Timothy Nelson & The Infidels, Live @ The Toff, 25/04/13
I caught up with the ginger-haired front man of Perth band Timothy Nelson & The Infidels after their Toff show on the 25th of April. This marked the second day of their third Australian tour, promoting the release of their heel-tapping, disco infernoing new single Mary Lou. After the release of what could only be described as a ‘fabulous’ new video, as well as its recent peak at number 3 on the Triple J Unearthed pop charts, Mary Lou seems to be causing a stir in the independent music scene.
After leaving his film studies at eighteen to pursue a career as a musician, Timothy is not one to take his music lightly (and it really shows). Five years on, his band are going strong, with a well-received album under their belt and another on the way.
How is the tour going so far?
Good, Hobart was really cool. We played with this band called New Saxons (they’re one of the cool bands there I think). We’ve played with them twice now actually, they’re really nice people.
Is it good to interact with other bands as much as possible when you’re touring?
Yeah, building relationships with other bands in other cities is what it’s all about.
You want to be able to share your gear with each other and also let them crash on your couch if they come to your town (sadly we’re not a couch-surfing band, there’s just too many people..)
You’ve changed a few band members since your 2011 album ‘I Know This Now’, and your sound’s changed a lot since. Would you describe ‘Mary Lou’ as having different influences? Was this a conscious change from your previous country pop sound?
There’s disco influences yeah..I think there was a conscious effort to make music that was dancable. I couldn’t really figure out how to make music that you could dance to at first without it being rubbish. I felt like people just wanted soulless synthesizer kind of stuff, and I didn’t want to do that.
Even when we make the conscious effort to make a really catchy pop song, I personally can’t help but try and put more into it. You might start with the idea in your head that you want to make a really catchy number, but by the time you’ve finished writing and recording, you’ve gone on a whole journey with that song and kept adding ideas into the mix.
Everyone in your band seems to know exactly where to be within the mix. Is it important to make sure you’re ‘aware’ of each other in the way you play as a group?
Yeah, you have to be. When you have the kind of gear and setup we have, people look at you and think ‘This had better be good’. We look like a band that works hard and has a lot to do, because we’ve got a lot on stage.
Sometimes it’s about what you don’t play. It’s kind of like the scariest movies are the ones that don’t show the ‘evil force’. We’ve learned that in the last year or so. We used to just make a lot of noise – although we didn’t know we were.
When we did that album (I Know This Now) everything was playing at the same time. To us it sounded brilliant, until I saw a video of us at our album launch and I thought ‘this really needs work.’ It’s a whole lot different playing music than it is listening to it.
I noticed you only played one song from your previous album tonight (‘Let Her Go‘). Are you making a conscious effort to only play new material?
I think in a live sense we pick the songs we think will go down really well, and we’re also trying to ‘play in’ these new tunes. We don’t get the opportunity to play an hour and a half set all of the time. When we do (which is only when put on our own show) then we play stuff that we used to play, and it works in that sense because at least in Perth there’s people who know our songs through attending gigs.
Do you make use of social media a lot?
Yeah, well you kind of have to. We’re self-managed, and Hayley (violin) does everything, but she’s in the band so we can say we’re self-managed. You have to do the social media thing, which I think works.
Are you relying on social media more than the ‘traditional’ forms of promotion?
When I first started playing music, Myspace was already really big. That whole world was already the norm when I started playing in bands. Unlike older members in the group, I sort of came into music when social media was just taking off, so to me, that’s normal.
Do you think it’s ‘effective’?
Well, sometimes I wonder if I’d still be playing music if it wasn’t for social media. You’re fourteen, you write a song and put it up on one of those ‘things’, and then your mates hear it and you want to follow it up with another one. Before you know it you’re in a band.
So you feel like it’s motivating people to want to share their material more than they used to?
I think it’s making it so easy to broadcast any creative effort that you make, that it’s easier to get out of the bedroom now.
You recently released a video for ‘Mary Lou’, how was that to film?
Yeah, loads of fun. I was in makeup for two and a half hours though, so by the time I was a drag queen, I was so in the mode of trying to ‘act professional’ being the only musician between actors and film people, and not wanting to let the entire thing down based on my inexperience, I just ‘went for it’.
Do you think having a strong music video has helped ‘Mary Lou’ get a lot more reception?
Yeah, I think videos are more important than ever, especially since Gotye’s song was huge after being a Youtube hit.
We decided to do a video a month and a half away from this tour. It was last minute (to be honest we couldn’t afford to do it) but we just did it anyway because it wouldn’t have felt right to go into all this effort to promote a song if we hadn’t done a video.
Is it a relief to just be putting a single out for the moment?
Yes, but we are working on an album. We had a tour booked in December last year and needed a reason for it. We recorded one of our new songs (‘Talk’) and made that a single. After that, we felt the need to follow up on ourselves so started a campaign for a new album in the works.
Timothy Nelson & The Infidels are currently working on their second album with Joel Quartermain (Eskimo Joe), due to be released around September. ‘Mary Lou’, as well as ‘I Know This Now’ can be purchased on iTunes. You can like Timothy Nelson & The Infidels on Facebook for album/tour updates.
Their show was supported by Perth folk songstress Amanda Merdzan and Melbourne folktronica duo Porcelain Pill.
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