No sweet surrender
The Age
Friday August 28, 2009
Sugar Army's debut album stirs the fire, writes Craig Mathieson. THE creative endeavour stoked by Perth's comparative isolation €” a mixture of segregation allowing natural evolution and ambition in the name of getting out €” has been noted since the first sparks of punk rock flickered more than 30 years ago.But while the city's independent scene, with forebears such as the Triffids, is well known, in recent years it's been the modern-rock movement that's come to the fore.Bands such as Karnivool, Gyroscope and now Sugar Army bridge the alternative ethos with anthemically stirring intent. Perth is the modern-rock capital of Australia and the result is loud but never bombastic.€śWe're not coming from one place and we're not trying to be one type of music," notes Patrick McLaughlin, the 28-year-old vocalist for Sugar Army. "We're trying to mesh a lot of things together and go with what feels good. It ends up turning into something completely different but you have to nut it out so it's at a point where you feel good about it.€ťOn the quartet's debut album, The Parallels Amongst Ourselves, you can hear close harmonies and industrial rhythms, blazing guitars and intricate song structures. It's the result of a songwriting process between McLaughlin, guitarist Todd Honey, bassist Ian Berney and drummer James Sher that's a combination of extended negotiation and a leap of mutual faith.€śWithin the band you've four independent, vocal people," McLaughlin explains. "When we're writing everyone's trying to perfect what they're doing within the song, so you've got four people fighting for their place.€ťBut if the music flits from idea to idea, Sugar Army's lyrics are about people deprived of choice. While the band couch it in often-defiant terms, much of The Parallels Amongst Ourselves is concerned with being trapped, a reflection of the suburban Perth environment they grew up with and rebelled against.€śPerth is pretty much a large country town," McLaughlin says. "You're encouraged to do the normal thing: grow up, play sport, get a stable job, start a family. You're not encouraged to break the mould ... The drive for creative people in Perth is to get out of here and do something bigger and better.€ťHowever, McLaughlin can't fault his parents for their choice of home. They left Northern Ireland on their wedding day in the mid-1970s and lived in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, before arriving in the comparative safety of Perth 20 years ago. McLaughlin's father was a guitarist who encouraged his son to pursue his artistic inclinations.€śMy dad loves techie, fiddly guitar players like Steve Vai, so that pushed me in the opposite direction,€ť McLaughlin says. €ś[But] being woken as a kid by dad blasting Steve Vai on a Saturday morning is a small price to pay for the support they still give me.€ťSugar Army play Northcote Social Club tomorrow night.
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