Laneous & The Family Yah are back in town to promote their new album Found Things. Their sound is an eccentric mix of funk, punk, pop, dub and beats. Think a love child between Regurgitator and Mr Bungle. Bassist and manager Poz had some time to kill on the road in between solo sets, sex and food to give us the low down on the Family Yah.
MF: What’s going on with Laneous & The Family Yah?
P: We’ve been super-stupid busy touring for the last 4 weeks. We did the Regurgitator tour and started our album launch tour directly afterwards, allowing just enough time between shows for food and sex. Right now we are sexing in a tour van on a highway somewhere between Brisbane and Sydney to start off this leg of the tour by seeing the Boredoms tonight. Radtown!
MF: Tell us a bit about the new album Found Things?
P: It’s a strange album with lots of diverse sounding songs that were written in the year between releasing our first album and starting this one. Lyrics and music are like art made out of found things, musical inspiration and life experiences and things we find along the way. It’s got really nice artwork too, by awesome artist and raddo chick Laura Hill.
MF: What’s the songwriting process in the band?
P: First I have some kind of life experience that effects me so much that lyrics just spew out onto paper so easily I don’t know how it happened, then I usually take it to my musical friend Lachlan Mitchell and I say “I reckon it should go ba-bap-babah!” and he writes something, then I take it to the band and they flesh it out. Sometimes we write in the rehearsal studio and everyone writes their own parts and I have to dig thru lyric books.
MF: How would describe the band’s sound?
P: Manic magi, bi-pola cherry cola, mongrel meats, ugly but beautiful, derivative but mutated, written by people who listen to lots of different music for people who listen to lots of different music.
MF: The video for I Am Dog is fantastic; how did it all come together?
P: It’s a light-hearted song, so it was only natural to have a light-hearted clip. We wanted a bit of voxpop style realism in it so we hit the streets and asked people to act like animals. It was lots of fun.
MF: What artists have influenced the band’s sound?
P: Everything that five different people have listened to for their whole lives; a very wide selection of music. Some of them would be Jimi Hendrix, the Dirt Bombs, MF Doom, D’angelo, Deerhoof, Busta Rhymes, and Frank Zappa.
MF: You’re in the midst of the album launch tour; how’s it all coming along?
P: Exhausting, but rewarding. We’ve done some very different gigs, playing ear splittingly loud in a large venue, playing to a packed but intimate room and also playing to a half-full room of surfy bogans and heaps of police. We’re starting the last and longest leg now. I’m going to do a solo gig tomorrow and play some covers like Weezer’s El Scorcho, Mr Bungle’s Merry Go Bye Bye, Aretha Franklin’s Natural Woman, The Drone’s Oh My and Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer and it’s gonna go well. I know it’s gonna go well cos I’m actually writing this part retrospectively cos it’s 3 days since I wrote the rest of this interview.
MF: The Brisbane scene is producing some great artists; what artists
should we also keep a look out for?
P: Dubmarine, Chucknee, Tin Can Radio, The Rude, Band of Frequencies, Grass Roots Street Orchestra, Pear, and the Awkward Orchestra, just to name a few.
MF: With Xmas coming up, what are you hoping the fat guy in a red suit
will bring you?
P: I want a korg monotron and…and…. a bike and… some quality time with my blushing bride.
MF: What would be the first song you would put on a mix tape?
P: I’m loving living on a prayer by Bon Jovi at the moment, but to start a mix tape I’d probably choose some Yma Sumac operatic lounge music to ease into the Bon Jovi mood.
