Having relocated from their native Australia to England this year, Calling All Cars have been making friends quickly off the back of a series of thrilling live performances. Ahead of the release of their Raise The People album, we spoke to bassist Adam Montgomery about their move, their future plans and their upcoming appearance at this weekend's Sonisphere festival.
You relocated to London from your native Melbourne this year to follow your musical dreams: how’s that working out so far?
So far so good. We really had no expectations when we came over and now we have a record label, booking agent and have done a stack of shows so we feel really lucky. To be honest though, we’re just excited to be here. Playing shows in the UK/EUR was a longterm goal of ours ever since we started the band so it’s a nice feeling to see that come to fruition. A long way to go though…
What’s the main difference between the UK and Australian music scenes, in your experience?
The main difference we’ve noticed (in the 2 months we’ve been here) is in the culture that surrounds rock n’ roll. Over here people are just so much more passionate about rock music which is really amazing for us to see. The scene is much smaller in Australia and more geared towards the ‘flavour of the month’ bands which tend to be throw away indie music. I guess it’s partly to do with the size of the industry in Oz and the absurd idea that music is more disposable now that most people don’t pay for it so people tend to lose interest in things and move on quite fast.
You’ll be appearing at Sonisphere festival this weekend: when you started out did you ever imagine you;d be sharing a bill with the likes of Metallica and Iron Maiden? Did those bands mean anything to you growing up?
Not for a second did we think we’d be on a festival bill like Sonisphere. We’ve always done things in little steps, so when we started we just wanted to play whenever and wherever we could, then i guess you get some shows, then you want to support bigger bands, then do headline tours etc etc. It’s always working towards the next little goal. If someone told me 5 years ago, i’d be living and touring in the UK and playing some world class festivals, I probably would’ve said they were insane, but that’s where we are now and we can’t wait to keep moving forward. As far as Metallica and Maiden go, they didn’t initially mean a lot to us. When we first started as we were probably a generation or two behind, but as we began to embrace our influences we started to look back at who those bands were into. We realised that when we’re listening to band such as Refused, Prodigy, NIN, those guys are directly influenced by Metallica and Iron Maiden and bands of that time. Once you start looking back it all starts to make sense and you discover and begin to love things you didn’t know a lot about.
There’s hundreds of bands at Knebworth this weekend: give us one fabulous reason to come see your band?
Because we will be handing out free beer to the people who are closest to the stage… We are also Australian so there will be some chance you might hear a funny accent. Our singer Haydn also likes to spend a fair amount of time off the stage so you might see something you’re not expecting for 12:05pm on a Saturday.
And finally, what’s Werewolves all about gents?
The song is about getting laid and doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing. Take that as you will. When it came time to do a video we thought up a stack of different concepts, but ended up taking the most literal option and the director essentially filmed two people having sex. It was a bizarre day.
CHECK OUT OUR EXCLUSIVE IN THE STUDIO RECORDING OF WEREWOLVES BELOW.
PRE-ORDER RAISE THE PEOPLE HERE.
