A multi-layered landscape of modern psych-rock, anchored by a friendship formed during childhood, The Lazy Eyes new album ‘Songbook’ is an exhilarating introduction to a band eager to redefine psychedelia.
The Sydney four-piece, comprised of Harvey Geraghty, Itay Shachar, Noah Martin, and Leon Karagic, spent the pandemic perfecting songs written during their early teens’. This year, they re-emerge from lockdown with a debut album in tow, having finessed their artistry indoors while restrictions wreaked havoc on their local scenes.
‘Songbook’ is constructed with the same reverence applied to a physical craft, meticulously carved from layers upon layers of musical texture and fuelled by a determination to build on the legacy of the Aussie psych-pop predecessors that largely informed their earliest songwriting.
Fresh out of high school and already likened to their heroes, the band are keen to maintain the long-term friendship that exists as The Lazy Eyes’ central power. And it’s working, propelling them from busking on Sydney’s streets to a support slot with The Strokes in five short years.
Clash caught up with them ahead of the release of their debut album, ‘Songbook’.
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You’ve all lived quite a significant period of your youth under the pandemic, how did it impact the creation of this album?
Harvey: Obviously no one loved this pandemic but I feel like we just tried to get the most positives out of a negative and we managed to do quite a lot really, like finish off the album. We even started working on new songs, so it’s been ok. I think we’ve made the most of it.
Itay: It’s hard to say because we’ve only ever experienced this. We wouldn’t have really had the amount of time we did end up having to work on the recordings so in a way it helped us. As soon as we got that window of opportunity we were really keen to just use it because we still had a lot of stuff to record.
It’s nice to know that something good came of it! So a lot of these songs were written when you were as young as 15, how has it been to revisit them and re-record them all these years on?
Harvey: There was a hurdle where we got sick of all those songs, but that was quite a while ago. We got sick of them and then kind of almost got back into them again when we had to record them. But it was good in a way because we had the time to chip away at all the random stuff and the songs became exactly what they are at the core. That’s sort of what songwriting is. Just chipping away at a sculpture, if you will, and right in the middle is the pure song. It was fun. We got lots of time to experiment on the recordings and we also got to rework one of our earlier mixes of one of the songs, which was good because not everyone has the time to dig up old recordings that they’re not so proud of anymore.
And this album was created from your own studio. What was it like learning to produce together during this time?
Itay: Really fun! We’re not really real producers or real recording engineers or mixing engineers or anything but I feel like with music it’s just music. Nothing really has to be done a certain way. If it sounds good then I think it is good. I feel like we have learnt to just do what feels right and hone our skills and eventually we were able to make stuff that we enjoyed.
Harvey: We’ve learnt to fake it til we make it. Hopefully, we make it.
Sydney’s music scene has suffered over the past few years, with lockout laws and Covid restrictions. How do you think the next generation of musicians from Sydney will be impacted?
Noah: Jeez, I don’t know. Hopefully, it will mean that more people want to go see live music with the absence of it for so long. But I feel like Sydney’s music scene is a bit hit and miss, to be honest. There are good bits of it but it doesn’t really feel like a family per-say. I feel like in some states it’s one big family and everyone supports one another, but I feel like there’s a lot of separation. There are a few groups that play together a lot but I don’t know…
Why do you think that is? Where do you think it comes from?
Harvey: I wish I knew. It’s weird.
Noah: Maybe it’s the lack of support.
Itay: Covid didn’t really help that either. There have been a bunch of really key venues that have either shut down or shut down for a bit and opened and shut again.
Harvey: Probably the lockout laws. We hadn’t experienced the nightlife before the lockout laws and all our parents tell us these stories about how the nightlife was so good so it’s probably that.
You’ve said in the past that Australia’s psych-rock scene is fuelled by the country’s geographical isolation. Have you seen any development to this over the last year, when isolation has been even more intense?
Harvey: I wonder if people listen to different music in lockdown. I had a weird reaction musically to lockdown. I listened to the opposite music that you would think. I was never into it before but I got into rave music and dance music.
Itay: Maybe you were filling a void.
Harvey: Yeah maybe. I was just having a one-man rave in my room. But I feel like the psych scene developed because of the isolation in Australia and also because a couple of those Aussie psych bands made it big and people followed. Now I don’t know. The next Australian that made it big that comes to mind is The Kid LAROI so maybe there’ll be a big wave of The Kid LAROI’s.
You’ve been compared to a lot of those big artists, like Tame Impala and King Gizzard – how do you feel about the comparisons?
Itay: It’s super nice and flattering. We were pretty young when we started so it’s hard not to wear your heart on your sleeve. So we were obviously inspired by Tame and Pond and great Aussie bands, so when people say we’re similar it’s nice. I think we feel in the future we’ll be able to kind of, not get away from it but, what’s us will become more prevalent. Because when everyone starts you kind of copy your heroes I guess.
What do you think separates your generation of psych-rock artists from previous ones?
Noah: Youthfulness. I mean the sound of the music, it sounds youthful. I think it was inspired by a lot more than just psych-rock.
Leon: I think the big difference is a lot of psychedelic rock nowadays with our generation is a bit more of a synthesis of other stuff going around us or happening around us as well. I definitely think it’s more so about blending in pop sensibilities. By virtue of just being surrounded by what’s new and all the technology at our disposal, I guess it’s just about taking the same ethos of fun, colourful music but in a more modern direction.
You started out busking – what were your go-to songs to cover?
Harvey: ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams.
Itay: ‘Road’ by Katy Perry.
Noah: I think we did ‘I’m Yours’ by Jason Mraz.
Itay: We literally just did songs that we knew people would know. Also, I think we were just starting to have a taste in music. I feel like when you’re that young you don’t really have a taste in music yet, you just listen to the radio. So we were playing the radio hits of that time but there were some good ones. There were some really good ones.
Yeah, there’s a certain point where you discover your own musical influences that aren’t informed by your parents or the radio. What were the first albums that really resonated with you?
Leon: It is a very satisfying moment when you listen to something that you know doesn’t come from your parents or anything like that. For me, it was ‘Making Mirrors’ by Gotye. He had that song ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ that was huge and blew up, and it was one of the few pop tunes at the time when I was like 12 that I really liked. And then delving into that album when no one else around me was listening to it. I just found it super satisfying that it was like my thing. The whole album really kind of made me escape all the alt-rock that my parents were playing.
Itay: Noah, you were into Stevie Wonder right? Or was that from your parents?
Noah: That was from my grandfather. That was from literally when I was born. But I honestly can’t say an album. I feel like I just always had music through my whole life, it’s just always been there. Harvey: I thought of a really random album that I’m pretty sure is right at the very start of listening to more indie music. I got into Last Dinosaurs. They’re an indie band, from Australia too, but it was an album called In ‘A Million Years’.
Itay: Wow that’s bringing back memories actually…
Harvey: Yeah, that was also the first concert that we went to on our own accord too.
Itay: Yeah, that was one of the first.. what was that big song called? ‘Zoom’?
Harvey: Yeah Zoom. We’re on Zoom!
Itay: Ah, how ironic. But I remember because personally, I was a bit different from all of the others in the way that I was just not really into music much before I went to school, weirdly for music, and met these guys. Harvey showed me that, so that’s probably one of the first songs that he showed me where I was like ‘I’ve never really heard like a guitar riff before’.
Leon: It was like that with Goyte as well when I listened to it and I discovered sampling. And I was like ‘oh my god you can take snippets of sound from other stuff and use it in your own music, that’s mind-blowing.’
Harvey: Yeah, I remember that. When you’re used to a song and then you hear the original sample for the first time it changes your whole perspective.
Leon: Yeah! especially when you’re like ‘oh, you can do that?’ It seems so obvious but I never even thought to do that in my life.
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You’ve spoken about the influence of escapism before, and it does feel so relevant for this album, as it seems to carve out its own world in a way. Why is it important for you to provide that experience within your music?
Harvey: So that people can escape lockdown. It’s nice to just disconnect for a while sometimes. I feel like it’s a universal thing even not just humans, computers and stuff are restarted every now and then. It’s good to just visit someplace else for a while.
Leon: Yeah, I feel like music is just a good way to unwind. Especially when it comes to psychedelic music that by virtue of it, it’s kind of sonically explorative. So by having that sort of outlet and sitting down and listening to some quirky things happening, it’s just the way to let yourself go and go for a ride with the music.
Itay: Speaking personally, the main reason I listen to music and the way the music hits me the most is when it’s transportive and it just takes me somewhere else. I feel like people listen to music for different reasons. Some people like listening to music to dance and move their body and for some people it can be nostalgic and stuff which is kind of a form of escapism, letting it take you somewhere else and you can just relax. It’s all-encompassing. I guess by virtue of enjoying that music we tend to lean towards creating it.
And you’ve never played outside of Australia, so how does it feel to be gaining all this attention internationally now without ever leaving home?
Harvey: Very exciting!
Itay: It’s so weird. It’s so cool, we announced a UK tour, and sometimes our manager sends us the ticket counts and we’re like ‘how are there real people on the other side of the planet who wanna buy physical tokens to come see us?’ It’s cool.
Harvey: I wouldn’t be surprised if he was like ‘Ah sorry fellas, that was a glitch. We’ve sold one.’
Itay: The power of the internet. It’s a modern phenomenon when you can not ever promote yourself in the real sense. And in terms of our band, we’ve never really prioritised focussing on our internet presence. In Sydney and Australia, we like to play live and build live momentum, it’s worked for us really well so to be able to achieve similar results in an entirely different way is really cool.
‘Songbook’ has a lot of abstract lyricism – where does this come from?
Harvey: I write the lyrics. Sometimes they can be inspired by real life events but some songs are more escapism, as we were just talking about. The songs that come to mind are ‘The Seaside’ and ‘The Island’, that just come from escapism. It’s a bit of a mix, sometimes it’s just real life and sometimes it’s just utter bullshit.
Itay: Most times when we write, the lyrics kind of come from a similar place to the music which is just mysterious. It just kind of comes and the more you force it out the worse it gets. It will come and then afterward you’ll be like hmm was that actually about something? And sometimes I’ve realised that ages after they actually express something deeper inside me which is cool, but then sometimes they’ll just be like the sound of the melody but with vowels and consonants, just putting music to words that way.
‘Fuzz Jam’ is interesting because the lyrics are so simple, ‘I want it all to stay the same’, but then musically the song is constantly changing. Can you tell me a bit about this song?
Harvey: I feel like it always degrades the song when I talk about this one, but it started from a beatbox. Yep, bye. I was in the bathroom looking in the mirror and just beatboxing to myself. People sing to themselves but I was just doing a bit of beatboxing and got that rhythm which is now the main baseline. It kind of started from that and I made the demo and developed the song and everything. But the lyrics were really just to put something down in the demo I think, not much thought.
Itay: I thought it was so weird because when we were preparing all the stuff for the album we had to write down all the lyrics to all the songs. And all of them were kind of decently long and had some things to them and we got to Fuzz Jam and it was just four lines and we were just like ‘wait what?’ It was just a funny realisation. I think it’s the only one that’s cool in the way it’s more hypnotic and it’s more of a chant and a mantra. A different approach for sure.
Does beatboxing ever feature on the album?
Harvey: No, but good call.
This album does feel so positive and cathartic, what do you hope people will take away from it?
Harvey: My mad beatboxing skills.
Leon: Good vibes!
Harvey: Good vibes, every vibe actually.
Leon: Yeah, a variety of vibes.
Harvey: As much vibes as possible.
Leon: Nostalgia, melancholy.
Harvey: If people get escapism that’s like, job done. We’ve given people what we wanted to.
Noah: Satisfied! They get to the end and they’re like.. yeah. You know?
Itay: Yeah, it hits different when you get to the end of an album and you’re like ‘woah’.
Noah: You feel full, it’s like when your whole body is full. It’s like when you feed yourself and then you’re not hungry anymore.
Leon: Yeah we want people to feel satiated.
Itay: We want people to feel hungry.
Leon: Hungry for more.
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‘Songbook’ is out now.
Words: Laura Molloy
Photo Credit: Jack Moran
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