INTERVIEW: Sam McCarthy, Kids Of 88

It’s eleven o’clock on a winter Wednesday, and I am sitting outside in an unpleasantly cold wind next to an ashtray with my phone pressed to my ear.

A middle-aged man is standing next to me, smoking his cigarette with unmitigated fervour. Somewhere in New Zealand, Sam McCarthy, one half of KIDS OF 88--a buzz band come good--is sitting on the stairs outside of his house.

We exchange initial pleasantries about time differences, weather, and mutual fear of missing out on a phone interview because both parties are assuming that they will be contacted by the other. I ask Sam if he is in New Zealand at the moment. “I am,” he tells me. “Where are you?”

“Queensland,” I tell him, “so I’m undoubtedly warmer than you are.”

“Especially because – well, I’ve done that thing where you avoid doing laundry for three weeks. I’m kind of enjoying it though,” Sam jokes. “Being a bit fashion backwards; dressing like a bit of a grand-dad.”

We joke around about how fashion backwards is the new fashion forwards, but like proud member of a crack team of journalistic brilliance that I am, I use this as an in for my first legitimate interview question.

“So,” I say, casual and slick, “speaking of transitions... There were adjectives used to explain your first album [‘Sugarpills’] that aren’t usually applied to a two-man band. Words like ‘slutty’ and ‘sleazy’, for example. Obviously those words aren’t relevant to the new single [‘Tucan’, released on the 11^th of May] so I really wanted to ask you about that change.”

“Yeah, I guess ‘slutty’ couldn’t really be applied to this one. I mean, maybe you could use it in a porn video or something but it would have to be very artistic porn; you know, the kind with soft lighting and emotional plotlines. You know that porn that they make for females?”

“High class porn.”

The transition in sound is notable from the outside. Though stylistically their music is much the same—though perhaps ‘Tucan’ is a little less sweaty than tracks like ‘My House’ and ‘Just A Little Bit’ (by far the bands biggest buzz track to date)--the lyrical offering of ‘Tucan’ is markedly more mature. It’s not a track that speaks of sexual assurance, but emotional assurance.

“I guess, for us, it seems like a very natural progression. ‘My House’ came out in 2009 and obviously we’ve done a lot of things since.”

It’s sometimes easy to forget, when observing changes like this in the sound and direction of a band, that musicians are music lovers at heart. In the three years since ‘My House’ and two since the release of Kids of 88’s debut album ‘Sugarpills’, they’ve surely listened to a lot of music and gleaned a lot of inspiration. Not to mention, they’ve won awards, travelled the world, and toured with big ticket artists like The Naked and Famous and Ke$ha.

Naturally, I’m curious about how a band could manage to straddle the line between two worlds so well—one that takes its music seriously, and one that’s infamous for taking itself too seriously (good luck figuring out which one’s pop and which one’s indie-pop).

“I’ve always been a fan of pop music,” Sam says, without a shred of hesitation. “I’ve always admired well-structured melodies so we like to incorporate that.”

“Nothing superfluous,” he adds.

Ultimately, that’s been the heart of Kids of 88’s success, at home and abroad; their music is no-nonsense, good time songs. And ‘Tucan’ offers the strong, melodic logic of pop music with the fresh, lyrical awareness of a much more mature act and the experimental tang of a band starting to push the boundaries of what it can do.

Before we move on, I ask Sam what it was like touring with Ke$ha. “Is it all Jack Daniels showers and snorting glitter?”

“Kind of. It was interesting, actually. We’d be touring around Europe and playing in these two-hundred year-old theatres so backstage it would be freezing. And she was really living the high life—huge tour bus, great hotels.”

Not so for Sam and band mate, Jordan Arts.

“We’d be sleeping in an eight-seater van on the side of a highway and then playing shows where there’d be people covered in glitter walking around back stage, doing body shots. It was actually really funny—just this really over-the-top tour, and we were travelling around like the poorest of indie bands.”

Sam and Jordan have been best friends for years. “What’s it like, working with your best friend?”

“Good. It’s good to have that security there; it makes it easier when you’re writing and recording to be able to talk openly to someone if you have an idea or you want to experiment with something.” Although, he later adds, “don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked artistically before with people that I haven’t been very close with, and it can still be very successful.”

My time to talk to Sam is winding up. Before we go, I ask him about the remixes that Kids of 88 have done. Approximately a year ago Sam and Jordan released an official Lady Gaga remix, and they’ve remixed for a number of other large acts. “I think it’s important to us that people do remember that we come from that pop, dance background. That’s what we are at heart as an act.”

“There’s a story about that actually. We sent her people a demo of the remix that ended up being put on Youtube. There were hundreds of thousands of views on it before we figured out what had happened and they had to eventually replace it with the finished product. It’s out there somewhere. I suppose we should just be grateful that we got a chance to remix for Lady Gaga—bloody hell.”

Their second album, ‘Modern Love’, is due to be released in the coming months.

Check out the video for their latest single 'Tucan' feat. Alisa Xayalith below

KIDS OF 88' AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES

Saturday, 9th June Alhambra Lounge Brisbane  - tix $12 from Oztix.com.au

Wednesday, 13th June Beach Road Hotel Sydney - free!

Friday, 15th June Esplanade Hotel Melbourne - tix $12 from Oztix.com.au

Words by Cheryl Billman