Interviewed for The Dwarf

With their new album Oozevoodoo under their belt The Scare have finally hit the road with a headline Australian tour and a chance to showcase the songs that signal a new chapter in their career. On the eve of the first show, guitarist Liam O’Brien chats about the new mindset the band have and the road they have travelled to get there.

The Scare took a different path to most Australian bands by exiting the local scene and basing themselves in London for 2 years where they gigged around Europe and ended up writing and recording their debut album Chivalry. That album was written in the back of tour vans and at sound checks and The Scare now feel that it doesn’t represent the band they have become as O’Brien explains, “The first time we just wanted to get the album done because we didn’t feel like we were a real band without an album. Then we thought ‘we’ve done that, now lets do a way better one’ and focus on where we’ve evolved to as people as well as musicians.”

Returning from the UK the band set about planning for their second album and were determined to make a name for themselves in their home country. With plenty of touring and now the release of Oozevoodoo, O’Brien thinks their fan-base here is starting to grow. “I think it has started to happen, it was always going to take a while, especially with the Australian audience. In England we had an easier time assimilating with people and getting them to want to see more of us but in Australia it was more isolating. Its just a different demographic that you play to over there. We always want of course to have an appeal in our home country, you just start questioning yourself and saying ‘if Australia doesn’t like us what’s going on,” he says.

The Scare were able to draw on the production skills of one of their fans – a certain Daniel Johns of Silverchair – when it came to shaping and recording Oozevoodoo. “As we started writing the songs he just started coming to practice at our rehearsal space, uninvited. He’d just show up with a case of beer and a big smile on his face and sit in the middle of the room and just listen and every time he felt a groove or something you’d see his face light up and he’d start dancing and shit and it was like we knew we were doing something right,” recalls O’Brien. “Then he started giving us pointers and it was all really natural the way it happened. He just brought his enthusiasm. We were feeling a bit downtrodden after the first record not doing so well and didn’t really know what we were going to do and he saw the potential in us and helped us achieve that potential I think,” he says, before adding, “He showed us ways of playing our instruments individually that we just wouldn’t have thought of. He was kind of like a coach more than a producer.”

The amount of touring and life experience meant that The Scare’s second album was always going to be a big leap forward and O’Brien acknowledges that they have come a long way. “If you listen to our earlier work its just five really anxious musicians trying to be heard at one time,” he says.

Two things that standout when listening to Oozevoodoo is Sam Pearton’s drumming and the way that the guitars of O’Brien and Brock Alexander work together. “Yeah we both have really different styles of playing and I think thats where everybody wanted to keep that in the album. You can hear the difference between a song that Brock primarily wrote to a song that I primarily wrote. Our writing styles are so diverse that it works really well. We both play guitar but our ideas stem further than just the fretboard, we clash and we harmonise,” explains O’Brien.

As well as a shift in the sound and directness of their songs, The Scare’s live shows have also evolved. “I guess we used to be a little bit more menacing back in the day. It was kind of intentional when we first started and wanted to challenge people, which is why we named it The Scare. We wanted to make people uncomfortable but then we realised if we wanted to keep doing it and make a career out of music we had to be a little bit enjoyable for the audience,” O’Brien says.

The band are keen to get back to the UK to build on the groundwork they laid when they were based over there but this time they won’t be forgetting about their fans back home, “Yeah we really want to get back over there before next April and play some shows and do the summer festivals. We don’t want to leave Australia for too long because we’ve really started to nurture our audience here and its finally working for us. We used to feel like we’d ostracized ourselves too much from Australia but we’ve been gaining so much over here and we don’t want to lose it , so we won’t be living over there for too long, we’ll just be touring,” explains O’Brien.

The Scare come across as a band who are in it for the long haul. They have experienced the dalliances of youth and come out the other side with a clearer vision for their music. Oozevoodoo is their first bold step in a new chapter for The Scare and their combination of style, swagger and enthusiasm should see them gathering a large audience of dedicated followers both at home and abroad.