A Quick Chat With GENIIE BOY

GENIIE BOY, Gold Coast's magical indie-pop duo comprising of Alisha Todd and Scott French have just released a delightful dose of their feel-good energy in their single 'Better' and accompanying music video. Since debuting in early 2021, they've been blazing away with their debut EP which released late last year, which has been now followed up with three singles so far this year.

In the pursuit of 'betterness', GENIIE BOY's 'Better' is a cruisy tune packed with warmth and the accompanying music video, in pure GENIIE BOY style has them bring all their creative joy and larger-than-life humour.

We caught up with GENIIE BOY to talk about the track, their creative process and how they approach doing their amazing music videos.

Can you tell us what the new track is about and what you want people to take away from it?

Better is about the pursuit of happiness and how we really love and hate the pursuit and often over complicate the journey of getting to the end goal, which is ironically happiness. From our experience, the longer we spend being alive, the more we want to simplify our lives. There's such a beauty and peace in the simplicity.

Who are some of your influences and why?

Scotty's early influences came from 90's rock, bands like Tool, Korn, Rage Against The Machine, Matchbox 20 and everything in between. He played in bands since high school, learning songs from these bands, then after hearing Stringman Sassy at Woodford Folk Festival, went in a direction and formed A French Butler Called Smith with a bunch of friends from the Gold Coast playing original music within the realms of Latin, Funk, Gypsy and organic dance music.

My (Alisha's) influences are pop heavy and tinged with country, coming from Gympie and being in a country music program at School. In uni, I was exposed to funk and jazz but lately my mind is costantly blown by Remi Wolf and the power of her voice and zero fucks given attitude and her ability to write incredible pop music yet be so musical that she's always reinventing her songs in live settings. I'm also very entertained and intrigued by TuneYards, their quirkiness is very Tim and Eric at times and they are just in it for the sake of art and expression.

What's the creative process for you, from writing through to recording?

Lately we have been going into the studio and starting from scratch, starting by creating the music bed together and then Alisha will add the lyrics and melodies on top. We started doing this to bring a more balanced approach to our sound... Our first EP is mostly Alisha bringing a song to the table and Scotty working his magic on it, and it somehow didn't quite represent Scotty's character as a producer. So we now start with the music. And it all happens at once, writing and recording.

We know you do your music videos yourself, how do you approach a new music video concept and what are some unique things you've done?

The concept starts with me pestering the shit out of Scott for weeks on end, saying we need to figure something out. Then one day, *ping* I will have the idea after listening to the song over and over in my car, pulling my hair out, and I will just say it at Scott, to which he will say 'awesome' and we begin from there. We now have a little theme with our videos. They're very 'DIY', which helps puts a limit on what we can do, where we do it and how we do it, and also allows us to make it as crappy as we want which ultimately ends in a good time during the making of and a cheaper video (that takes a lot of effort to conceptualise and make). Of course we keep trying to make a better video each time, so our videos started with filming Scott on the disco toilet and playing under the flight path of landing planes, followed by wearing morph suits in public (so we could put shimmering patterns on our bodies in post production), followed by our excursion on an elevator to the sky, where we met with some space people getting high on fluro goo and ending (for now) with this video we made for 'Better', where we papier machéd 3 giant heads and went about a day in the life of muso... without the ability to see, which resulted in some pretty golden outtakes.

What do you think makes a great music video?

A great music video, like a great song, should take you on a journey and be something you haven't really seen before.

If you could collaborate with any artist, who would it be and why?

Mattymadeit! Another local Gold Coast producer and musician.... oh wait..... we might just have a little remix coming out with him soon actually 😉

When not working on music, what other creative outlet/s do you have?
Scotty lives and breathes music, he also produces for other musicians at his music studio. We both like to edit the videos! Alisha often photographs other musicians and has made a video series called 'Dusk at Dust', a live music series where she films local musos at the Dust Temple on the Gold Coast. Other than that, our creativity is used mostly on how to spend our labrador puppy's energy.

Who are some local bands we should check out?
So many. Buttered, Jarulah, Chutney, Eimhin, Girl and Girl, Lily Budiasa, Amy John Roberts just to name a few.

Winter or summer and why?
Alisha says winter! Because Summer is horrible in QLD. Let's face it, no one ever enjoys being in the thick of summer. I've never met anyone who said 'it's so fucking humid and it's 40 degrees, I feel great!'

What else do you have planned for the year?

We are very keen to play Springtime Festival in Surfers Paradise on Sep 4th! Then we have a couple more singles to put out and more music to write.

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