Actor/Model on Myspace

Mp3: My Agent Says

Like most Actor Slash Models, Ricky French and Karen Anson are extremely talented and can walk and talk at the same time.

A Melbourne band with a lo-fi, high energy philosophy, Actor/Model (pronounced “Actor Slash Model”) utilise cheap toy keyboards and synths, old beat-up guitars and inventive, pounding drums to construct simple, beat-driven pop songs with fabulistic melodies and pleasuristic soundscapes. And if that’s not enough, they are also ‘political’. Jesus.

Actor/Model have no interest in looking or sounding Kool, or sending the ultra-kids into waves of convulsions. They believe that quality of songs comes before everything else. The songs on their debut release, Gossip About Guys, hold up a distorted mirror to consumer culture, the cult of celebrity and the proliferation of suburban shopping mall fashion. Gossip About Guys travels from toe-tapping electro punk to dance to skewed wall-of-sound post-rock to pop songs which echo back across the Tasman to Ricky’s kiwi-pop roots: catchy as a flying nun in hell.

Interview by Richard MacFarlane: Published in The Brag, 27/8/07.

I called Ricky French, one third of Melbourne (once Wellington) band Actor/Model. He was furiously postering the streets of Melbourne re: their upcoming gig only to have his sticky-tape gun break seconds before I called. It’s cool, he wasn’t bummed (I would’ve been; those tape guns are radical), asking politely if I’d wait a moment while he ordered a beer (and bag of chips) at the pub.

What flavour chips? Well, I didn’t catch that, but Actor/Model’s musical recipe takes one tablespoon synth-pop, 200g no-wave, 300ml POP!, a sprinkling of shoegaze and a healthy portion of humorous cynicism. At least that’s what it says in the reductivists cookbook.

Their Gossip About Guys EP, released early this year purveys a sound filled with liveliness and melody and a realised sense of dynamics. It’s moody in parts but also fun. At five songs in length,it’s a cross section of their sound; the first three short, synth-driven jams and the last two Murray Street-style. Both Ricky and Karen work day jobs and splitting time between that and music-making can be tricky, but they’re on the way, hoping to get an album out soon. Ricky’s filled with ideas.

“We tried to achieve quite a lot in recording it, just to get the whole breadth of the band all in just a small place. With the album, I want to turn all sorts of corners and move in and out of genres and come back to them and explore ideas”.

“We started using a drum machine a couple of years ago because we didn’t have a drummer. I think the sound of the drum machine really lends itself to the synth, and Karen is synth player. Her style of playing is really unique, it’s great working with that. That electronic equipment lets you get a really punchy sort of sound”.

Elsewhere, their sound is happy to dawdle. Ricky used to play experimental sound stuff solo when back in Wellington, and it’s crossed over. There’s a whole bunch of influence from everywhere all at once and it gives Actor/Models sound a real immediacy.

”We’re looking at doing a short album, seeing as we’ve done a long EP. The songs, though, I think will be more proggy in their approach, more drawn out jams that shift around a lot, as opposed to those punchy synths songs.”

Live, they’re more sporadic, shifting between styles and improvising heavily. It’s a polarizing sort of way of playing; Ricky finds it works more often than not and because of taking risks, when it does work, it really works.

“It depends on the day or how I’m feeling, but we probably improvise about half the set when we play live. We have sections in songs where none of the three of us play the same notes one night to another. Occasionally our amps will blow up as well; we use these old New Zealand amps that are pretty temperamental”

They moved from Wellington to Melbourne a few years ago now after hearing how supportive the music scene is there. Turns out it’s true; between day jobs they’ve played a wide variety of shows from smaller warehouses to bigger venues.

Ricky formed Actor/Model after playing in a hardcore-style band that later morphed into Die! Die! Die! He’s toned his stage antics down a bit since then, there’s less climbing on lighting rigs and less Iggy Pop-esque prancing.

“I’ve toned it down slightly, but it’s definitely extremely energetic, the live show. There’s a kinetic sort of energy, which is good, because if yr putting on a show, you should be entertaining.”

Polaroids of Androids review:

In a perfect world Melbourne’s Actor/Model would be the kind of band that we (Australians) would be exporting to the world. They have influences but by no means are they as transparent as the local bands that actually do make it overseas. They are insanely catchy without blatently ripping off a previously succesful formula. Their stripped back honesty isn’t bogged down with overly emotional and pretentious crap. They would fit in opening for an over-hyped overseas act just as much as they would knocking at an impromptu warehouse party. Gossip About Guys is a brilliant five-track EP of catchiness and childish charm without even a whisper of the normal contrived bullshit that comes packaged with the majority of local releases.

The opener My Agent Says… is a catchy tongue-in-cheek play on their paradox nature of their chosen band name. It’s sonically perfect and topped with an atmospheric feel. The track naturally flows from chorus to verse and back again.

The band create an unbelievable large sound for trio, especially evident on the second track Chicken Salt Coast which starts with a Strokes-like riff only to be layered in the similar harmonised vocals as the opening number.

I Dot Heart is a more airy number. Keyboards, although subtle at times, are brilliantly used as the central melodic backbone. There is also a series of quirky little sound effects on this track which you appreciate more and more on further listens.

S.S Slapper is an insanely energetic number that is strangely reminiscent of 80’s computer games - without all the nerdery. It’s fast paced and colourful but doesn’t sound at all like that childish overly-happy hyper-coloured-stupid-fluro-whooo bullshit music that seems to be going around. It’s the celebration track of the EP and although at time reminds me a little too much of Architecture In Helsinki it is a fantastic explosive spurt of joy that adds some nice diversity to the release.

The closing number Laptop Dancing takes the ideas from the rest of the EP and melts them all into a fantastically awesome 7 minute opus. Each verse builds with occasional harmonies before rumbling into a chorus powered beautifully by deep guitars and more ‘classic’ pop vocals. A large instrumental piece complete with delayed melodic sounds and fuzzy feedback planted in the middle of the track nicely throws the listener off course before slowing bringing them back to the action with keyboards and another rising action. Blissful stuff.

I pretty much don’t have a bad word to say about this 5 track storm of radness. It’s as close to flawless-ism as you are going to get from a local band who are incredibly talented and putting together original and interesting music. Listening to this EP is the clearly the best way to spend 25 minutes of your day.

- Capt Polaroid

Herald Sun newspaper:

From Triple J:

Melbourne trio Actor/Model have just released an EP of synth friendly, harmony laden songs. And one of them, My Agent Says was my catch of the day this morning. With chord changes that make your heart happily twinge, and a warm harmony soaked sound, this song just gets better and better with every listen.

- Zan Rowe

Cyclic Defrost Magazine review:

Actor/Model use their setup of guitars and keyboards well and it’s fun. Simplicity is the key. It reminds me a little of Brooklyn duo Matt & Kim; synth pop or synth punk or both, lots of call and response vocals between the boy and girl. It’s never sugarsweet but has enough melodies to bolster it especially combined with skittering cymbals and a real danceablility….gung-ho and synth-punk.

Mess + Noise review:

Zoolander perfection. The debut EP by Melbourne’s Actor/Model takes the vainglorious vacuity of a catwalker and fuses it with future-tense Krautrocking intensity. Opening cut ‘My Agent Says’ is a throwback to the knob-twiddling heyday of Mister Quincy Jones: the moment Karen Anson depresses the keys on her splendid synth, your eardrums light up like the footpath in the ‘Billie Jean’ film clip. The songs here have a never-ending rush; guitarist Ricky French has never met a slashing riff he didn’t want to sustain for an eternity. The way the keyboards and guitar interlock is almost like watching two stars collide, or at least J Mascis finessing his guitar around Duran Duran’s new wave nonsense. Behind them drummer Philip Smiley is like an automaton on the autobahn, driving the pulsebeat and converting songs like ‘Chicken Salt Coast’ into exactly that – a highway blazing with unlimited speed. Art rock ballad ‘I Dot Heart’ laments the life of the demimonde: “This airbrush can’t conceal a frown,” sings French, in total Hush, Hush, Sweet Thurston mode, while ‘Laptop Dancing’ reinvents new wave in a way that will cause a whole heap of haircut bands to spontaneously combust. Let’s hope they tune in.

- Shane Moritz

InPress review:

This local three-piece make an appropriately (for those colder months, at least) moddy clash of wintry ’80s British sounds and a definite pop/melody bent. ‘I Dot Heart’, at over six minutes, is particularly lush and enveloping. Lovely handmade packaging too, not that it really matters, but a nice bit of DIY always makes a CD feel more like a gift.

- Clem Bastow

Beat review:

Gossip About Guys displays an alluring uniqueness that could see this lo-fi three-piece propelled into the post-whatever, melodic indie stratospheres. Pairing a driving, insistent rhythm section with whirling synth and fuzzy guitar to create a moody (frequently melancholic,) almost Sonic Youth-esque ambience….Chicken Salt Coast sees the band’s fusion of simplicity and substance in full flight - the guitar and synth sparring and intertwining with each other, whilst keeping pace with a pounding, insistent rhythm section to produce an off-kilter little gem. The call and response, male/female vocal dynamic in this track is executed with aplomb, but unlike say, a primal Frank Black/Kim Deal assult, both Karen Anson and Ricky French can sing in tune and tracks like other standout, ‘My Agent Says’ benefit immensely from their harmonies….Seven minute prog epic ‘Laptop Dancing’, with its incredibly dense, competing layers could quite easily have ended up in a horrendous, impenetrable muddle, but instead seemlessly shifts between glistening clarity and a Dinosaur Jr.-like wall of sound.

- Nick Clarke