Eskimo Joe keep cool
By Juan-Carlo Tomas

They’re named after an American diner they’ve never visited, grew up together and now they’re wondering what all the fuss 
is about.

But moody Perth three-piece Eskimo Joe can hold their own in the limelight. They’ve done enough touring, soul-searching 
and growing-up together to do so.

“We’ve been together for seven or eight years now and we’re just starting to get to a point where a lot of people know 
about us,” says drummer and sometime-guitarist, Joel Quartermain, 27.

Together with mates Kav Temperley, whose sultry vocals dress their latest album A Song is a City, and guitarist Stu 
MacLeod, Eskimo Joe have been nominated for our ARIAs: Best Rock Album, Best Group, Single of the Year (for the 
angst-ridden From the Sea) and Album of the Year.

“It’s the kind of thing you can tell your parents about and they’d get really proud,” Quartermain says of the nominations, 
with a laugh. “They’re happy.

“But Album of the Year is the one we’re looking at since it’s the award of the night.”

The group got together in 1998, while Quartermain was playing with a Fremantle high school band called Freud’s Pillow, 
where he met Temperley. Starting out on keyboards, he gradually took on guitar and switched to drums for Eskimo Joe 
after the pair decided to form their own group. Completing the picture was guitarist MacLeod, a childhood, over-the-fence 
friend who grew up with Temperley.

“We’ve grown up together as musicians,” Quartermain says. “We’ve been together as a band for a long time, riding in 
Taragos and all that and our pace has become a bit more similar.

“But we certainly haven’t found our pace overnight.”

Eskimo Joe have gathered pace since 1998, when they broke onto the scene with their debut EP Sweater, before 
doubling-back a little with their cruisy self-titled offering a year later. Their debut full-length, Girl, came around 
in 2001 to widespread acclaim. Then, after two years of touring they released the current album, A Song is a City, in 
May this year.

“As you get older your musical palette develops and you change tastes,” he told ninemsn.

“Lately we’ve been getting into more and more stuff that’s less and less rock, so that’s influenced the record a bit.”

So A Song is a City looks at the sorts of things twentysomethings worry about: expectations, being young and feeling 
awkward. From its inward-looking first track Come Down to the feelgood Life is better with You and the manic I’m so 
Tired, the trio are slowly revealing the emotions which bring its members together.

“For a band like us, on a quest on write the perfect song, this is probably the closest we’ve got to it so far.”

Eskimo Joe will be a highlight of Sunday’s ARIA awards, at Sydney’s Superdome. Aside from an avalanche of awards, 
which they hope will come, it’s an avalanche of nerves Quartermain worries about.

“When we played on Rove it was quite nerve wracking since they told us we’d be playing to 1.2 million people,” he 
recalls. “I think there’ll be even more people watching this in a full stadium setting.

“It’s one of those things where we’re going to be nervous, then we’re going to do it and afterwards we’re going to 
get very, very drunk!”