Grinspoon have spent the last 16 years pummelling audiences in Australia and overseas with their own unique brand of Aussie rock. With the release of their eighth full length album, ‘Black Rabbits’, they’re hitting the road once again.
“This is a big year, this tour is huge; we started with the Big Day Out, and we’re going through until the end of April; we’re really looking forward to playing some of our own shows so we can play a lot more from the new album,” bass player Joe Hansen says. “Festivals are incredible. There’s just so many people, it’s such a buzz, and you get to play on the big stage to a crowd of people who we might not normally get, but at the same time, when we play a festival we tend to play a greatest hits set; if we play a bunch of obscure stuff that people don’t recognise, they’ll wander off.”
Touring can be tough when you have a family waiting at home, and with no more than three years separating each of their albums since 1997, the band has spent a large chunk of the past sixteen years either in the studio or on the road.
“It depends on the tour and how much time we have between shows, but when we can, we bring our family with us — on this tour at the Big Day Out I had my wife and two kids come along, and they had a ball. They loved it! It’s awesome to have them see what we do... they don’t really know any other life, it’s not abnormal for them to see us play to 50,000 people.”
A current trend for bands who’ve been around the block a couple of times is to tour full-album shows. So, is Grinspoon ready to move in this direction?
“I don’t think we’ll be doing that any time soon,” declares Joe, “but I’m really looking forward to playing stuff from the new album though. Coming up to the ‘Black Rabbits’ tour we’re going to play a bunch more of the new stuff, and older songs that aren’t as well known — with our own shows we can delve into that territory.”
Growing up together as a band will bring you closer, but the boys in Grinspoon come across as more of a family than a band.
“These guys ARE my family, we’ve gone through everything together — we’ve watched each other get married and have kids.”
But like any family, there’s bound to be the odd disagreement from time to time.
“Some of our arguments can last for months,” Hansen says of the disputes within the band. “Because we all live in different towns, a lot of our communication is by email, and when you argue in emails it’s very different to when you argue in person. You tend to lose a lot of the meaning. But we always have a laugh about it afterwards.”
One subject many bands can’t agree on, no matter how long they’ve been together, is whether to change their sound for the next album.
“I love our older stuff,” admits Hansen. “When we’re writing new songs or putting together a new album I’m always leaning towards the older, heavier sound, and the others are always like, ‘Joe, you’re so predictable!’. Normally it’s two of us [who] want to go one way and the other two want to go in a different direction ... We always come up with a good mix though, and Phil is the singer, he needs to express himself.”
‘Black Rabbits’ is a big step for Grinspoon. The album paints a more mature picture of the band, and is a long way from their first album, ‘Guide To Better Living’, but it’s still 100 percent Grinspoon.
“It’s branching out, but not too far. It’s always difficult with change, we just hope we can please ourselves, but also please our fans.”
Grinspoon play the Tivoli March 15 before returning to The Cooly April 21.
