Interview with Aleks and the Ramps
By Richard McFarlane
The last time I saw Melbourne troupe Aleks and the Ramps it was a somewhat bewildering experience.
It wasn’t because they started their set with a choreographed dance routine to a Beyonce medley, or that one of them was wearing a tight leopard skin dress. In fact, I wouldn’t have expected anything less. But because the unusually low turn-out seemed very odd; there were not many people there at all. I thought the show was going to be a sell-out because of the collective buzz about the band: media coverage, positive reviews of debut album Pisces vs Aquarius, but mostly word of mouth.
Even though Aleks felt certain the show was going to be a success, his perspective was somewhat different. Maybe it’s the benefit of hindsight.
“I guess that’s the thing about being on a first time tour and being a no-name band, with an album that no-one’s ever really heard of and which isn’t available in stores. One thing I have learnt from playing in a band and putting on shows is that there’s absolutely no way of telling. No matter how much promo you do and who you tell there’s no way of knowing. It’s so unpredictable. Some of the most heavily publicised shows we’ve put on have sort of bummed out. Then two nights later you play a show that you haven’t told anybody about (or actively tell people not to come to) and they all turn up, I don’t even know how people found out about that show.”
I was convinced, however, that there was hype building and that the show was going to be huge; a ridiculous sexed-up dance fiasco of the funnest nature. It’s difficult to gauge.
“I don’t know how you gauge success,” Aleks responds.
“There’s mentions of us in some of the music press, there have been a few reviews. But reviews come and go and bands come and go. I try not to read them. I figured out it wasn’t really a healthy thing to do. I’ve tried not to read the Mess+Noise article because it’s just really personal and I don’t feel comfortable reading it. But I really hate reading the reviews of the album and live shows. A review is never going to please an artist, I don’t think. Because, you know, we are so stuck-up and set in what we think it is that we do,” he laughs. “I just don’t really like reading them because I find myself thinking about it too much. I sort of don’t want it to taint the process of creation. But then again, the whole art of reacting to public opinion and press is also an art itself that maybe should be learned as well.”
This could make a lot of sense considering the nature of Aleks and the Ramps’ music. It seems like there’s a very big element of interaction with the audience, with the listener. They don’t do crowd participation or anything, but there’s definitely a gap that is bridged. Making audiences uncomfortable seems deliberate in a way, or at least challenging their expectations takes precedence.
“Some of my favourite art involves me being amused and uncomfortable at the same time. Todd Solondz is a pretty good example of that. It’s the sort of thing that we do actually strive for, partly at least. Especially in live shows, to maybe disturb people a little bit.”
“It’s a pet hate of mine in reviews where the band is compared by just taking two bands; like, ‘Oh, it sounds like Sonic Youth or The Beach Boys.’ But taking two film directors seems like a pretty good analogy for music, especially ours.”
Aleks has not heard The Fiery Furnaces’ Blueberry Boat, but elements of this record manifest themselves on Pisces vs Aquarius. Both are lengthy, quirky, all over the place; haphazard with moments of brilliance and often extreme poignancy. Theatricality plays an obvious part; some people might consider it brave to wear matching leotards and prance ridiculously, shrieking all high-pitched and wild-eyed. But acting silly is not couragous for Aleks and his Ramps.
“People have said to me before things like ‘Oh, you know it was really brave how you guys do that.’ I remember at Film School, making some kind of strange films that people had said were brave; it never really made sense to me. I guess bravery is when you have a fear and then you face it and you overcome it. We’re not really fearful of acting like idiots; it’s not bravery at all.”
Self-deprecation and just simply having fun is more important. It might be braver to just sit on stools and go through the songs in a mellow sort of fashion. But there is an element of the personal in their lyrics; like Aleks’ unwillingness to read personal-focused writing about the band. If there is bravery involved, it would be with the lyrics, even if they still could be described with words like absurdist.
“I know that people will make all kinds of assumptions on my character and personality and other people’s personalities by listening to lyrics and the music in general I guess. I don’t really like people thinking that I’m a pervert weirdo,” he laughs, “but I don’t necessarily care that much. It is hard, writing the lyrics for Pisces Vs Aquarius was much harder than writing for the previous EP. On that, I wasn’t really expecting anyone to really hear it; the lyrics were quite perverse and really strange. But once you actually sit down and put pen to paper with the knowledge that other people are going to hear this stuff, it shifts; there’s a complete difference in the mode of writing”.
In the current climate of Australian music, I do genuinely think Aleks and the Ramps’ approach and concepts are different from the rest, unique. It might be a little bit overt for some; it could even be slightly reactionary compared to more conventional trends and aesthetics in this country’s music. The notion of a novelty aspect to their music seems unavoidable, but it obviously has the potential to be reductive. Having a point of difference doesn’t have to equal novelty; it just so happens that the band’s points of difference are fairly novel. They don’t play post-post-punk. Is it reactionary?
“Partly, I think. But it’s just where I find inspiration. I think I enjoy and get inspired by really ill-conceived ideas that are badly executed. Just because, you know when you go to see a band and it’s really full and everyone paid $30 to get in, and then they’re pretty crap and everyone still seems to be digging it. I started thinking about what I would actually want to see. It’s not so much that I want to start a band to draw attention to being different from other stuff happening, it’s more just like there’s a band out there that I want to see that doesn’t exist at the moment. This might sound a bit weird, but I imagine being an audience member and what would please that person the most if that person was me. In a roundabout way, it’s about making music to please yourself; but not yourself as in the individual playing music, moreso as the listener. It just seems to me that there is a massive void in music sometimes.”
This makes sense to me; especially considering the sort of Australian music that gets the most attention. It’s probably just the nature of the music industry, but to me it seems the mainstream of Australian ‘indie’ that is most publicly focused on can tend towards the similar, the post-post-punk or the standard rock with record label driven hype being the most important factor in getting heard and thus getting popular.
That might sound cynical. But the cyclical nature of music today begs the question of the fate of the ‘novelty’ band.
“We’re having a break at the moment because we’re looking for another drummer,” Aleks says. “We’re probably going to go in a different direction after that, whatever that is. But as far as reacting to the novelty tags, up until this point we’ve been doing what we want to do, regardless of what people say or what people think and the ‘N’ word has been thrown around, but has only been thrown around really over the past couple of months. Whether or not it will affect what we do in the future, I’m not sure. It sort of doesn’t really seem worth thinking about. I don’t even really know what a novelty act is. And I don’t know if there’s any point in trying to be or trying not to be. We don’t like it when people say the ‘N’ word in regards to us, we don’t like it; we’re not really that thick-skinned. But at the same time, we make music that we want to make and people can do with it what they want; if they think we are a novelty band – maybe we are a novelty band? – but I don’t know. Whatever”.
The novelty is at its peak in their live show, even if their album does have a cover of Roxette’s ‘It Must Have Been Love,’ sung in Spanish.
But the future could hold a slightly more serious change, whatever ‘serious’ is for a band that blurs the lines between stupidity and poignancy.
“It’s one of the reasons why I’m sick at the moment, I’ve been up really late working on some demos we’ve been doing at home,” reveals Aleks. “Without really meaning to, the new batch of songs have been turning out a lot more melancholic and sad; not that I’ve been either of those, I’ve been fairly happy recently. I’ve just sort of wanted to listen to sad music. So I guess I’ve been writing sad music too. The next album is still going to be pretty strange, but I don’t know just what the new stuff is going to sound like.”
Pisces vs Aquarius is available on Cavalier Records/Mistletone.
