Zak from The Frowning Clouds answered the phone to mixed sounds of commotion and general activity. Was he rehearsing? Cleaning up from last night’s party? Preparing for a messy party to come? None of these – “just searching the huge pile of VHSs in the lounge room, just throwing out ones we don’t want. Just heaps of old family 80s classics.” It’s an image that fits well with the mop haircuts, tight pants and ‘vintage fun’ attitude of the Geelong five-piece.

The jangly guitars, swinging rhythm and garage acoustics of The Frowning Clouds has been a long time in the making. “Since about the first year of high school I was listening to The Ramones and stuff… your archetypical ‘70s bands and all the songs they were covering… Like The Cramps, they only do ‘60s covers. We just got into it from there.” The beginnings of the Frowning Clouds we see today started back in high school too - “I found some friends who were into it at the same time so we just showed each other all these and it just snowballed from there... I started The Frowning Clouds with Nick, who I live with, three or four years ago. We were just playing acoustic covers, in the bedroom and stuff.”

These days the band’s musical tastes diverge, but for Zak himself: “The Velvet Underground, they’re pretty much my favourite band, and The Kinks, stuff like that.” As for local, up and coming acts, the band likes Melbourne’s The UV Race and Total Control, and Sydney’s The Straight Arrows. I find it good inspiration to make music.” “There’s a band that I saw at the Tote maybe last month called Chook Race and I thought they were pretty good.” “And a friend of mine’s band, they’re called The Clits – it’s just him and two girls. I’m big on those too.”

The new single, “All Night Long,” is firmly rooted in the era of the mid-‘60s. “We just wanted a song that just insisted dancing, I guess.” Maybe the energy and spontaneity comes from how quickly the song was made. “Nick wrote that one pretty quickly, just wrote it in his bedroom and we learnt it that day at practice and it was just… there, you know?” The Geelong boys didn’t waste time or money booking a fancy recording studio with perfect acoustics, either. “We just did it with The Straight Arrows. The singer, Owen, has like a four-track tape player set up in his lounge room and a little drum kit in his kitchen. We just went over for a weekend and just did it in his house, straight to cassette pretty much. We were sort of iffing for it for a while and didn’t listen to it for a few months, then listened to it and liked it so figured we might as well put it out. It’s pretty old that song… start of the year, even late last year.”

The band is about to release a new 7”; it’s the second for the band, who released another 7” last year on Spanish label Monterrey Records, months after it was recorded and proposed for release on the local Stained Circles label. “Dan, who plays in UV Race and Total Control, came up (cause we’d played with The Dirt Bottles from America), and just asked us if he wanted to release a 7” on his record label, which was Stained Circles. So we went down to Missing Link, and Mickey from Eddy Current [Suppression Ring] was there and he just recorded those three songs right to four track. We were just so slack and it took so long to get the artwork organized so by the time we did it they’d spent all their money on a Jay Reatard anthology. So they gave us the songs and said we could do whatever we wanted with them…” This worked out as best it could. “A guy I know from Spain said his friends had just started a label and for us to send them our songs. We just sent them a photo and the master, and about a month later we had a box of 7”s. So we just sold them off and kept all the profit – we didn’t have to pay anything.”

The band is just about to finish their current tour with Eagle & the Worm, which has been taking up most of their year so far. It’s very much a case of friends sharing the love – “we used to play with The Fearless Vampire Killers a fair bit, because they have the same booking agent as us. Now the bass player for Fearless Vampire Killers plays in Eagle & the Worm, so it was all sort of chummy. The booking agent for Eagle & the Worm got in touch with us and put us on the tour.”

For the rest of the year, they have some big plans. “I’m not sure if it’s finalized or in concrete or anything, but hopefully we’re going over to Europe maybe at the start of December.” Whilst Zak is vague, the band is hoping the trip will be a repeat of their lauded performance and Golden Plains in 2008. “If we do go we’ll only spend about two weeks… The reason we’re going is that we’re playing a festival… but I don’t know the name of it.”

In the mean time, The Frowning Clouds will be playing gigs and writing music. “We were planning to release a record late this year… but it’ll probably be around April next year.” Although, since it’s been so long since recording “All Night Long,” Zak isn’t sure what their record will sound like. “The stuff we’re doing now, or aiming to do, is a little different. I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s a little less ‘frowning cloudsy’ I s’pose. It’s such a subtle change. Being in the band you feel the subtle changes, but I guess to everyone else it just sounds the same.”

How does he want the new album to sound? “I’d like it to be more like [“All Night Long”] – kind of lo-fi, tape sound, but we’ll just wait and see when it comes to recording.” “We sort of try and do something different every few months… so we don’t know what we’ll be like next year.”

Until then, catch The Frowning Clouds supporting Eagle & the Worm at one of their upcoming shows in August and September.

DATES:
- HOBART August 13th Republic Bar
- GEELONG August 18th The National Hotel
- BALLARAT August 19th Karova Lounge
- MELBOURNE August 20th The Corner Hotel
- ADELAIDE August 27th Ed Castle
- SYDNEY September 9th Oxford Art Factory
- MAITLAND September 10th The Junkyard

The band is also releasing their 7” at select shows in September.
DATES:
- MELBOURNE September 17th The Bufallo Club
- SYDNEY September 23rd The Sandringham Hotel w/The Moffs
- SYDNEY September 24th Goodgod Small Club