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Interview: Body Type
- Olive McCagh
- Aug 6
- 8 min read
Interviewed by Olive McCagh
Australian punk band Body Type just dropped their third album, Tally, a record that softens their edges. The four-piece were chasing a break from music, yet the universe had other plans; massive tours sparked energy and inspiration for their newest collection of songs. Maturity is evident within the tracks, as well as the role of their Los Angeles producer, Stella Mozgawa. Body Type have invited the atmosphere into their sonic world, taking up space and continuing to showcase the evolution of the band. We spoke with Annabel and Cecil about California days, collaboration and the roots of Tally.
Olive: You recorded your album Tally out of Los Angeles. So, I’m curious what that experience was like spending time in California to make the record.
Annabel: We were there in winter, and California is very mild, and you'd get up in the morning, and it'd be beautifully brisk and then you just go for a walk and you'd feel nice.
I know it's pretty boring to talk about the weather, but there was one day where everything was covered in mist, and it was so magical. We were all feeling like we were in the David Lynch zone and it felt mystical and cool. It was really novel to be somewhere special like that. And also, just eat tacos all the time.
It really made the experience a lot more stimulating than just hanging out in the local studio and busting something out and then going home and feeling exhausted. It was definitely a multitude of experiences, not just staying in one place. We were also staying in a place that was attached to a beautiful, they're called Craftsman; it's the style of these little American old houses.
Yeah, a beautiful bungalow with these wooden columns that are angular and going up and it was just very homely. It was so nice to be in this beautiful home, and we got to have these big family dinners at the end of the night after recording. That was probably the best part, sitting down to really wonderfully prepared meals by each of us, taking turns to cook.
O: What about writing the album? Where were you when you put these songs together?
Cecil: I don't know, everywhere.
A: You’ve got a good memory
C: Ah, to be honest, even though we said we took a break, it was when the demos and the writing really started happening.
We had a massive end of 2023. Then demos and jamming started happening in January of 2024. So even though we weren't playing shows, we were still together; sometimes it was just Bab, Soph and me, if G was in Perth. Or it was three lots here and there, if some people were doing other things. We were writing in between shows we had.
The bulk of it was done in August through December of 2024, when we were down in Wollongong, or up in Sydney, CBD. So, kind of everywhere.
Everyone would go off and either write parts, or they would have written songs themselves personally, or we were writing each part for specific songs and plotting and being inspired and stuff like that.
We were in Europe, June to July 2023, and then we came back and did the Australian tour. Throughout that whole time, we were doing stuff and then really hammered it in at the end of 2024, which was when we were like, ‘let's go to America and do something really special’.
A: It's so funny because I just remember there was a brief moment in 2024 where I was like, ‘Cool, this is going to be so nice. I'm going to relax and have nothing planned for like the foreseeable future’. Even though I was still doing some music stuff, I put out an album as well. But I just remember that May period being like, ‘Cool, this would be so good to relax’.
And then that Sleater-Kinney tour came up and was sort of something we obviously just could never say no to. So, things just happen like that where you think nothing's going down and that's just, it's kind of Murphy's Law. You're always going to be jam-packed and end up cramming everything in.
O: This is your first time working with a producer in this way, and you worked with the incredible Stella Mozgawa. I was wondering how that relationship with a producer changed your creative process in the studio.
A: It's really intimidating when you go in as a band and you're trying to dictate it all yourself. You put a lot of energy into constructing the songs in the first place, but I feel like there's a level of expertise with recording and balancing out sounds that you can do a lot of work.
We’ve worked with our friend Jonathan Boulet on the last two records before this, and he's sort of like just a gun all-in-one sort of guy and can do everything. But at the same point, he wanted to let us be our own producers. So, that comes with its own kind of burden of responsibility too.
It was just so great to pass that on to Stella and feel secure in her expertise and her advice guiding us through it. Because she has all these great ideas and she's such a rolling collaborator, she can come up with anything and has really helpful solutions for everything.
C: I think on the last two records time was always a factor.
Even though we had travelled to LA knowing that we would have two weeks to do the record, that was still the most time that we've ever had to record. We’d always had to have these strict timelines. The first album was recorded just before COVID really hit; we had to get it done before, I think G was going to Perth.
Then the second record, we only had these windows to do it post-COVID. Annabel had COVID during one of the sessions that we had; this very limited amount of time during the Pixies tour. We had to finish this record before the end of 2022.
Whereas I think with this time, even though time was definitely on the brain, we made a considered choice to only record these 10 songs. Then we had more time with Stella in her studio to work on production and do all of these things which we'd never had before.
So that was really nice too, allowing space for that. We also did pre-production with her when she was in Sydney too, so we had that extra layer of figuring stuff out and her suggesting, maybe you should consider changing this structure of this song, maybe you should change this beat here for me, maybe this could be an option.
So again, we'd never had that before. So that was also really nice, having all these extra little steps, whereas everything before had always been so, ‘we have to do this now’.
O: I feel like that's one of the toughest things for a lot of musicians that I've talked to as well, is there's always that time crunch. I think when that element can be taken away, there's so much more space for creativity, for excitement. I guess as well, handing that role over to Stella, it means you can kind of just be the band in a sense. You can just be the band and make the music, and that's really special.
C: Yeah, we're very good at all of us wearing multiple hats, because, I guess, through all of our recording processes, really, we've always taken the lead. With this one as well, being at the time we were self-managed. So, it, managing the logistics of being overseas and everything as well and budgets and everything.
So at least in that sense, when we're in the studio, we could actually just, yeah, be the band.
O: We’ve touched on this a little, but I wanted to get into how collaborative your time was in the studio with Stella. How much of a role you had going back and forth to change the record in little places.
A: It was very collaborative because we brought her the bare bones of a lot of the songs; she really had a lot of room to expand on that. We've got keyboards and stuff in there that we've never had before because we've always just been true to what's going on when we play live and recreating a live sound almost.
But with her, we actually lent into creating more atmospheric moments in songs. Even with one of the songs, she was totally instrumental to it basically being rebuilt because she heard us trying to play it. And then she was like, ‘Whoa, you need to slow down and strip this back’.
We were a bit freaked out by that, but I think once everyone's egos relaxed, we realised it was a good move to just pare it back and make it simpler. Make it a less chaotic song to suit what we were actually trying to convey in it. So yeah, she was instrumental to shaping every individual track.
Also, if we had specific ideas and stuff, she helped us get to that point. If we couldn't quite articulate it or figure out what it was, she'd be able to suggest something to get to that point. It was really intimidating in that studio because there was so much gear to work with.
When you're in that setting, we think we've got enough time to record this and do all this production stuff. But in reality, we have to like narrow down what we want from all these choices.
She helped us choose stuff and feel confident in those choices as well, which is a big part of the insecurity of being like, ‘is what we're doing good?’
I've had a lot of people say to me, it sounds quite different. I think it's probably the element of more stuff going on and less in your face.
O: It's obviously such an amazing thing to do, to add another collaborative partner in a project, because I guess that's what bands are all about in the first place. It's nice that you get to get to that point with Stella.
C: I think it's also just good in terms of progression of our own sound. I don't think any of us set out wanting to make the same record as we had before.
I think even to me as a listener of bands or artists, I think everyone gets obsessed with the first record. Everyone puts so much pressure on a first record, especially in Australia. It’s a debut, but then actually some of the better stuff comes later down the line when there's more maturity and more development.
I guess people really pinpointed us as post-punk, because we were really angry on that first record. I wouldn't say really angry; there was definitely like a punkier tone on that first album, and that's indicative of what we were living through.
I guess on this one there's been more growth, more maturity. We're all a bit older, and we're in a different place in our lives as well.
I feel like you could also hear that too. It would be kind of boring to me if we were still writing the same record as Everything is Dangerous. Is that fair to say, Annabel?
A: Yeah. I've been writing mad chiller songs for a long time. Been waiting for my moment to shine.
Everyone can chill the fuck out.
O: I wanted to ask if you had a favourite lyric on the album?
A: Planet 8 is pretty loaded with excellent lyrics.
C: ‘Fuck Finger Pricks the Button.’
A: Yeah, ‘Fuck Finger Pricks the Button’. And then there's something about the ‘Westfield Tower, Stare at Your Face for Hours and Hours.’ There's a lot of lyrics in those verses that I love.
C: That's one of my favourite bits because, is it also the verse Annabel, where you have to do those little stabs?
A: Yep.
C: But G, as well, I love in Mulberry too when she's like, when she says, ‘Bound to the asphalt in every way’. I always think about that on my commute to work.
A: That one actually reminds me of Expired Candy because she says something about the rays coming off the wharf of the road from the heat and stuff. She's good with the road.
Tally LP is out now via Poison City Records
You can listen to it here
