Like 2019’s Manic Candid Episode, The Murlocs continue to polish their signature wide-eyed psychedelia and bluesy garage-rock style with their latest effort, Bittersweet Demons. Consisting of —‌ vocalist/harmonica-player/guitarist Ambrose Kenny-Smith and bassist Cook Craig of the ever-prolific King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, guitarist Cal Shortal (ORB), drummer Matt Blach (Beans) and keyboardist Tim Karmouche (Crepes), the five-piece shine a light on the fragilities of human nature, highlighting personal figures who leave a profound imprint on our lives, with their most personal and complex batch of material yet. Unlike their more gritty, lo-fi garage-rock releases such as Loopholes and Old Locomotive, album number five revitalises the band’s fuzzy and distorted stylings, but wanders through a kaleidoscopic tour of soaring 70s-era glam rock and infectious power pop with an emotional slice of garage soul, pushing even further into the unknown.

Throughout the 42-minute runtime, The Murlocs cut through eleven tracks seamlessly, exuding a Harry Nilsson-esque swagger with blistering soundscapes. Led by Kenny-Smith’s distinctive showmanship and blazing harmonica, the wonderfully catchy and rollicking opener 'Francesca' glows with its thunderous groove and unrelenting hook. Next up, the rough and scuzzy 'Dangerous Nature' leans heavily on its piano-based melody, bursting into a psychedelic freakout, before the jangly, piano-driven title track arrives with a headrush of cycling litanies. The heavy, arena-friendly 'Illuminate The Shade' bursts with rough-and-tumble psych-laced guitar riffs, while the gloomy 'No Self Control' is a slow-burning, twisting piano ballad. Next along, ‘Skyrocket’ is spacey and intense, demanding your attention with Kenny-Smith’s commanding storytelling and melodic sweetness - an enticing musical voyage -, before the final track 'Misinterpreted' exhibits the band’s new maturity in vivid fashion, sounding more like a real band instead of just a bluesy King Gizzard spinoff; especially now as they’re in their tenth year together.

With even more sophisticated and timeless tracks, The Murlocs wear their influences on their sleeve, giving their unapologetically DIY mix of retro and greasy tunes a fresh sound. To dig a bit deeper into the new album, we had the pleasure of chatting with The Murlocs, who unravel each track’s adoring homage.


Ambrose Kenny-Smith: The whole concept for this record was to try and write about my family, friends and any other old acquaintances that made an impact on me throughout my life. I moved three times growing up so each song reflects on different parts of that journey. It doesn’t get much more personal than this! I hope everyone feels at just as much at peace as I do when listening to it.

Francesca

‘Francesca’ is my mother’s middle name. She has such an energetic aura of love that comes with compelling conviction. Her larger than life personality and attitude revolves around a sometimes unworldly way of living in the moment. When I heard our keyboard player Tim Karmouche’s demo of the song I decided that it needed a pretty simple lyric that was uplifting and positive to match up with the tempo feel of the music. Having a big heart would sometimes swing her in waves of depression as she would go above and beyond to support myself and my sister growing up. Unsure and immature I never knew how to deal with this. Selfishly I would look the other way to distract myself from the issue. As my sister and I grew older and moved out of home there was a lot of anguish over this which made my mum’s presence sometimes hard to contain. Since then, it is truly amazing how much this has all completely turned around for the better. She has really taken her stride in the last few years and we all couldn’t be happier. She is such a strong, powerful, independent force in our lives and despite how much my father and her despise the word “proud”, that is how I truly feel about her with content. If you listen closely to the first 10 seconds or so of the track you can hear mum shouting out loud, ‘You go girlfriend!’, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Dangerous Nature

The City of Greater Geelong is a mixed bag that is filled with many confronting and quirky characters. The town centre revolves around ‘The Mel’, where all the street rats hang out in-between the 7 eleven and the bus stop. I’ve had friends that were coward punched for no reason at all, friends’ ears bitten off in brawls and some even airlifted to the hospital from severe concussions. Our guitarist was once found in the gutter by a street sweeper in an alley way only a few blocks away from this area after a night out at the pub. I remember the nurse at the hospital calling me in the morning to come pick him up. These local wheelers and dealers are orchestrating a lot of this mayhem day in and day out. Whether it’s under the influence or not the chaos is always there with or without it.

The main musical influence came from listening a lot to ‘The Band’ again. The backbone of the song is based off that happy go lucky piano riff. I am always aspiring to write songs that have a bit of twisted positivity to them with an underlying subject matter that has a fairly grim connotation.

Bittersweet Demons

This track stemmed the whole record. ‘Bittersweet Demons’ is about those fond memories you’ve had with someone that you will hold on to forever. When putting together this album I was in the middle of a big obsession with Harry Nilsson and Plastic Ono Band. I think this song managed to highlight these influences the most. My dear friend Keegan Walker tragically passed away on April 28th, 2019. He looked at life in such a beautiful and unique way and had a major impact on everyone he ever crossed paths with. I started to write this song after he stopped by my place one day, looking a bit worse for wear. These concerning moments were always quickly reversed by the time you would see him next. He would always bring such an abundance of joy to every situation. The life of the party that everyone gravitated towards, a true friend that was always there for you at any given moment.

When I found out the news of Keegan’s passing, I was on tour in the states with The Murlocs. It was the first time I had ever been so rattled with heartache. The one thing to me that has always been the biggest sacrifice about constant touring is losing contact with my friends and family. Losing Keegan whilst being on the other side of the world was the toughest thing I’ve ever had to overcome. Needless to say, he was there with me in spirit to get me through that last week or so that was left of shows. I was so grateful to make it back home just in time for the funeral which turned into one big party, just the way he would’ve wanted it.

“Be Keegan Kind” - Keegan Walker.

Eating At You

Whenever I go back to my home town, I always have this dwelling sense of fear and excitement when my mind crosses the thought of running into an old friend or acquaintance. I often find myself being the first one to acknowledge the other person, my memory comes in mysterious ways. Sometimes you’ll run into someone that you haven’t seen or heard from in quite a while. From that first glimpse you can sometimes find yourself quite thrown back by this stranger standing before you. All these moments over the many years that you’ve shared with this person start flashing back into your mind, the good old days from a lifetime ago. There are some friends I haven’t heard from for quite a while and I often try to imagine what they’re up to?

These legends turn into a hot topic of conversation amongst old friends that still see each other here and there. It’s a never-ending world of wonder that makes you constantly question the reasons as to why someone might make these certain choices to alienate themselves. What is that missing piece to the puzzle?

Illuminate the Shade

The oldest nibling of the bunch came from a few ideas that became a bit expired in our brains by the time it came to properly put down in the studio. This song was recorded at the Manic Candid Episode sessions back in 2018. I had always liked the track, but I just wanted to keep it in the back pocket until it was accompanied by the right bunch of songs. I thought it didn’t flow very well on that album and after finishing off that record I was wanting to make a much more upbeat and energetic from start to finish and this was going to be the track that it was built around. Bittersweet Demons didn’t come out that way at all. Half-way through I decided to take a u-turn and go the other way to then meeting back again in the middle. I believe having songs like this help compliment and contribute to the overall fluidness of the album as an end product.

No Self Control

Since I can remember I’ve always been one to get carried away when having too much of a good time. Endless fun can quickly turn you into being a creature of habit. Some habits can become bad and even worse being a lot more than you originally bargained for. I find myself rarely having any self-control in most of these circumstances as it doesn’t take much to twist my own arm. Cook Craig brought this idea to the table and it was cooking from the get go. It was immediately suited for the album. My favourite moments would have to be some of Cal Shortal’s guitar harmony lead breaks. This track is unlike anything else we’ve ever done, and I hope to continue this flavour deeper in the future.

Skyrocket

This song is another off cut that was put aside from our previous album Manic Candid Episode. At the time I felt that the song didn’t really suit the rest of the songs, so we left it off for the next album. I think that was a wise choice as it fits better now on Bittersweet Demons. The music was written by our lead guitarist, Callum Shortal. Originally, I wasn’t happy with what I was singing, so when it was revisited I chopped and changed the words and punctuation about three or four times until it felt right and also matched the other songs lyrically too. It touches on a different angle to the rest of the songs, as it’s amplifies the frustrations one might have whilst on an artistic voyage. Never being completely content, with your existence and always hungry for more. Sometimes you worry that the odds are against you when you actually reach the goals you are shooting for. It’s a motivational speech for myself and to whomever can relate to this obsessive manifestation. A constant reminder to keep on rolling with the punches despite the bumps in the road.

Skewhiff

My mother uses ’Skewhiff’ when referring to something being unstable and/or uncertain. For this track, I found an old iPhone memo of the main riff which I came up with on this old Yamaha keyboard that I had since I was kid. I was feeling like we needed one more song, so I decided to bring it back to life as it seemed to be appropriate in context to the rest of the album. We put a microphone out on the street when we were tracking it, in the intro you can hear the rain and cars passing by the studio in Preston, Melbourne. ‘Only You Know’ by Dion was a big influence on the song’s production and feel. In fact, that whole album Born To Be With You was another big reference point for all of Bittersweet Demons. Second guessing things can easily get blown out of proportion, especially when you decide to confide in someone that you maybe shouldn’t have. The last line sings, “it ain’t our business when it happens naturally”. This statement depicts the nature of true love and how it will alway’s find it’s way, if it’s meant to be or not.

Limerence

After rewriting the lyrics to ‘Limerence’ several times, I decided to continue on with the personal narrative of the album, so I wrote it about my parents’ relationship from the moment they fell in love right up until it all fell apart. I’ve imagined there has always been a sense of lingering guilt. My father was at the end of his first marriage and my mother was 11 years younger. My parents eventually got married in 1984 in the backyard of my mother’s family home. As the years went on, things started to slowly fall apart at the end of the second decade. We decided to move to Castlemaine, Victoria to keep the family together as my Dad had already been living there with his manager and band mate at the time. Most of his clothes and prized possessions were no longer in the house in Melbourne so we moved out of the city and to the country in attempts to rekindle the situation. It lasted about 18 months before my mum, my sister and I moved to the surf coast of Ocean Grove, Victoria. This is where we lived out the rest of our school years with just the three of us.

I wrote and recorded the base of the song at home which was pretty much just acoustic guitar, harmonica, vocals and some piano. At the studio session I got Matt Blach to lay down the drums over the top and then Cook added his bass, Cal added some 12 string acoustic and Tim re-did the piano parts. I had a weird musical curse going on at the time where I kept writing songs in the time signature of 3/4. This track was put together at the peak of that period. I think I can safely say I’m now out of that waltzing heads pace, at least for now...

Blue Eyed Runner

Reflective of my relationship with my father, ‘Blue Eyed Runner’ points out the similarities and differences that come between us. As I get older, I start to see that some of my traits are that of my father and my mother. These characteristics that they share together have become more and more evident to me in the reasons why they first became drawn towards each other and ultimately why it all came to an end. Their humour and personalities combined are often quite eccentric and bohemian. Sometimes people are taken back by this energy and don’t know how respond to it, they like to keep you on your toes. My dad’s band back in the 70’s called The Dingoes had this song called ‘Boy On The Run’. It’s about his continuous fascination and passion for The Bush which began from his childhood of growing up around the Australian and English country side. He has a reputation for leaving shows and gatherings in general as soon as possible. He is always planning his exit and sometimes even his entrance, where to park his car for the quickest escape route home. This is often planned in preparation for days and even weeks before. For these actions my mum would sometimes refer to him as ‘The Runner’. Blue eyes such as his and mine can often be associated to that of eternal youth, a sense of being at peace. Realising this spiritual notion, made it all the more convincing to put the two together.

Misinterpreted

Tim Karmouche, our keys player wrote the music for this one. It’s a bit of a ‘tip of the hat’ to the song ‘Comfort Zone’ from Manic Candid Episode. Tim is one of my favourite songwriters and having him contribute more songs to The Murlocs has been a much needed blessing. It’s a slow melting candle that softly guides you along downstream. The context of the song is reflective to that of wasted groups of soul searching youth. Some lines reflect on certain people I went to school with and their brushes with law and some parts are just about random people that I see on the street. Experience comes with mistakes that are made throughout our lives, in this case it’s those split-second ones that are often made in our adolescence. This naive nature can change the course of your future at the blink of an eye. There are lots of different types of people in this world. Some want to watch it burn and others just want to walk through it. It can be hard to tell them apart. ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover’.