The way it is



With their new album A Song is a City due for release in May, Perth three-piece Eskimo Joe have been in hibernation for 
quite a while – not only have they changed record labels, but they’ve also matured as a band. Loves lost, and all that.

In fact, one may argue that A Song is a City is the yang to Girl’s yin – where the predecessor was brimming with the 
confidence of a boy in love, if first single “From the Sea” is an indication, then A Song is a City will find frontman 
Kav Temperley positively mournful. “It’s strung with stupid amounts of metaphors because a lot of the time you don’t want 
to hurt the feelings of the people involved, so you tend to write in metaphors,” he says coyly.

From the SeaIt seems that the change in personal circumstances has done the band a world of good – if Girl was the sound of 
three bratty punk-pop kids growing up, then A Song is a City could be the sound of full-grown men comfortable in themselves.

“I think we knew where we were heading more than ever after Girl,” he confirms. “With Girl, we were trying to set ourselves 
up so we couldn’t be pigeonholed, which is what we were afraid of after the two EPs. We were doing an album, and we wanted 
people to refer back to the album, so let’s do it properly, and so I guess we wanted to create a sound that would give us 
a chance to create whatever we wanted to create, and not have to be conscious of it.”

For the new album, it was different again.

“All we had to do was write, whereas with Girl we were consciously writing certain tracks like “Who Sold Her Out” and “Wake 
Up” that were bridging our old stuff to our new stuff, so that our fans and people who loved us before wouldn’t go ‘well, 
fuck you!’ because we were a completely different band. So we consciously did those songs, and now we don’t really have to 
do that – we can just write our music and hopefully people will dig it. I think more so than ever we have an idea of the 
direction we’re heading. I think this album sounds more like a band playing, whereas on Girl we purposely forgot how to 
play our instruments so that we could reinvent ourselves a bit.”

Tracked with Paul McKercher before the band went home to Fremantle to do a bit of post-production themselves, A Song is a 
City was then mixed with Nick Launay. “Ed [Buller] was great for the last record,” Kav says, “but we learnt what we needed 
to learn off him and took it to the next project, I guess.”

“From the Sea” is a great pop song, that’s for sure. But there’s also a dark edge to it, especially in the yearning 
qualities of Kav’s emotional delivery.

“The album in general is quite dark,” he confirms. “Girl was a bit of a honeymoon record, and this album is a bit more of a 
break-up record. We kind of discovered last time that it was one of our major strengths being personal in the songwriting, 
and so obviously whatever was going on in our lives was going to dictate what was going to happen in the songs. Even though 
its dark doesn’t mean it’s a ‘bad’ thing, it’s just the way it is.”

Girl found it’s way into many critics hearts, but just not enough punter’s CD collections. Does that put extra pressure on 
the band when doing a follow-up?

“Not really,” he states. “I don’t read reviews any more; I look at the pictures. You want to see if you’re being reviewed, 
but all I do is look at the picture and go ‘ah, that’s a crap picture’ or ‘sweet, I look great in that picture’. That’s 
all it comes down to for me now; I’m a simple man,” he deadpans. “In Fremantle, you don’t really have that same kind of 
pressure of the A&R people dropping in on their way to somewhere and checking out what’s going on, because it’s isolated.”

Down the alleyThe band scene in Perth has certainly been burgeoning in the last few months.

“Most of the main gigs that happen happen around Perth, because that’s where most of the venues are,” says the Freo 
resident. “But, for instance, the house that I’ve been living in for the last four years with Rodney from End of Fashion, 
we have this jam room out the back of our house and that’s where we demo all of our stuff and that’s where we recorded a 
couple of tracks that are on the album as well, and that’s where Joel and Rodney recorded the Little Birdy EP. So there’s 
Little Birdy, and End of Fashion, and the Sleepy Jackson, and another band called the Avenues, and everyone’s hanging out 
and playing each other’s music and demoing and that happened for a severe period of time until our jam room became the 
Base, which ended up being a recording studio. All of those bands who were were jamming with over the last year and a 
half or two are all off doing their own thing now, which is really cool.”

It’s certainly a varied scene – there’s everything from the Sleepy Jackson to the Tucker B’s to adam said galore to 
Eskimo Joe.

“I think it’s to do with the fact, moreso with bands like the Sleepy Jackson rather than adam said galore, the new kind 
of breed of bands that are coming out now are very based around a song kind of culture,” Kav opines. “It’s about writing 
really good songs, and that being the important thing rather than the band being the important thing. That’s created this 
situation where everything that people are writing and recording is getting played on the radio, because they’re good 
songs, and at the end of the day that’s what will live on – people don’t remember the bands, but they remember the songs. 
I think that’s the culture in Perth at the moment, and I think that’s why it’s happening the way it is.”


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