INTERVIEW: Deep Sea Arcade
We had a chat to Nic, Tim and Simon of Deep Sea Arcade during their visit in Brissy. Did you know something in the Great Barrier Reef was named after DSA?
“We’re hoping the weather will clear up but honestly we won’t mind that much if it doesn’t. We love to play in Brisbane because the crowd always makes a point to make it a really great show. In fact, I think Brisbane is probably one of our favourite places to play.”
These are some of the first words I exchange with Nic Weaver, lead singer of DEEP SEA ARCADE, who are currently one of Australia’s biggest musical exports and have received worldwide acclaim for their unique, dynamic sound. Joining us outside of Cloudland’s Valley Fiesta Artists Green Room are the bands two guitarists, Tim Chamberlain and Simon Relf, who is holding a plate with a choice sampling from the spread available for the artists. He offers me some sushi.
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Declining, I ask if they’re being paid by the Brisbane City Council for their glowing commendation of the city. Brisbane is a small city, and for those of us who live here, it’s still hard to imagine that a band who has played shows across the world - and isn’t actually from Brisbane - could enjoy time spent here so much.Even as Nic denies it, adding: “We have a lot of friends here, too,” Tim pipes up with a suggestion.“Maybe that’s how we could fund the next album,” he jokes.Something in the Great Barrier Reef is now named Deep Sea Arcade after the band, they tell me proudly. “We’re probably going to team up with Lara Bingle and start selling snorkelling packages.”
Sensing an ‘in’ and being the crack journalist that I am, I ask if they’re actually thinking about the next album yet. Simon and Tim both immediately point to Nic.
“I mean, I have about eleven songs written,” he admits, “and we’re recording some of them as demos. There’s more, though. Everyone’s got a few songs in the pipeline.”
I enquire as to their writing process and whether it’s always been so collaborative. “No,” Nic admits. “It has been on this album, more so than the first. On the first album, Nick Weaver and I wrote all of the songs together. But with this album, we wanted to try something a little different.”
They begin to tell me about the process, and I’m struck by their determination to do something different - and maybe even better - on the next album. Nic begins to tell me excitedly about how they are testing themselves throughout the writing process. “We’ve had these little projects where we’ve all had to go away and find, say, five beats that we like and [drummer] will record them for us to write songs over.”
We find ourselves on the topic of influences. Undoubtedly, a lot of Sixties influences have been attributed to the band, and I’m curious to know if any of them are deserved.
“I imagine that the way we assemble songs is much like the way DJ Shadow would assemble a song. We might take a little bit from the Eighties and something from the Nineties and sometimes it’ll come out sounding like something completely different - like, for example, it might come out sounding like something from the Sixties.
This morning on the plane I was listening to this demo Simon was writing which was amazing - "
“I thought I was ripping off Crosby Nash & Stills the whole time,” Simon tells me conspiratorially.
“And it was so funny because Simon had sort of convinced himself that it sounded exactly like Jane’s Addiction which, of course, it didn’t. I think sometimes if you’re too strict with the process, it loses something. Sometimes there’s too much reading between the lines.
Right now the Sixties are really in, in the UK. I mean, really in. There are a lot of purist revival bands around now, and they sound like something from the Sixties and they look like they’re from the Sixties - that’s fine, but that’s not what we want to be.”
I agree. My mother - a true child of the sixties - has expressed her disgust at their attempts to recreate the past on many occasions. Coincidentally, she loves Deep Sea Arcade.
“I think we aspire to be like Radiohead, maybe, in that respect,” Nic adds finally, “because we don’t want to fit into a specific genre. We want to have a lot of labels attributed to us.”
Words by Cheryl Billman, check out street on POSSE.COM
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