Chicago – Last year The Preatures caught the attention of music lovers worldwide when the single “Is This How You Feel?” catapulted the Australian band into the limelight. The Sydney five-piece – comprised of Isabella ‘Izzi’ Manfredi on vocals and keys, Gideon Bensen on vocals and guitar, Jack Moffitt on lead guitar, Thomas Champion on bass, and Luke Davison on drums – continued to amaze fans and critics with the release of their debut LP Blue Planet Eyes, bringing a mix of pop and rock, infused with sounds of the 70s and 80s.
Best New Bands had the chance to chat with Izzi before embarking on The Preatures’ North American tour. We talked 80s music, going mental on stage, and the stresses she faced (and overcame) as an emerging artist. She also dispelled that “bloody Wikipedia page” rumor.
The music video for “Better Than It Could Ever Be” has a complete eighties feel, playing off one of the retro aspects to your sound. Did you specifically ask for the video to have that 80s feel? And are there 80s bands that you just love to listen to?
In terms of 80s, are you talking the video game reference?
Yeah, with the graphics!
All of us grew up in the eighties. Well, I was born in the late 80s…but we all sort of remember that pixilated Frogger, very early Nintendo and SEGA world. We were all of us actually video game nuts when we were kids. It’s something that ties us all together. I found this great book on arcade games and the evolution of arcade games and wanted to do something like that for the song because the song felt really colorful to me. I thought it would be cool to do something aggressively retro. And 80s bands, it’s funny like I used to say, when I was a kid, that loved all music except for 80s [music]. I don’t even know where I got it from. I think maybe it was my reaction to Culture Club and Boy George. I just couldn’t stand that music. It was really frothy music to me. It was just like, “Ugh!” Like clown vomit! But now some of my favorite bands worked in the 80s; late 70s, early eighties is probably my favorite time period for music.
In terms of what influences the band, Talking Heads, The Pretenders, Divinyls. A lot of great Australian bands started in the 80s, so The Angels, Crowded House. INXS of course is a huge one for us. It was a really cool decade, except for maybe the late 80s. There was just a whole lot of money going around, and I don’t think anyone had a clue.
I’m going to probably sound odd saying this, but listening to some of the songs on Blue Planet Eyes takes me back to my childhood, listening to Debbie Gibson. Did you guys listen to Debbie Gibson in Australia or was it mostly Kylie Minogue getting play?
I don’t know who she is…
She was a pop singer in the 80s. I think it’s your voice…
I’m going to google her right now! [She finds a video and plays it.] “Only in My Dreams,” okay I know this song. This came out the year I was born. Wow! (laughs) I wasn’t into Debbie Gibson, but I was into Belinda Carlisle, Madonna, Transvision Vamp, and stuff like that… Oh, and Wendy James! Wendy James! She always wore like the tackiest 80s stuff, like bright baby pink and platinum blonde hair. She is mentally hot!
I saw you perform live last year when you were in the States. You blew me away. I had never heard of you before and was like, “Who are these guys? They’re awesome!” Then I listened to your album. It was way more popish, than rock, like you were live. What inspires your wild performance on stage? Are there particular artists who inspire you?
I really like Iggy Pop and James Brown. I like Chrissy Amphlett, who fronted the Divinyls… the shows are definitely rock ‘n’ roll shows. They’re a mix of what we love about performance, like really tight grooves and umm, I just like anything that makes me feel like a kid on stage. Just going mental. The freedom to go mental, that’s just the performer that I am…When we made the record, it was really we’d recorded “Is This How You Feel?” and there was a naivety – it was pretty naïve, that song – in the way that it was recorded but also in the way we performed it. I had never sung in that register before. I had always gone quite deep and throaty…We made the record with the intention that “Is This How You Feel?” could be on it and not feel like an anomaly, so we really made the record around that sound. It is a quite a poppy, clean sound, whereas live we’re completely different…I think what people can appreciate about the record is it’s a grower. It’ll grow on you. It’s not meant to be a punch in the face record. It’s meant to be something you can listen to over and over again.
I want to talk about “Ordinary.” In previous interviews you talked about how being on the road, you crave an ordinary life, like having a set time to go to bed and having a schedule. Is that what inspired this song or something else?
Yeah, it did! Last year was really tough for me in a lot of ways. Have you seen 20 Feet From Stardom, the documentary about backup singers?
Yes, I have.
This is kind of a random thing to bring up, but it reminded me of this whole thing that I went through last year…[In the film] Sting is saying that the problem with reality shows is that he feels like the artists who go into those situations miss out on the spiritual journey that an artist will go through, like the personal journey that you go through when you start the industry. I think it happens to every artist in one way or another. You go from being someone that makes music and writes songs and is really passionate about people loving your music and wanting to play to big shows, and then actually being confronted with the reality of it, which is very unglamorous, very difficult, and in many ways, completely soul destroying. You have to find a way to either navigate it or somehow thwart the system, which I don’t think many people have been very successful at doing until they get to be big successes.
So I definitely went through that last year. I questioned a lot of times whether it was really what I wanted to be doing. I knew I wanted to be on stage and I knew I wanted to be making records, but I didn’t know if I really wanted to be in and out of hotel rooms every night, sheerly exhausted, eating crap food and having crap coffee, not being able to make the shower work. It doesn’t sound like much talking to somebody, but when everything goes wrong in a day, it does get to you. You just get very tired…I never thought I would be the sort of person who would crave routine, the ordinary, the normalcy of everyday life. I remember being in school and I hated routine. I hated having a schedule…I wanted to grow up and live this extraordinary life and do these crazy things, but then I realized, when I actually got there, in fact you’re on a schedule, you’re stuck in a van for eight hours a day…but you get over it. You get used to it. You adapt. You get a better attitude… So yeah, this song is about that and facing myself. When we made the record, I felt like I was under a lot of pressure from myself to do things that probably I wasn’t really ready to do. I think there’s something to be said about getting past the process, especially with the first album… At a certain point, you really have to let go and allow yourself to just go through the process and then move on towards whatever it is you’re going to do next. Otherwise you just crumble. So that’s really what the song is about, in a nutshell.
Well, I’m glad you learned to let go and stuck to it because I think you guys are great!
Thanks! (laughs)
I’m dying to ask you, I read that when you first started out, you, Thomas, and Jack were in a Rolling Stones cover band. Is this true?
No! That bloody Wikipedia page, it just keeps coming back to bite us! We did play a Stones cover, but we played heaps of covers. We started off as a cover band, I think like lots of bands start off, especially when you’re playing rock, classic songwriting stuff. We played Patti Smith, Van Morrison, The Beatles. We played White Stripes stuff, blues stuff.
Do you have a favorite cover to do?
My favorite cover is actually by an Australian band. It’s called “Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again” by a band called The Angels. It just ruins me. It is the ruiner of covers! It is so difficult – it’s not actually difficult, difficult – but it’s so fast and there’s so much energy involved in the song, that by the end of it we’re just thrashed. I love playing it; I love it!
The Preatures are on tour now; our review of their recent NYC performance is HERE. See them get thrashed on stage. Click HERE for a list of tour dates. Blue Planet Eyes is available for purchase on iTunes.
Sarah Hess
After attending The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Sarah went on to study education at Dominican University, earning a degree in history. When not teaching, writing, or taking in a show, she is most likely to be found with a camera to her eye or hanging out in a darkroom.
You can follow Sarah Hess on twitter at @Sarahhasanh and view her music photography on her website: smhimaging.com.
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