was I thinking?’ Hopefully, I’ll get to a point in the future where I’m happy with that.

What role do visual elements and artwork play in complementing your music? And who are your go-to collaborators for these projects?

With Ollie Jones—the music videos? Once we realized what he could do, and being massive fans of animation, like watching Adult Swim, Flying Lotus’s music videos growing up, and some Unknown Mortal Orchestra videos with cool animation, Grizzly Bear’s claymation video—we saw Ollie’s work and thought, ‘That’s insane. If he can do that, let’s keep going.’ So we use him as the video creator.

It’s sometimes hard because if you want to create a record and move in a different direction, you feel bad because he’s so good. It’s not against his art style; it’s that you want to move and change styles. Same with the album covers. We started using a guy called… Oh man, I can’t remember his name—that’s bad of me. But he did the first two album covers and Part One and Two when it was a double record.

We carried on and used someone called Sergeant’s Watermelon. Sometimes it’s just scrolling through Pinterest and Instagram and coming across bits and pieces, and I think, ‘That’s great.’ But I didn’t want to get stuck on, like, if you’re a psych band, here’s some trippy images. So for Fronzoli, I used my wife’s gran at our wedding because it was just a funny photo, and it seemed fitting for the record. Some people were like, ‘Why did you do that?’ But I don’t want to always seem predictable. Trying to change styles, be quirky and different, and keep people guessing feels like a stronger way to keep your band moving forward. You could probably hum the next Porn Crumpets record if we just carried on doing the same thing, so we keep trying to change it.

How do you incorporate elements of your personal lives into your music? And has this changed over time?

Yeah, 100%. I always question it because you weirdly get stuck in the age you started the band. So I’m perpetually like 20 years old, but I’m a 32-year-old man. Sometimes I need to grow up, but my job allows me to carry on living these 20s. But I don’t want to end up like Jane’s Addiction, where you look at them and think, ‘Oh man.’ You’ve got to figure out as you get older how to keep that young approach but not do the stupid things.

I used to write about weekends and nights out. Now it’s become more observational, bits and pieces. Like the last record, all the lyrics were quirky because they were supposed to be meaningless. But I’ve sort of changed it now. I’m obviously still fairly young, but there’s a wiser brain inside my cranium than there used to be, so I’m probably not doing the same things I did when I was 20.

It’s always interesting where it will go and what you will do. I want to get to the point where the band itself is always carrying on. I even said to our manager the other day—we talk; he’s in LA right now—and he was like, ‘Come to LA, do some writing.’ I said, ‘I’m happy in Perth.’ I don’t think I’ve got the big ambition to be… Obviously, I want to succeed, but I would still just write music if I was still working on the building site. The goal for me isn’t a monetary goal or awards-based goals; I just enjoy doing it.

It’s funny sometimes when, like yourself, I’m doing an interview with Matteo from Italy—like, how do you even have it? It’s interesting because Perth is so small and sleepy. You go out, see the same people, go to the same pubs; time doesn’t change. But then you go on tour, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, this is what’s happening.’ It’s a shock, and then you get carried away with it. Then you come home and think, ‘Oh, that’s right, time to put on my normal shoes, stop wearing those flowery pants.’ It’s two worlds, and I’ll figure out where I am in the middle of it eventually. But for now, it’s record, record, record, and try to listen to as much music as possible—or no music; I’m battling between that.

Are there any upcoming projects or new directions that you’re exploring?

Yeah, I’ve pretty much got four albums on the go. I’m in the studio—the actual Dave Parkin studio at Blackbird. We’re going to have a single pretty much done by next Wednesday. It won’t be released then, but it should be finished, and then we’ll set a release date. Hopefully, we can push an album out, and I’ll keep working.

I’ve basically got until March to write as much music as possible. I’ve already got a ‘Yellows’ record that’s an acoustic one. I’ve got a heavier record, a sort of weird thing that I’m trying to make into music—but it’s music. And then I want to do something epic. So there’s four things, and if I can get them all happy, next year will be a big year for us.

When will your next album be out?

If it was up to me, I’d release it all now. So yeah, that’s all up to the bigwigs, the people in the suit and tie. But we’ll see.

Photos courtesy of Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others