From one perspective buoyant and cruisey and the other unnerving and forthright, Club-Med’s debut EP is a masterclass in sharp storytelling, showcasing a band who are more than capable of sucking us in with their rough-around-the-edges charm, just to catch us off-guard with their profoundly poignant lyrics. The four cuts on Busy, Busy, Busy each come wrapped in classic Australiana instrumentation - jangling sprawls of guitars over steady grooves, while modest vocals serve up a heap of unassuming hooks - yet, beneath the EP’s sunny disposition comes a more turbulent description of Australian life at the fringes.

On ‘Fresh Start’, co-vocalists Keats Mulligan and Amy Pettifer sound as frustrated as the other as they trade vocals, an atmosphere that continues on with the nervous energy of ‘Sucking Up the Hate’. While ‘Ordinary’ lightens the mood slightly with its garage-rock chords and spirited melody, the reality of the situation is hard to ignore as Pettifer sings “oh a boy can dream, that I joined the winning team,” before the cutting lyrics of EP highlight ’The Trip of a Lifetime’ leave us at our most agitated, even without the restless drive that underpins it.

Where other bands toying with this style of music might end up sugarcoating the Australian experience in the name of nostalgia, Busy, Busy, Busy taps into something deeper, shining in its ability to so precisely pinpoint the harshness of our culture where others might not spot it. It’s a really powerful debut release, so to get a better insight into the EP, we chatted with Keats to learn a bit more about each of Busy, Busy, Busy’s tracks.

Hello, thank you for showing interest in our EP, Busy, Busy' Busy, my name is Keats of Club-Med and here is a track by track run down of our tape.

I suppose the thing that binds the songs in this EP together is 'complexity'. Sometimes it is very easy, in my view, to have a position on events or ideas when they are bigger and mostly disconnected from yourself. But nuances of them, as they are experienced in the moment, are sometimes diluted or altogether lost in memory. This EP is about the complexity of such feelings, as they happen in the moment, in your real lived experience of them. Some are inspired by lived experiences, others by experiences recounted by others. There are four tracks on the record and each is about a different and uniquely complex real-world experience.


Fresh Start

This is a breakup song. The story follows a couple that move abroad together in pursuit of adventure but find themselves 'stuck' in a situation that neither wants to be in. When people grow apart it is always sad. When they grow apart whilst also experiencing the  struggle that comes with the distance between them and their support networks, it can be made all the more challenging. In 'Fresh Start', Amy and I each tell a different side of this failing relationship, call and return as the frustrations unfurl. But even though our respective takes on things are different, we meet together in the chorus because the feelings are the same. This retelling of the story sounds more bleak than the song really is. It has a pretty sunny bounce to it, to be honest with you.

Sucking Up the Hate

This song is about how complex identity can be, and how we form our own sense of selves to fit in with the expectations of those around us. This story is loosely inspired by the experience of my grandmother's family moving over to Australia. The chorus is about compartmentalising trauma so that it doesn't hold you back - a very unhealthy practice. In this story specifically, its about pushing away one identity so that it doesn't interfere with the identity the storyteller feels they need to present to fit into a new community. I think this makes for our saddest song. It is so cruel and unfair to think about such an incongruence between competing identities within one person. It is sad to think about people having a sense of shame about the person they are, and having to persist with it to make ends meet. Yet, I am so sure that it is experienced by so many people at the margins every day.

Ordinary

‘Ordinary’ is about growing pains. It is about possessing a growing bitterness for your aspirations as they fade away in the rear-view mirror. It is not so much a song about being sad or mad, it is a song about the frustration thats felt when you have a sense that you might not be 'fulfilling your potential'. That is a very unique brand of anxiety. In 'Ordinary', the storyteller has almost completely divorced themselves of their dreams, out of a frustration that they are filling themselves with false hope and are letting everyone around them down. It is pretty teen-angsty and a touch cringe, but those old teeny feelings still find their way into a grown up brain from time to time. Obviously the great tragedy of it all is that you don't owe the person you are to anyone but yourself. Conceiving of yourself as a 'let-down' is an unhealthy place to be and probably a symptom of a society that loves to engage in some recreational pity. Still, this song is a song about someone in such a place.

The Trip of a Lifetime

This song is about dementia, or perhaps more so about the experience of having someone close to you go through it. It is about my experience with a family member of mine as she began to lose touch with her own sense of self, as her memory began to fail her. Going through that with someone can be surreal, because the relationship that you both knew is comprised, at least partly, by the experiences that you share together. When one person loses those, they lose a lot of what they know about their relationship with you. Even if they can grasp onto the fact that you're important to them and recall your name, they still can't make heads or tails of what that connection is made up of. It is really tough to go through for everyone involved. This song follows the illness from the point it takes hold in the nursing home through to the end. Everything about the song is important to me.