Three Ring Magic

What does a group as off-the-wall and inventive as Laneous & The Family Yah get up to during Australia’s long hot summers? If you’re thinking surf trips and barbecues, you’ve got it totally wrong.

“We've just joined a travelling circus to pass the time,” says a remarkably matter-of-fact Laneous. “It’s hot and tiring work with some of the weather you get around Australia, but it's been keeping us busy and putting a coin in the pocket, which is good. It’s a lot of work, but you’d be surprised how akin being in a band is to performing in a travelling circus. It’s not too far a jump from one to the other. And that keeps us fit and keeps us healthy in the body and the mind. It also helps us save up to record our sophomore album. We've been preparing a lot for that, actually.”

Sophomore album? Already? It is after all only six months since the release of the group’s well received debut, ‘St. Ill Regal’.

“We're very proud of that album. Having said that, things have changed a lot with our style and technique and our writing, and stuff like that. When we made ‘St. Ill Regal’ we hadn’t really written many songs. We wrote most of the songs in the studio, whereas with our new album we’ve been writing songs for the last year or two and we're almost over prepared in that respect – we have too many songs to choose from,” he laughs. “That has made it easier, but at the same time harder to prepare the particular songs for this next album.”

Anybody who closely follows Laneous & The Family Yah will know that ‘St. Ill Regal’ took some time to pull together. But it was a learning process, and the group is planning on applying those lessons to their new record.

“I guess we really learned that time is money. In that way, the more you're prepared the less money you’re going to spend and therefore the more money and energy you can spend in other aspects of the release. I also learned that there are no real rules to making an album. You’ve just got to do it the best way that suits the situation, I guess. Hopefully, within the next month we will be able to start tracking. But we want to get started ASAP really, and that's where the money issue is always a problem. We’re going to try our hardest to get it going.”

But right now Laneous and his accomplices aren’t thinking too hard about songwriting and second albums. Rather, it’s the West End Carnivalé that’s foremost in their thoughts.

“We’re totally looking forward to it. Definitely. I mean, if it's anything like last year,” Laneous laughs, referring to their outrageous performance of 2009. “It was just a wild, wild success. We were all dressed in gender bender and just went crazy. It was a full room of sweaty, trippy individuals and it turned out to be a shitload of fun.

“As for this year, I'm not quite sure just yet what we’ve got in store on the outfit front, but we've got a few new tracks to unleash and that's going to be excellent. Really, though, it can be hard to say what’s going to happen sometimes, because I don't really know what to expect myself. People should definitely expect the unexpected. We’re pretty out there because we all love so many different types of music and it makes for a very manic set. There will be guest MCs, lots of singers, and just the usual raucous behaviour.”

And beyond ladies’ clothing and sophomore LPs, what else can people expect from Laneous & The Family Yah over the rest of 2010?

“We’re going to try and continue this approach of touring aggressively up and down the east coast, and try and build audiences in Sydney and Melbourne. Other than that the aim’s just to write as much music as possible. And also try really hard at this circus thing in our spare time, of course!”

Chimps, clowns, guitars and cross-dressing: it’s a perfect recipe for the busy life of Laneous & The Family Yah.

Laneous & The Family Yah will perform at the West End Carnivalé, Davies Park, Saturday May 15. ‘St. Ill Regal’ is out through Bird Fire records and MGM Distribution.