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Interview: Swapmeet
Interviewed and Photographed by Olive McCagh
Swapmeet are Adelaide's sweethearts, born from local pubs and dancefloors; now their debut album Mount Zero is setting them across stages all over the world. It's a record that embodies the uncertainties of being a twenty-something. Transforming anxieties into earworm melodies, embracing change rather than hiding from it, resulting in anthems that will stick around as long as they get stuck in your head. I caught up with four piece post-soundcheck, pre-show in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley. Over beef pho and chicken rolls, we chatted about favourite lyrics, who gets the microphone, and how good the food is. I can tell Swapmeet loves being friends as much as they love making music.
My first question is about the cover art of Mount Zero. What inspired it? What is the meaning behind it?
Venus: It’s actually an ambiguous kind of thing; we were going for something else. We were trying to do this keyhole thing. We did a whole photo shoot, and then it just didn't end up being the vibe.
Then I was just going through some footage that we took on that day, me and my friend, and I took some screenshots and really liked the picture of the buildings in the background. We still played around with the keyhole concept.
It kind of ties in with some of the lyrics in the record, and also the shape of it is like a mountain with a zero.
I realised after the fact that I'm probably going to say that that's intentional.
I think it's really beautiful.
I'm curious about how you curated the order of the tracks.
Maxwell: Much debate. I think we were still arranging it the night before we had to send.
Venus: Yeah, we were changing the names and rearranging the order.
Maxwell: We had two orders that were the ones that we had to choose between at some point. Somehow, we got it to two.
Joshua: I think I'm the one that was listening to the different one on repeat. So, I was very confused when we said we were changing. I was like, ‘I've been listening to this way the whole time.’
Maxwell: I feel like the album, I've had other people talk to me about it. Like the order is a kind of sneaky album. It starts off fun and playful, it hits the halfway point of the album and it's like, ‘Oh, this is serious’. And it eases into it. Then it gets serious towards the end.
Would you guys say you're perfectionists when it comes to things like that? Like fiddling around with order and song names do you think that comes out of you?
Venus: We can be particular, but definitely not perfectionists.
Maxwell: I feel like the Swapmeet stuff is the least perfectionist I get.
Venus: I think we couldn’t be perfectionists if we tried, just because you can't be a perfectionist in a group setting. We're so collaborative.
Maxwell: I feel like you lose a bit of the magic as well when you're trying to make something perfect. Especially trying to repeat takes or get something right. You always want to go back to the first thing that you heard.
Josh: Listening to songs on repeat as well after a while, regardless of how perfect it is, you're going to want to change it. We've had songs we've workshopped just because we've been sitting on them so long. Then we listen to the original and we're like, ‘The original's working the best.’
Maxwell: That happened with Mount Zero. Remember, we were mucking around with this one part, and then we were like, ‘Wait, this is right.’ It was the exact same thing that we'd started on two hours ago.
Jack: We were copying and pasting the whole section of the song back and forth, trying all these different orders. And we were like, ‘That's not quite right’. And then eventually it just went all the way back around to what it was.
Maxwell: Which is still important. It’s always a good way to know.
Jack: You have to know you don't like something.
Venus: If someone has an issue with the way we've formed one of our songs, just know we've tried it in whatever way you’re imagining; we’ve tried it.
Do you have a favourite lyric on the album?
Venus: I got a ticket for life. 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5..
It's a lyric that I can clearly remember when Maxwell wrote it. There's nothing special about it; I just remember watching him with a pen and paper, and he wrote it, and he was like, ‘Ah, I just wrote some random stuff.’
Maxwell: The good thing about that one as well is it is just random shit. It's not thought out. But then Jack's dad was like, ‘Oh, what's the ticket number Maxwell says in the song?’ And I'm like, yeah, ‘That's exactly what I was talking about, the ticket number’, not just counting up and down.
Josh: I think my favourite is a random ass one that has no meaning to the song as well. We were stuck thinking of lyrics for Bonny, and then the night before we'd just been binge-watching Malcolm in the Middle, and we didn't know what to put. Yeah, they came up with Malcolm in the Middle, and it means nothing, but I love that show.
Jack: I was going to say the outro of Mount Zero. Maxwell and I just had a really funny night of coming up with the lyrics for it. We'd finished everything else in the song, and it was kind of just that we needed to do.
I don't know; we were just getting silly; it was really late at night. We'd spent the whole day just recording stuff, and now we were just hell loopy.
Maxwell: We were like on the floor with our feet up in the air and a notepad.
Our favourite lyrics are just us talking about hanging out.
There are two in Mount Zero that are just really random reference points. I've got ‘Having a spell’, and ‘Take it to the ground.’
And they're both random sport references from as a kid. Just like cricket and footy, I thought it was fun to just throw that in there. I don't play cricket or footy anymore, but I like the terms I feel like I heard a lot as a kid just thrown in and used for a different context.
Your album is also available on vinyl. I saw it in my local record store. What does it mean to have a physical album out in the world?
Josh: It's very, very, very cool to see.
Jack: It means you're really cool. [Laughs]
Venus: I think it's especially cool with how much of the album was made on a computer. We're not that traditional of a recording band, but it's cool to have that piece of traditional media applied to it. It's just cool, and it feels a bit different, like computer music on a vinyl.
It's fucking sick.
Joshua: That's when my dad was like, ‘Oh, this is like a thing.’
You guys are playing so many shows all the time, both locally around the country and internationally. Does playing to strangers versus familiar faces change your performance at all?
Josh: I think because our first three years were just Adelaide crowds every weekend, literally every weekend for a good amount of time. So, when we finally went interstate, it's like, ‘This is weird. We don't know half the people in the room’, which was very cool.
Venus: I love it. It's so freeing.
Josh: You don't feel like you're trying to impress anyone or anything like that. Yeah.
Venus: There's such a culture of embarrassment and people in the audience knowing who you are. It's nice for people to have no reference point for who we are as people. It's just about the music and it feels really freeing in that way.
Jack: Yeah, I love my parents, but they are the most annoying audience members.
Is it different in other countries? How are the crowds comparing?
Josh: We've only done the US for the start of the year. In the US, they yell a lot more; they heckle a lot. But it's kind of good because then you have a lot of stuff to play off when you’re talking.
Jack: None of it's bad heckling. It's all like, ‘That was cool, man. What's that one song?’ And then you tell them, and they'll be like, ‘Oh, great. What's your name?’ And just keep the conversation going.
Do you guys like dialogue on stage?
Josh: I feel like we can be really awkward at talking, but if we have something like a heckle or something funny happening at the time.
Venus: Josh just got his microphone licence back, so it's really exciting.
Josh: So, I either say really cringe-embarrassing stuff, or I can get it on a roll. In Sydney, I got on a roll!
Because Venus left for the toilet in the middle of a set.
Venus: I had to go.
Josh: She did.
Who were the first ears on your album?
Josh: Jackson. The unofficial fifth member of the band.
Venus: He's like our spirit guide, greatest mentor.
Josh: Keeps us in line.
Venus: Helps us finish our songs. He's a pivotal member of what Mount Zero sounds like. He's able to just have the final word on everything, and he has the best taste in music, and creates really cool music that isn't as similar to us, but he just understands us better than anyone else ever has.
If he's impressed by something, that's all that matters.
Maxwell: If he says something's just getting old, we trust him a lot. I feel like there aren't really many people that we trust as much as we trust him with stuff like that. But it makes it really easy as well.
There's never been a time where he will say something, and we're like, ‘No, actually not’. If he is trying to say something, we're like, ‘Yeah, fair’ and we just move on.
It must be nice to have that dynamic from someone outside the band as well. I feel like that can be really hard, and easy to get stuck when it's just the conversations within the band. So, it must be really lovely to have that outside voice that can take you there.
Maxwell: Also, Hamish, who mixed the album. He was really good. It was our first time working with him and with someone else outside, and he was perfect. I think because his music's so good, we also just trusted him as well.
I was wondering what artists or albums have been soundtracking your Australian tour so far. What are you guys listening to right now?
Venus: We listen to The Postal Service.
Josh: ‘I Created Disco’ by Calvin Harris.
Jack: I was listening to Squarepusher on the plane. It's this 90s breakbeat artist. It's cool.
Josh: Death Cab for Cutie.
Venus: An artist called, Forma Norte. And always Tex Patrello, just all the time.
Maxwell: The Victoryland album. I don't know what it's called, but it's really good.
Mount Zero is out now via Winspear
Listen or buy it here
