A quick chat with Picket Palace
Big fan of your new track ‘All About The Money’. Is it true that it was inspired by social media comments?
Oh thank you very much! Yeah part of it definitely came from that. We were having a bit of a laugh reading comments accusing us of “selling out” for media attention, and we thought it was hilarious to imagine ourselves suddenly becoming nauseating prima donnas just because we went mildly viral and met Eddie McGuire. But also, why would anybody in the industry care that we were on TV for 30 seconds a year ago? That was what made us laugh the most when we were throwing ideas around; the idea of a band who are desperate to sell out.
‘All About The Money’ also makes a poignant statement that the Australian arts industry is criminally undervalued. What can people do to help shift this?
That’s a tough question right now. The problem is that, like any industry, if there’s no money coming in then nobody can make a living, so the only people who can afford to pursue a career in the arts are people who are already privileged and financially secure.
That’s fine for people like us with jobs and support networks, but it means you lose all these other vital, exciting, creative voices because poor people can’t afford to work for free, getting paid in exposure and Instagram shout outs. Buy tickets, buy t-shirts, support people who make things by consuming their work and validating their existence! It seems like everybody has really felt the absence of live music and performance in our lives this year, so hopefully people are hungry enough to show creative industries the support they need to get humming again, because the government isn’t going to do it.
You became known for your footy themed music, but your last 2 singles have been thematically very different. Are you done with making footy anthems for good?
You write songs about whatever makes you think and whatever makes you feel something, and footy definitely stirs up a lot of feelings in a lot of people so it was fun to explore that and celebrate it, but we’ve got a lot more stuff we want to do. Unless someone wants to pay us a stupid amount of money, in which case we will surrender our artistic integrity immediately and enthusiastically.
What was the recording process of ‘All About The Money’ like?
Probably the most fun we’ve had recording anything so far. We recorded most of the core parts live and with no click track, which made everything way more exciting and energetic. All the sparkling wine probably helped with that too. We laid everything down in a day at Sing Sing Studios with Aaron Dobos, who also recorded and mixed our last single, No Fun Intended, so he had a really good understanding of what we wanted and how we all work. He made the whole process really easy and managed to coax some of our best performances, we really can’t speak highly enough of him as a dude or an engineer.
Your guitarist, Gus, created the incredible animated video for ‘All About The Money’. What was the inspiration behind it?
Gus: I think it was just just the weirdness of seeing the band on those TV shows and broadcasts last year. It’s a very strange experience seeing your silly face meshed into the iconography of something you have been watching for years and years. I think I was just like ‘that was weird, I wish it could be even weirder and we could show up in Kath and Kim or Masterchef’ or something ridiculous. Would be great if we could just show up, unwanted, to every TV show and derail it for a bit in real life.
What’s planned for the rest of 2020?
Plans? No no no, we’ve learned our lesson about hoping for things this year. Sit down and be quiet and if you’re very lucky you’ll be allowed to hug your mum at Christmas.
