Interview + Gig Preview | PAPERCITY
A Courtney Love connection, being followed by Taskmaster and making it on BBC
Ahead of their first visit to Melb/Naarm Alex from PAPERCITY joins Tempo to tell us all about what’s happening over in NZ for live music along with a snapshot of the band and what to expect before they hit the Cherry Bar on Aug 20.
Hello Alex, you are bringing over your band from New Zealand to play a show in Melb/Naarm at Cherry on Sat 20th of August with heavy alt rock band Vollie and alt/indie-punks Catholic Guilt for a stacked night showcasing some hard-hitting music from both sides of the Tasman. Can you tell us more about the show, your connection to the venue and support acts?
We can’t wait to play in Melbourne! Cherry is one of the few venues we knew of by name before we were looking to play a show there, so it’s really cool for us to get to play in such an iconic place. We’re also really looking forward to playing alongside Vollie and Catholic Guilt. They’re two bands who are killing it in Melbourne at the moment.
I think there’s a really good selection of different sounds on the line up - but all of the bands are really high energy, so it will be a super fun show.
I am keen to hear the backstory of PAPERCITY, can you give us a snapshot?
We’re from a town right in the centre of the country that’s at the bottom of the world (Nelson, New Zealand). It’s a pretty small town and there’s not a lot to do when you’re at high school - so we all kind of congregated and got completely obsessed with making music. It’s actually the same town that Broods are from and Courtney Love weirdly also went to high school there too.
I think (like a lot of other really small places) because of the lack of things to do, people either make art or spend their weekends doing donuts in the McDonald’s car park.
You hail from the small-town of Nelson, NZ, bringing your self- proclaimed hard-edged sad pop sounds into your local indie scenes. Can you tell us about what it’s like over there in terms of support and great venues in the various cities? I have experienced some of Wellington’s landscape and Camp A Low Hum festival way back in 2010. What’s the vibe like these days?
There’s actually a really cool bit of momentum behind live music in New Zealand happening at the moment. It has been a really tough few years, with lots of the small and medium venues closing their doors - which I think is something that has been experienced worldwide. But recently it seems like people are really looking forward to going out to shows.
It’s been awesome to see all of these rooms fill up and to be able to play to such a wide range of people all over the country. Joel Little and his wife Gemma Little have opened an amazing all ages venue in Auckland recently called Big Fan, which has really opened the door for people to put on high quality, safe shows that anyone can come to and the venue has managed to build an epic community around the bands and artists who play there.
Can you tell us about your connection to Melb/Naarm and if this is your first time over here or what you have experienced from previous visits?
This is our first time playing Melbourne!
Our closest connection to Australia currently is probably that the Australian Taskmaster’s assistant Tom Cashman follows us on instagram.
So, if anyone reading this has any suggestions for any must see things while we’re in town, let us know!
I am interested in the international nods you have been getting from the BBC, and also how the recent TikTok attention came about?
We were honestly just really lucky that out of the blue Ollie Winiberg (who’s a BBC Radio One presenter) playlisted our song Feel. We have no idea how he found it but it was super cool that he did.
And then for TikTok - I think we just started to find the right people there and a few clips of our music videos took off. It’s been super rewarding to get to interact with people all over the world who are into the same stuff as us and are connecting with our music.
After the four singles so far, I am wondering if you are currently building towards an album release and if so, are the rest of the tracks in a similar vein or can we expect other directions as well?
Yeah, I think we’re always just trying to make sure our music makes you feel something. So more of the energetic emotional stuff is on its way. And you can definitely expect more noisy synths and weird sounding guitars!
Finally, who are your favourite local Melb/Naarm bands right now and who would you like to see interviewed for Tempo? Feel free to also mention any cool and upcoming bands from NZ if you like?
There’s so much good music coming out of Melbourne at the moment - we’re lucky that we’re playing the show with some of our favourites Vollie and Catholic Guilt. Dempsey are also a super epic new Melb/Naarm band that we’re loving.
A couple of our NZ buddies who are smashing it at the moment are Coast Arcade and our live sound engineer’s new band Dillon Jo. Check them out!
(Coast Arcade are actually on tour in Australia at the moment so you should totally interview them for Tempo.)
