Body Maintenance Are Your New Favourite Band From Melbourne
Images by Pia Hannah, Josh Sabini, Holly Buckley, and Nick Nolan.
Body Maintenance are a post-punk band, but they don’t sound like Joy Division, they sound like Body Maintenance.
Hailing from Melbourne, Body Maintenance sounds like a band you would hear in a club in 1980s Manchester rather than at Melbourne’s The Curtin Hotel in 2023. While taking inspiration from the likes of Sisters of Mercy, The Sound and Echo and the Bunnymen, their sound is unique and unlike any other bands in the realm. In April released their debut album Beside You, the follow-up to their 2021 self-titled EP.
Listening to Beside You, you are taken on a journey beginning at the hard, fast and uplifting ‘Silver Yarns’ that makes you feel as if you can take on the world. Four songs in you are met with ‘Time Enough’ which brings you back to the sad reality of the world that we really live in. Isolating yet inspiring, aggressive yet intricate, their music is the perfect soundtrack to accompany a walk home or even a late-night drive.
The band consists of Riley Stafford on Vocals and Guitar, James Kane who is also on guitar, Nick Garth who plays the synth and bass and Zoe Mulcahy on the drums. I caught up with Nick and Zoe to have a chat about the band and the new record, Beside You.
If you are around Europe in August the band is going on a European tour and you can keep up to date with where they are playing on their Instagram.
Image of Nick and Zoe by Josh Sabini
Congrats on the release of the album. How are you feeling now it’s out?
Nick: I’m very happy for it to finally be out. It was a long time coming, especially since a lot of the writing process started during lockdown. Having those couple of years slowed down the process, by us not being able to meet up and play music. It’s the cliché that a lot of bands have at the moment, but it is the reality. We were still pretty proactive though; Riley would send through riffs, and we would bounce ideas off each other. James wrote the initial version of the record's title track Beside You during that period too.
Zoe: We did the best we could with the circumstances. The band started in 2017 and now it's 2023, I’ve been in the band since 2018. We’ve always wanted to put out an album. I think for bands that have been around for that long and don’t put anything out, there is a lot of pressure associated with that first big release. That’s something that I think we’ve done well with, not letting that pressure get the best of us and overthink the songs too much, overdoing how it flows and what it means. I think because we write our own parts and come together as a group, we were all able to help make sure we wouldn’t psych ourselves out. Luckily the EP release took the weight of doing an LP.
Nick: Also, by the time we’ve reached this point, finishing the Beside You record, we’ve figured out how to work with each other as best we can, it has felt really organic. Like with the opening track on the record, ‘Silver Yarns’, I turned up to rehearsal and everyone had been there for a little bit already and Riley and James were like ‘we came up with this riff, what do you reckon?’ I was instantly into it and the song pretty much wrote itself in a matter of half an hour or so. We worked on it a bit after that session, but we had it together so quickly. That was definitely a moment where I was like wow, this is everyone working together at full capacity.
I think ‘Silver Yarns’ is my favourite song on the album. You mentioned that you all write your own stuff, how does that work?
Nick: I think it’s changed over the years, somewhat dramatically.
Say, ‘Ends’ on the latest record, Riley wrote that himself before the band existed. In the original recording, he recorded it in his bedroom and dubbed the vocals over the top with the microphone of his headphones. A few of the other songs on Beside You were ideas that James, Riley or I had been bouncing around during lockdown. We would send them to the group and when we’d finally get the chance to get together, we would work on them and evolve them into what they eventually came to be. Usually, for most songs, there’s an initial idea that someone has that gets brought to the group and we’ll jam it and decide ‘let’s run that’, ‘let’s not run that’ and then everyone adds their own parts from there. There’s a lot of brainstorming at practice between us all but everyone is usually on the same page.
Zoe: There are no egos. It always starts with an idea, whether it be a song or a riff. Then we will spend days in a room working it out until we are happy with it. We would all just keep track of what we have.
Yeah, I noticed that ‘Ends’ was in this record, and it was originally on your 2018 demo tape. What was the decision behind putting that song on this album and not the previous release?
Nick: We put ‘Transit’ on the previous release instead, which was also from the 2018 demo tape and another song that Riley had written before the band existed. They’re still two of my favourite songs to play to this day. I remember when Riley and I first became friends and figured out we liked the same music, Riley told me he had these demo songs and asked if I wanted to listen to them and figure out some band situation. I got the bus home from work that day and took the wrong route and had to walk for half an hour in the pouring rain. I was listening to the demos while walking and it really resonated with me, it was the most fitting music for being completely bummed out and saturated. That moment made me realise that this guy really knows how to pull on the emotional strings. I’ll remember that moment forever.
The band’s sound is quite unique for a contemporary band. It feels like a lot of contemporary post-punk bands are trying to sound new or try to do something different. Yet if you told someone that you were a band from the early 80s people wouldn’t blink twice. Is it a conscious thing for you guys to try to have that sound?
Zoe: If you were to ask me who my influences are other than a few pop artists I’m obsessed with, like Christine and the Queens, I’d say all my drumming influences come from the 80s. For me personally, I couldn’t imagine trying to make us sound like anything else.
Of course, we want to do ourselves justice, make ourselves sound modern and put our own twist on something. But the core of what I tune my drums to is like Siouxsie and the Banshees and I will listen to Budgie’s drums and be like what is that and how do I get that? Siouxsie for me has always been such an icon, every record they’ve put out and how the drums have evolved, is inspiring. I wanted to emulate my version of that on this record, especially with really intense fills and driving, I want the drums to feel like something is coming at you. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that my sentiment is aligned with everyone. I would say we want to stay true to the heritage of post-punk.
Nick: Totally, everyone is really infatuated with late 70s and early 80s stuff, which in our eyes is a lot of the best stuff ever written. I think that with the whole uprisal of the music in that realm, it was at the forefront of creativity for its time. It’s not a deliberate thing for us to be like ‘it has to sound old school’ or anything, it’s just what we love. On any other day we’re listening to Blitz, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Sound, Modern English and Siouxsie and the Banshees. It’s what we like to hear as opposed to us making a band because we want to be the next revolutionary thing.
It’s almost an if it’s not broke don’t fix it sort of thing, right? Like, that’s what you guys listen to and enjoy, why would you need to change it?
Zoe: Yeah. I mean on the next record I don’t want to change anything, but I want to see where we are going. The band has changed so much from day one to now. This record even has some weird influences. There is disco and hardcore-influenced drumming, even some straight-down-the-line rock drumming, which is pretty stupid for a post-punk record, but it’s a reflection of what we are listening to at the time.
Nick: I think it is just a culmination of all our influences coming through into our own creative outputs. You can definitely hear that we have a background of loving 80s punk music, but also there are some hints of Sisters of Mercy, James and Riley are massive fans of them.
It feels like the first EP took more inspiration from Sisters of Mercy, being harder and a bit darker than Beside You.
Nick: I think as the sound has evolved, we have begun to stray away from the death rock sound and gravitated towards experimenting. Everyone has so many ideas going that it’s hard to compile them into one idea of what you want them to be. I think that’s the beauty of the way we write because someone will be like ‘here’s an idea and it’s in the realm of this…’ and everyone adds their own flavours based on what they’ve been listening to at the time, and it takes shape from there.
There aren’t any factors that are necessarily Australian with the band either. A lot of Australian bands really scream and shout about the Australian thing. But you guys are quite ambiguous as if you could be from anywhere in the world. Is that something you don’t want, to sound obviously Australian?
Zoe: We haven’t intentionally done that. I also think that bands that are super Australian, do so much for Australian music, and they put a lot of other Australian artists on the map because people recognise that accent and all of that. It is important that we do have artists that do sing in an Australian accent and do have that energy because I think that’s a fierce thing in itself. Post-punk and the genre that we play specifically is very Manchester heavy, even if you were to listen to it without the vocals you would be like this is a band from the UK. So, adding Riley’s vocals it’s just him, he sings the way that he speaks and doesn’t have a heavy Australian accent.
Nick: I think it just stems back to us not wanting to have any gimmicks. There’s no intention. Riley’s vocals are the way he speaks.
Also, there are no overtly Australian themes in the lyrics either.
Zoe: Well, if you know Pentridge prison, that’s there. I guess none of us are patriotic. It comes from intention, right? You write how you feel. If we were singing about politics, I don’t think you’d know. I think the style that Riley writes isn’t obvious, so even if some of the songs were about something, political or patriotic you wouldn’t know.
For sure, that does make sense. As a post-punk band, how annoying does it get when you get compared to Joy Division?
Zoe: Oh man, I had a dollar for every fucker who has come up to me and been like ‘do you listen to Joy Division?’. It’s both sweet and reflective of how much the person likes the genre I suppose there are so many incredible bands outside of Joy Division but being associated with them is definitely okay by me.
Nick: If you listen to us and them back-to-back, both are just post-punk bands and I think that’s the only similarity you can draw. It’s the same genre. It does happen a lot. I don’t ever want to be compared to them in any way, shape or form. That’s terrifying [laughs].
I think for post-punk and punk bands the graphic design and the image the band has outside of the music can almost be just as important as the music. I am a big fan of your covers and the t-shirt you guys released too. Is the imagery and aesthetic associated with the band something that is big for you guys?
Nick: Yes, but not as important as working with our friends who’s work, we really like and admire. The EP cover was done by Jimmy Neuman, and we’ve always been big fans of his stuff and the same with Louie Dodd who did the Beside You record.
Zoe: Louie worked on an image of us that Pia Hannah took, which we would’ve been happy with the photo, but he turned it into something completely different that we were really happy with. We didn’t necessarily want our faces to be in it, but we were looking for something that felt like how the record sounded.
Nick: For us working with friends and collaborating on stuff is the most fun part of doing it. We got James Tyrrell in to help us record it and he’s a good friend of ours and has a wealth of knowledge on recording. It was also lovely to work with Pia who is a great photographer and good friend of ours. I remember when we released the previous EP, Louie wrote to me and was like, ‘that’s cool man I didn’t want to do the record cover anyway’. As a joke of course, but he’s always been interested in working with us and this time around it just seemed perfect. He did such a great job.
It’s good you guys have talented friends.
Nick: It’s good to support the creative people around you who also support you.
I was in London last year staying with my friend and I was talking to his housemate who hadn’t spent time in Melbourne, but he knew who you guys were and had two of your songs saved in a playlist. I was hyped, but I couldn’t even imagine what it’s like for you all in the band. What is it like now that the band is gaining international attention?
Nick: Honestly, you don’t hear about it. Especially because we didn’t have any online presence until recently. Now since we have released the record, we’ve had people from all over the world writing to us and sharing our stuff. This guy posted a story of him sitting by a river with one of our songs playing, he geotagged the location and it was just outside of Moscow. That was crazy, it was cool. I guess with the heightened social media presence you get a bigger gauge for that stuff but until a couple of months ago we had no idea. But yes, it’s nice, I think in some ways it assists you in doing your own thing, as opposed to trying to be known or whatever.
I guess you’ll be able to see it now you guys are heading on your Europe tour, what is your tour itinerary looking like?
Nick: We’ll be there from the 3rd to the 20th of August, and we’ll be playing sixteen shows, so basically a show each day. The first show will be in Groningen, and we’ll do a big clockwise loop of Europe and finish off in Paris and then head over to the UK and make our way north to the lower realms of Scotland. For the UK leg, we will be touring with Memorabilia, who are friends of Riley’s. They’re a great post-punk band, who’s sound is definitely in the realm of what we are doing.
That sounds so intense but will be great. Do you guys have any final words?
Zoe: I just feel very lucky I play in the band. It’s one of the things that happened by pure chance. I’m very grateful that I’ve had the last 6 years of my life with this band. It’s one of those things where outside of the music our friendship means a lot to us regardless.
Nick: Yeah, it’s definitely like a family. I don’t know how groups function properly without being friends outside of the band. There are definitely people out there in bands who are like ‘I go to practice; I play the shows and I never see them until the next practice’, that’s not really for us.
Zoe: We are very lucky that we all see eye to eye on where we want it to go, personality-wise everyone brings something to the friendship as a group of four. We hang out, shoot the shit, write stuff and we are very grateful for it.