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Earlier this month, Sydney budget rock stalwarts Straight Arrows released their long-awaited fourth LP Surface World, a blistering pure pop affair that pours eleven cuts from a deep vein of distorted garage rock sewage, guided by a pure and knowledgeable rock 'n' roll spirit that only a fanatic record collector would recognize. In our thoroughly enjoyable, career-spanning conversation with bandleader Owen Penglis, we talk all about the near two decade evolution of the band's high-voltage energy, the expansion of their sonic approach across the new album, and their upcoming tour dates.
What have you all been up to lately? What have you been listening to, reading, or spending a lot of time doing?
Owen Penglis: I wish I could say I'd been doing all sorts of interesting stuff, but it's mostly been organizing stuff for the band; we've always been very DIY so I'm mailing out records, booking supports for our Australian tour, and all that kind of stuff. I'm always DJing somewhere on a weekend so I'm forever trying to find cool new albums and 45s to spin. A friend just got back from Japan and brought me a copy of The Beavers' "Why Baby Why" and Jun Mayuzumi's "Black Room," along with a pile of '60s Jamaican rocksteady 45s—thanks Nigel! I've been reading Ian Svenonious' Psychic Soviet when I'm catching the train into my studio (about the only time I have to read at the moment) but I've got a pile of fiction I'm keen to get stuck into once we're on tour. But I'm really looking forward to having a few days off eventually and melting into an old school RPG on my laptop. I just wanna get lost in a world of dungeons, swords, and sandals, you know where you've just spent 200 hours essentially doing nothing consequential, but you really feel accomplished at the end. That's my favorite brain holiday. I think Fallout New Vegas is next on the list; it's weirdly relaxing to follow a set of low impact instructions.
I read that your dad played in the '60s instrumental surf/garage band The Atlantics. What was it like growing up in a musical household?
Growing up, no one at my place was really listening to music that much, and my old man was off playing cover shows with country bands. I kind of found music on my own, getting up at 6:00 am every weekend morning so I could see what was new on the charts Rage, and then switch over to the inferior Video Hits once Rage was done for the morning.
For those unfamiliar, what can you tell readers about the beginnings of Straight Arrows beginning in the late 2000s?
That was a funny time for me, I was a kid and had just been kicked out of a handful of bands I was in. I guess I was playing in these bands with older crew than I, and I was this excitable, turbo kitten and they were a bunch of grouchy, older cats who had no time for that shit. Or that's what I'd like to think. So I had no bands, my girlfriend had just left me for an older guy in a band, and no job 'cause I was working as a mechanic at a scooter workshop at the time (old Vespas and Lambrettas) and the place had just shut down. So I was a little bummed out with zero prospects in life. So, to drag myself out of the funk I borrowed a 4-track cassette deck off a friend's brother and sat down and tried to learn how to make it sound good. I was also massively disillusioned with the sound of 'rock' music at the time. It was like everyone was trying to make these shitty, clean albums and I hated just about all of them. I wrote a bunch of songs and did a stack of covers, just so I could take these songs apart and try to figure out how they were made, then put 'em back together. Kind of like pulling apart a guitar amp to see how it works, then trying not to break it when you reassemble it. Once I felt like I had a few OK songs, I asked a few friends if they wanted in, and everyone was keen. That first 45 ("Can't Count 1-22" b/w "Something Happens") is just me and Al [Grigg] recording to a cassette in a spare room at my old house in Darlington. It's funny, I had the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar all ready for him to record extra guitar and vocals on top off, but with the tape multitrack you've gotta bounce it all down to an extra channel to free up space, and whilst doing that I managed to wipe the whole thing. So with Al watching me I re-recorded the entire track on the spot just so we could get something done that day.
Straight Arrows have been going strong for close to 20 years now! What has the journey been like so far?
It's been fun! It's always an adventure, navigating the weird, wild, depraved, wholesome, and sometimes rewarding world of music. But fuckit, I've made a whole lot of friends along the way, and I can't think of a better way to see the world than in a van with all my best pals.
What have been some of your fondest memories associated with the band so far?
Hmmn, so many! And it's always the little things. Like, it's incredibly exciting when you've just put out a new record and people are loving it, but stuff like going to play in Italy and locals bringing you salamis their dad made in the shed absolutely rules. So maybe the weird food adventures! And also stuff like Henry Rollins playing us on his radio show and showing up at a house party we were playing—it all happens pretty quick, but imagine knowing that was gonna happen to future you if you were still a teenager. Touring is always an absolute blast, especially if you get to play with bands you've always wanted to see, like The Gories! Or when The Oh Sees asked us to tour some of the USA with 'em.
What was it like supporting Osees during their Australian Tour last year? Is it true you almost did a split with them a while back before they became "massive"?
Heh, yeah, I think so. Our first ever little tour in Australia was with Osees and Eddy Current—we got thrown on at the last minute because another band pulled out, and it was a heap of fun. I can't imagine playing with Osees at a shitty pub in Wollongong to 30 people these days! Jules [Julia Wilson] from Rice Is Nice and I used to have a 7" label called Juvenile Records and we'd put out a few records here and there, so on that tour I asked John if he wanted to do one, and he was like, "Nah, let's do a split 7" instead." And I went and thought about it for too long, and when I finally got back to him, like nine months later, the ship had kind of sailed. Oh well!
How do you feel looking back on your catalog? Do you still like or relate to some of those records?
That's a hard one—having to listen to my own records again is kind of a nightmare for me. I like to make 'em, and move on. And I put so much into these fkn things, and generally spend way too long mixing and overthinking 'em. But each one is a reflection of the band, and I guess myself, at that point in time, and also a good image of how the band sounded at that moment. The first one, It's Happening, we were kids and I was obsessed with a few US private press '60s records. Stuff like The Bachs, The Rising Storm, and Thus. Just these weird, forgotten, self-funded albums whose backstorties were lost to time. They always sounded like the engineer who recorded em didn't understand rock music at all and probably wanted to leave, so they sound pretty odd. So Spod (who directed out latest film clip for "Peakin") and I mixed it for months, in-between skating a halfpipe he'd just built in his loungeroom. Rising was me trying to do it all myself, piece by piece, so pretty much writing a couple of songs and calling up the band to come and record 'em, and only stopping once Rice Is Nice gave me a hard deadline. On Top! was a pile of songs we rehearsed and recorded live, and Surface World was kind of the same, but I went to town messing with this one once it was done.
Congrats on your new album Surface World! What was it like putting this one together over the last few years?
Thank you! This one, I kind of started writing for it when we got back from our last Euro tour in 2019; it had gone really well and I was super amped to rip straight back in. I demoed three songs that ended up on the LP ("Fast Product," "Walking Through My Mind," and "Summer Skies"), and then Covid hit and no one knew what the fuck was going on in the world. Come 2021 during a break in lockdowns we recorded all the main backing tracks for the record, then another lockdown hit and I couldn't work on the album for a bit longer. Blah blah blah, it took an embarrassingly long amount of time, and hopefully the next one won't. Hopefully!
Is it mostly new material or did you also revisit some older unfinished tracks?
Nah it's all new stuff I was writing in the period—generally if I jettison an idea somewhere along the line it'll never make a return. It's better to keep moving forward than try to breathe life into some corpses of the past.
Do you have any favorite moments or parts you were excited for listeners to hear across the new LP?
I reckon one of my favorite tracks on there is called "Shop Window," and it came together after I sampled a loop from the second Silver Apples album and wrote a song over the top of that. Then I got Nick [Nuisance] to learn this new, weirdo beat and it all kind of came together. I'm pretty stoked that I can get him to replay stuff like that, and with all the old equipment I've amassed can get it sounding kind of ballpark to the original sample.
I saw you posting on Instagram the various records, mainly old garage-psych/freakbeat 45s, you've referred to as inspiring the new album. What ones can you share with our readers and how they informed the new LP?
I can do ya one better and share the playlist with ya right here. A lot of these are tunes I got obsessed with at some point during the writing and mixing of Surface World. Sometimes you can sorta hear a little influence in there from some, and some might be imperceptible. Just little pieces here and there.
What kind of gear did you have in the band? Tell us about effects, pedals, etc.?
We've all been playing these '60s red sparkly from a Japanese brand called Norma—I found mine in a second hand shop years ago in Newtown and loved it. They're not like those brand name guitars where they're all sustain and "tone." You've gotta fight these things to make 'em sound right, and I love the battle. As a joke I found a matching one in the US and ended up surprising Al with it for his birthday. Then it became a weird band tradition and we surprised Will with the bass version on the last European trip—like I bought it before we left and stole Will's regular bass out of his case and replaced it with the sparkly one before we got on the plane so he didn't know until we landed in Amsterdam! And then we ended up surprising Nick with a red sparkly Rogers snare drum for his birthday the other year. So I guess it's become a thing. Besides the guitars, I mostly build all our pedals so I can tweak 'em all to sound kind of exactly how I think they should sound for the band. But there's plenty of cool accidents along the way, which makes it even better and I guess unique. Al and I also both play copies of the Mosrite Fuzzrite; mine's made by some company in the US and we got Al's from Tym Guitars up in Brisbane. On the new record I used a copy of a Burns Baldwin Buzzaround—I ended up with an original that a friend gave me and I copied the circuit (and improved a couple of tiny things) because it turns out it was worth more than all the guitars and amps combined. During lockdown I had so many friends asking me to make em one I started a little casual electronics company called OPPTRONICS and built about 60 of 'em. That's probably enough equipment talk for everyone! Oh, and amp-wsie I've been using a '60s Aussie amp called a Goldentone—I think Mikey Young from Eddy Current hipped me to these way back when we started playing. But touring I'm happy to use a Fender Hotrod, they sound good enough and you can throw them down a set of stairs and they still work, which is kind of what you need on the road.
The first single to appear from the LP was "Fast Product" back in January '23. What can you tell us about this track?
That was the first track I wrote in the latest batch—originally we were gonna churn out an EP called Fast Product (or Fastest Products) but Covid etc etc. It's a great excuse.
How about the single "Don't Shoot Me?"
That was one of the last songs I wrote for the record—I thought I was all done, but in the week or two before we went into record (we were practicing weekly to get the band nice n tight for a live recording session) I played everyone the chorus I'd been cooking up and they all kind of urged me to finish it off in time for the record. Nice, supportive boys.
I really dig the mop top garage worship on "Peakin." How did this one come together?
I bought an old, beat to shit Lambretta to fix up (a 1961 LI125 S2 for the enthusiasts out there), and working on that stuff gives me time to think, but without the pressure of trying to sit down and write a song. So I cooked "Peakin" up in the backyard with greasy hands, and stewed over it for way too long. Al ended up helping me finish the words off, 'cause I got a little stuck on that one. It's the first time we've really collaborated on songs, and I feel like it worked.
How did the track "It's Clear" come together?
Al wrote this one! He sent me a handful of tracks he'd written that he thought could make it onto the album, and "It's Clear" came out the best. He sent me an acoustic demo sort of power pop-ish track and I messed with it to make it feel a little more Straight Arrows, or maybe just more Owen. I had fun making that demo with a drum machine.
What were the inspirations behind the closing cut "Smoke"?
That one started as a demo back when the city was shrouded in smoke from the massive bushfires, but then it turned into some kind of metaphor about essentially getting gaslit.
What were the inspirations behind the cover art?
I've got a folder in my phone filled with photos and screenshots for ideas for future album covers, t shirts, fonts, posters, and whatever! I sent a handful of images to Luke Player (The Pinheads, The Long Knights, Luke Spook); he's been doing all our artwork lately and I love the ideas he throws back at me. I sent him a screenshot of an old Eastern European tea towel I'd found somewhere and he twisted and changed it into what I think is a very cool record cover.
You've got some local shows coming up in support of the album and a show in Barcelona in November. How excited are you for those?
Hot scoop for Paperface—we're actually gonna be doing a Euro tour in November and December and I'm super excited. The hospitality over there is next level. You're never scrounging for a place to eat or a place to sleep; you're treated as a "guest" of whoever's putting the show on. It's incredible! We'll be hitting France, Spain, Germany and the UK this time around.
What are some future plans regarding Straight Arrows in the next year or so?
If I was good at planning ahead maybe my life would be different, but I think we'll go back to Europe again next year, and I'll probably start writing a new batch of songs and hopefully there'll be a smaller gap than last time. Like John Connor says in the essential film masterpiece Terminator 2, "The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves."
Thank you for taking your time. Any advice or last words you'd like to share with our readers?
Do it because it's fun, support your local zine, bands, labels, and venues, drink lots of water, and eat a banana.
Surface World is out now on Rice is Nice (AUS/NZ), Agitated (UK), and Lolipop Records (USA).
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