A Quick Chat with Great Australian Bank

What are the origins of Great Australian Bank? How did it start?

I think we would’ve kicked off around 2019 or 2020! I’d just moved to Melbourne after a stint in Perth and linked up with Pat – an old friend from back home in Hobart – to start writing our earliest demos. Soon after, we’d gotten Alex in the band on drums after a callout over Facebook, and our former bassist Alex joined too. At the time, the band was made up entirely of old friends from Tassie living in the big smoke.

It feels like a lifetime since starting and we’ve shifted our lineup a few times but have definitely gone from strength to strength. Also, our current bassist, Caleb, is from Tassie, so we’re a band of full Tassie expats once again!

Tell us a bit about the new single. What does it mean to you?

Don’t Call Me is basically about my experiences with bouts of racism growing up, making it probably my most personal release to-date. Growing up as a mixed-race person in Tassie throughout the 2000s was equal parts strange, difficult and confusing. All my life (even now here and there) I’ve been remarked or reviled for the colour of my skin, as if my lack of pale complexion were some weird point of fascination or ire from everyone around me. These encounters happened mostly during my early school years and came from students and teachers alike, but it all had a really negative impact on my mental health, identity, sense of safety and sense of belonging.

My experiences here definitely don’t make me unique. I know a lot of people from diverse backgrounds that have had similar experiences to varying degrees of harm. Any person who’s been on the receiving end of racism from an early age can tell you about what it does to your perspective. For me, it took a long time to shake the feeling of being an outcast, then eventually build resilience and be proud of who I am.

Are there any inspirations you look to beyond music when writing or performing?

I kinda have separate headspaces for writing and performing. Performing isn’t something I think too hard about but definitely put a lot of physicality into, so I like to just make sure I’m in a present state of mind for that. For writing inspiration, I look to films, books, weird poetry and just being a generally introspective person. Last year I went down this weird rabbit hole with Australian bush poetry, like Douglas Stewart and Banjo Patterson etc. A lot of that stuff is really descriptive stylistically, which definitely fed into my lyrical style a lot. But bush poetry also played a huge part in framing the national identity of white Australia in the 19th and 20th centuries, which is pretty much the antithesis of what Great Australian Bank is all about. I loved that irony of ripping off an antiquated style of writing and using it to dismantle what it was originally made for.

Name the five songs that have informed your song writing more than any others.

Read About It – Midnight Oil

Cattle and Cane – The Go-Betweens

Call in Anger – The Mark of Cain

The Frame – Oceansize

Candle – Sonic Youth

What Australian bands are you listening to at the moment?

The Mark of Cain

Underground Lovers

Total Control

Bitumen

Ze Wisenheimer

How do you hope your music might impact listeners?

Mostly I hope that people just like it and can vibe to it! But yeah, on a deeper level, a lot of our music is themed around social justice, identity and personhood. If our music should ever stoke a feeling, thought or conversation around these themes, then I’d be absolutely stoked.