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Due to the nature of The Dears’ music, the records you make are obviously a very cathartic and personal thing. That probably heightens it all as well, right?

Well I mean it’s a band with a philosophy and a direction…

…it’s not like making a Miley Cyrus album I’m guessing?

Well this is what I’m saying. This is a band that’s raised on everything from reading Hermann Hesse to Martin Amis to watching heavy three hour sci-fi movies to…

There’s a heavy indoctrination lesson for anybody who wants to be in The Dears is there? They have to be able to name check a few movies, albums and books?

Ah no, I don’t impose that on anyone, I mean you could be dumb as a post and be in The Dears. As long as you can play and it’s in your soul, it doesn’t matter. That’s the other thing — you kinda have to be dumb as a post to play in The Dears! (laughs)

Well on the other side of things, Murray, you grabbed a children’s choir for the song “Saviour”, so did the kids put up less of a fight, are they less precious than adult musicians to work with?

I have to say it was a pretty unbelievable experience watching about fifteen kids or so from the ages of like four or five to like thirteen, come in to the studio, and within an hour they learnt their parts, sung, recorded and left (chuckles).

None of them threw hissy-fits? None of them demanded their rider?

All that happened in the end was we had to sign some autographs for some of their parents.

And speaking of children, I can hear that you’ve probably landed babysitting duties there today. Parts of Missiles still seem informed by yours and Natalia’s parenting, a song like “Money Babies” seems to allude (to) the fact you guys had those kind of responsibilities on your shoulders these days.

Well you know the thing that was interesting about “Money Babies”, when I started writing that song we were in Europe, on the first European Gang of Losers tour. Sometimes Europe can be strange when it comes to just finding some basic things in the middle of the night, like milk, and I was walking the streets of Holland, I can’t remember what town it was, I think it was Utrecht. I was trying to find an open 7-11 type store to find just a carton of milk for the morning, for the kid, and it was hard, but the whole time I kept hearing this “ooooooooooah” sound in my head and I kept just singing this thing and…

…and it gave you that lyric “I gotta get milk for the baby”. So you got a carton of milk and a song out of it?

(laughs) Yeah.

Australia has 7-11’s all over the place, you’ll have no trouble next time you come back here. Are there plans to bring the Missiles tour to Australia?

I really hope so, but I mean it’s definitely getting interesting out there in terms of facilitating tours for an indie rock band.

Well, you know maybe we should put some jobbing Australian musicians on notice. You might have shed some more members by the time you come here? We can maybe knock a band together for you Murray…

(laughs) We’ll have The Dears Australia Chapter?

The Australian Dears Show…!

(laughs) Me and Natalia show up and you guys supply the rest (laughs).

We’ll see what we can pull out. It’ll be a dream job for some of those people I’m sure.

(laughs) Well we’ll see about that.

I’ll let you get back to drywalling and doing whatever else you’re doing. I’ll look forward to seeing some snaps of the studio when it’s finished.

Absolutely.

Thanks for the talk and hopefully see you down here later in the year.

Awesome, take care.

First broadcast on Static on 30/04/09. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

Transcription: Chris Butler

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