“We’re Pretty Good At Going From Zero To A Hundred” CLASH Meets Delivery

It’s 9PM on a Friday in the packed out, glittery interior of Hackney’s notorious MOTH Club. The room is brimming with sweat, mullets and excitement, as Melbourne garage-punk rockers Delivery take to its stage for the second time in six months. The Covid-born ensemble waste no time as they rapidly launch into an action-packed set filled with choppy guitar riffs and an infectious level of chemistry that leaves many an audience member grinning from ear to ear.

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The crowd clearly reflects the kind of network the five-piece originate from, as it finds itself abundant with fellow musicians and creatives who are tapped into the DIY music sphere. They’ve been appropriately warmed up by Manchester trio Fruit Tones, whose bassist C.J Wood is later invited back up to the stage during Delivery’s headline set. He then promptly throws himself off it again, and crowd-surfs all the way up to a steel pipe that runs along the venue’s ceiling, which he clings onto momentarily in a sloth-like fashion before finally Tarzan-ing his way back down and rejoining the masses.

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“Long live MOTH Club!” shouts vocalist/bassist Bec Allan into her microphone, in solidarity with the grassroots venue, which has recently come under threat of closure due to planning applications for the construction of luxury apartments next door. She’s clad in a pair of corduroy trousers, and wears a baggy blue shirt fitted with a loosened tie, perhaps a nod to the office job she worked at while coming up with much of the lyrical material for the group’s latest album ‘Force Majeure’.

The record was released in January via Heavenly Recordings, home to the likes of Kneecap, Lynks and Pan Amsterdam. It’s the follow-up to their 2021 debut ‘Forever Giving Handshakes’, and serves as a subversive and humorously unapologetic critique of life’s monotonies. The group was formed in 2020 by Allan and her flatmate: guitarist, vocalist and synth player James Lynch. The original lineup also consisted of Lisa Rashleigh (guitar, vocals) and Daniel Devlin (drums, vocals), both of whom left the band to pursue other endeavors after wrapping up the recording of ‘Force Majeure’. Thankfully, lineup changes are quite commonplace among Melbourne’s DIY bands, and in a smoothly orchestrated transition, they were replaced by guitarist/vocalists Jordan Oakley and Scarlett Maloney and drummer Liam Kenny.

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The band sit down with CLASH a few hours before the show. They’ve just come off stage having completed their soundcheck, and four of them eventually roll through to the venue’s bar one by one for a Red Stripe and a chat. Lynch is the first to arrive, with Allan following suit shortly afterwards. They’re in good spirits, and are excited to be back in the English capital, albeit only for a fleeting visit. This is the last of a sixteen-date run of shows the band have played across Europe over the last few weeks, having only accumulated a total of three days without doing a gig since the start of the tour on February 17th.

Tomorrow they’re up at the crack of dawn and headed straight for New York, where that same evening they’ll make their American debut, before going down to Austin for a string of gigs at SXSW. Indeed, there ain’t no rest for the wicked. “I can’t even think about that right now,” chuckles Allan, shaking her head “Literally tomorrow night we’re going to be in New York playing a show which is pretty fucking surreal.” Lynch agrees, “We’re still in that state of mind where we’re like ‘Whoa! We’re in London playing a show!’ So the idea that we’re playing in America for the first time ever tomorrow feels like a bridge we can only really cross when we come to it.” Still, he remains optimistic about the exciting nature of the challenge ahead, boldly stating “We’re pretty good at going from zero to a hundred.”

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Last September, the owners of MOTH Club reached out to local residents in a social media statement asking them to support opposition to a development that could “pose a serious threat” to the venue, which has been in existence since 1972. In November, it was revealed that two more development proposals were submitted to Hackney council, further putting the venue’s future in jeopardy. “We heard about the MOTH Club’s situation all the way from Australia, so the word has definitely spread. Hopefully the campaign can rally people up and make a big difference. You need venues like this to keep the scene alive,” explains Lynch. “Melbourne’s got the same issue, where every month a venue is suddenly closing, or it has to get a petition going, or start a Go Fund Me to try and save it. I also feel like most people running grassroots venues all over the world at the moment are doing so purely for the love of it, as they don’t really generate much in the way of profit. We’re very grateful to those people.”

Doubling down on this, Allen asks “What would you do without grassroots venues? You’d never have anywhere to play your first show.” She continues, “You might only get ten or thirty people coming to see you sometimes, so to have places that will understand that’s a part of the process, and still give you a crack is pretty instrumental to the music industry in general.” Lynch agrees, saying: “I feel like you never outgrow those places either, even if you’re able to play bigger rooms. There’s a venue in Melbourne called The Curtin that we’ve played a bunch of times, and we always describe it as playing at our home ground.”

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We’re soon joined by Jordan Oakley and subsequently Liam Kenny, and the conversation turns to Melbourne’s local scene. “The deeper you go into it, playing with bands and forming new friendships and stuff like that, it feels like the community can be limitless. There’s always new bands forming,” explains Oakley. “You’ll get bands that are on the rise and then suddenly they’ll just stop, and then they’ll be back two years later. You can’t really encapsulate it.”

Lynch builds on this, “I’ve always felt very lucky about the fact that there’s such a brewing music scene out there, one that’s very self-sustaining.” He continues, “I’m not saying there isn’t heaps of ambition there, but most bands are doing it regardless of whether or not they’re going to be successful. I think all five of us have that mentality. Just being part of that community gives us the fulfillment we need to keep at it.”

Kenny, who is originally from Adelaide and has lived in a number of Australian cities, before inevitably ending up in Melbourne says “My experience is a bit different to these guys. Adelaide is a lot smaller than Melbourne, so not as many bands from there get the recognition they deserve, but you still get waves of awesome bands coming out of there.” He goes on, “It’s also got a great DIY community. I also lived in Sydney for a bit which has a smaller scene, and then I’ve been in Melbourne for a year and a half and it’s just psycho how much goes on down there!” When asked which other bands are worth paying attention to, the ensemble all pause for a second, before opening fire. They list dozens of names, including the likes of Eggy, Pinch Points, Checkpoint, Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice, Program, Cool Sounds, Dom Sensitive and “pretty much any band on Spoilsport Records.”

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Following the completion of ‘Force Majeure’ last July, the band had to quickly adapt to its second incarnation. Making an album with one ensemble, then promoting and touring it with another is a pretty unconventional way of doing business, and not one that sounds at all easy to carry out. Having said that, the group are relatively nonchalant in their recollection of how things unfolded. “It’s funny because obviously it’s a bit of a weird situation, but it felt quite natural because we’re such good friends with our old band members, and we’ve always been in the loop with how they’re feeling about stuff,” says Allan. 

“Obviously they had different ambitions for their lives and careers, but it felt really nice to make the album together, as it was kind of the last thing we got to do as a team before moving on.” She continues, “We’re just really appreciative of the new crew for being like ‘alright let’s go!’ and for the fact that they don’t mind playing our songs.”

She laughs as she goes on to recall the brief overlap period between the two incarnations of the band: “There was one weekend in Newcastle (New South Wales, not Tyne and Wear) where we had one show with the old band, one show with the new band, one show with two members of the new band and one members of the old band. But we’re all friends so it feels weirdly natural in a way.” Lynch adds to this, “I sort of describe it as passing the baton; you make an album and think that’s that chapter finished, but then you’ve got all the promo stuff and then like a year or so of touring it.” He expands, “We weren’t really aware that the change was going to be such a big thing until we were in the thick of it, but fortunately it’s been pretty smooth so we’ve been really lucky.” Speaking from the other side of the fence, Oakley says “It felt like hopping on a moving train, but in a fun way. I’ve been a fan of the band for a long time, and friends with these guys for quite a few years.” Allan quickly jumps in, affirming that likewise, Delivery had also been highly influenced by their new band mates’ former bands.

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Last summer, Heavenly Recordings wasted no time in signing the band after hearing ‘Force Majure’. Speaking encouragingly about the new partnership, Lynch says: “They heard the album and a day or so later they were in our emails, and then they wanted to call us. After that there was probably a little bit of teething time, because we’d sent stuff out to other people, but after a bit we were like ‘why would we want to work with anyone else?’” He continues, “They’re all really lovely, they’ve got great taste in music, and they loved our record. That kind of enthusiasm goes a long way.”

Packed with a fun assortment of straight up punk bangers, the record is an upbeat takedown of all things uninspiring. “There’s lots of lyrics about tediousness and monotony on the album. I was working an office job full time when we wrote this record, so a lot of the lyrics I was writing when I was either at work, or commuting to work.” Says Allan, “I guess it’s easy to think of those kinds of themes when you’re doing something that you find a little bit boring.” Reinforcing this, Lynch concludes by stating “It’s a funny time to be alive, so there’s lots to be critical of!”

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‘Force Majeure’ is out now.

Words: Fin Harrison
Live Photography: Ashley Evans

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