It Thing — DIY BABES ZINE

"An Underground Scene Is the Flip Side of Society"

Councils, one could even say the ruling class, target underground communities because they pose a threat to the status quo. These attacks speak to the importance of underground music scenes and the community they create.

Below is an interview with It Thing’s front person, Charlotte, and guitarist George.

(It Thing is: Charlotte Gigi, Tamara Kempton on bass, George Odell, James Nutting on drums)

By Billie Estrine

Fri. Aug 2 2024

Where did you both grow up?

George: I grew up in a little cottage in the UK and moved to Hobart when I was ten. I've spent pretty much half my life in Australia.

Charlotte: I was born in Tasmania. My parents owned a restaurant, and I was raised living upstairs. When my parents broke up in 2007, I came to live in Melbourne with my mom. I spent my childhood coming from here to there, in between. I moved back [to Hobart] and then back [to Melbourne] three years ago. When I think of where I grew up, I think of Tasmania.

What inspired both of you to start making music?

George: I was always surrounded by music. My parents would always have parties. They were both ravers when I was a kid. So I always fell asleep to loud music [and] I liked it. When I went to school, I was enrolled in a lunchtime guitar class. Yeah, I started playing guitar when I was six.

Charlotte: My parents, especially my dad, were very interested in music. They were musicians in the 90s. When I was [growing up], they had an extensive CD collection. So, a lot of the time, I would flip through them. I remember being six years old, and I always wanted to be a front person. I remember finding my dad's CD because I had a Walkman as a 6-year-old of Divinyls, an Australian band from Victoria. Just looking at the album cover, [I noticed that] the singer Chrissy Amphlett looks a lot like my mother, and I thought this was her because I knew my mum was a singer. I listened to it obsessively, and as a small child, clinging onto something like that, knowing this is what I need to do.

Is your mom from Victoria or is she from Tasmanian?

Charlotte: She's the same as me. She was born in Berwick, so rural Victoria, but she was raised in Tasmania. Now she lives here [in Melbourne] like me. My dad is a thorough Tasmanian, born and raised.

When you moved back to Tassie, did you live with your dad or alone?

Charlotte: I lived with him for a few months, and not because of any issue with him; it just didn't work out. I wasn't very healthy at the time, so I ended up being a bit of a drifter for a while, living in sharehouses.

Can you tell me about the Hobart scene when It Thing was coming up?

Charlotte: There was a pub in Hobart called the Brisbane Hotel. It's how people talk about The Tote here. It was the beating heart of music. There [were] a few other venues, but it was that one; you could do anything there. You just had to tell the guy who ran the pub [you wanted to play], and he would put you on a show. It was great and super accessible. There were a lot of other bands, and there were really casual shows three nights a week. I was 19, and we formed our band through that. It was like, here's my chance, I'm gonna do it.

George was playing in another band at the same time, which was very, very good. We met through that, became friends, and played together in our separate bands. George eventually joined my band.

It was a really good scene. The Brisbane Hotel is no longer with us, and the scene is a bit similar. There are still some bands going that are great. But it's an effort by the council to stop it. So any surviving bands in Hobart that are still playing are doing so against all odds.

What was the council's reasoning or objective to shut it down?

Charlotte: They would say different causes, like fire safety in the venues. They'd say noise complaints, but it's the CBD. Hobart is a tourist town. [There are not many] community spaces anymore; there used to be quite a few. So yeah, that's really sad, and I don't want to make people in Hobart angry, but the way I see it, it's very unfortunate.

George: There were a few things that they hadn't updated, but...

Charlotte: They had an agenda.

George: Yeah, not to sound conspiratorial, but there were plenty of other venues that were less compliant than [The Brisbane Hotel] was, and they were definitely a bit picked on. They were seen as like…

Charlotte: Facilitating hooligans.

George: Yeah, it was seen as a bit dodgy. It wasn't giving a good image for the city as this clean, quaint tourist city. I feel like that was definitely part of it. The council definitely didn't like The Brisbane Hotel.

Charlotte: It hasn't just been The Brisbane Hotel. The Fern Tree Arts Hall [is] gone as well. Rat Palace is gone. There was a lot.

George: The Fern Tree Arts Hall lasted for quite a long time. Over 10 years.

Charlotte: There's a band in Hobart, a great band, called All the Weathers. A couple of them lived up at the Fern Tree Arts Hall, and you could go record there. We recorded our album there, with Callum from All the Weathers. There were gigs there, big parties, and fundraisers. Me and Tamara, our bass player, met there.

George: It was a practice space.

Charlotte: It was a great community space. It's really unfortunate that it's not there anymore. Same deal with the council, and it's sad.

Naarm/Melbourne’s Council reacted similarly to the live music scene here.

Charlotte: We just found out a few days ago that our practice space is being demolished.

George: In 30 days, yeah.

What?!

Charlotte: It's a similar kind of thing, but I think here we have more strength in numbers. In Tasmania, there just aren't the numbers, so there are not enough people to stand up for it.

Yeah, the power of the people made it possible in Naarm.

Charlotte: I have no doubt that if there was not that strength in numbers and that community here, it would be the same thing. This place that we're in right now (THE CURTIN). They tried to take that away last year.

George: Yeah, it was meant to close.

Charlotte: This is a very old pub. What is it, 110 years old? It's named after John Curtin, a Labor Prime Minister. It's a good union pub, and they tried to take that away, but it's still here, and that's a testament to the community we have here.

When did you start playing live music?

Charlotte: 2019.

You too?

George: Yeah, as a band, and seriously.

Charlotte: You had a bit more history than that.

George: Yeah.

Charlotte: George was a busker.

George: When I was a kid, I used to busk. It was just me and my brother going down to the market looking cute and playing covers on guitar. I probably did that from about 12 through to 15 or 16.

In Hobart, there was a market called Salamanca Market on Saturdays. There was a big tradition of buskers there. Not so much anymore because the council cut down on that, of course. But every Saturday, we used to do that and make a lot of money.

Charlotte: Probably more money than we make now.

George: Some people would give us 50 dollars, yeah.

Charlotte: The only person who gives us a 50-note now is Tobias.

(Everyone laughs very hard!)

George: You have a pretty interesting history as well.

Charlotte: No, I'm being honest.

George: No, you used to go down...

Charlotte: Oh, that's not live music, is it?

George: Yeah, you'd go to the Dancing Dog.

Charlotte: When I was like, "Okay, I'm definitely about to start a band." I knew that I was going to do that, but I have crippling stage fright. So, when I was like, "Okay, this is definitely something I'm going to do pretty soon." On Thursdays, there was a bar in the city that had karaoke. So, I used to just do that to remove the stage fright, to try and cut my teeth a bit. Get a bit less anxious. And I think it worked. But that's not live music.

It's practice.

Charlotte: It was practice. Yeah, that's all I got to say about it.

If you're not playing an instrument, you gotta practice something.

Charlotte: I tried to play guitar; I don't like how it feels on my fingers.

Is that why you don’t play an instrument while performing?

Charlotte: It distracts me too much. Some people are really good at multitasking, and I think that's how a lot of performers are able to do it. But I cannot be aware and know what I'm doing, so that's why.

When was your introduction to the Naarm/Melbourne underground music scene?

Charlotte: Probably in 2019, when It Thing first released "Who Walks Your Dog" and "Borrowed Time." Billiam, who was probably about 16 'cause I was 19, messaged me on Instagram about wanting to put out a cassette tape for us.

That was my introduction. I was like, "Something is going on up there. They know about us; that's crazy." It's an island, you feel isolated.

It always comes back to Billy.

Charlotte: Yeah! As a child.

What about you?

George: I feel around about the same time. Not long after that, probably a few months even, It Thing and my old band came up to Melbourne to play. We played at The Tote, and I think It Thing played at some other bar. That made me follow the scene because I was like, "Okay, who are we going to play with?" Yeah, I just found so many amazing bands.

Charlotte: I think we got onto Dr Sure's [record label around then].

George: Yeah, we got onto Dr Sure's from there. That's when we met Dougal.

Charlotte: We met Dougal in 2020.

George: No, I met Dougal in 2019. I had to borrow a synth lead, which was a very annoying configuration. It was like nine volts but slightly smaller. So, it was so hard to find one in time. And, of course, in Hobart, there was nowhere that had any. So we came to Melbourne being like, "Oh my God, we don't have the lead we need [to play]." Luckily, Jake Suriano messaged us, Jake Suriano from Dr. Sure's, [and] he kindly lent it to us.

So that was another nice introduction. Even though we weren't part of the community or really knew anyone, people from the community helped us out without knowing us [and] for no reason.

George, when did you join It Thing?

George: Oh, it feels so recent, but how long ago was it now? April? So, almost a year and a half ago now. It was just before the release of the last It Thing record, which I wasn't in. I started gigging in April and then started writing straight away.

Did you play on the 7"?

George: No. There's nothing recorded with me [that's released].

Charlotte: All of our members only moved here last year. Our drummer and our bass player moved here last year. So, George feels part of the band in Melbourne. Mainly because he's been part of the band for 99 percent of our gigs in Melbourne.

Do you feel like being in Melbourne is a new chapter for It Thing over the last year?

Charlotte: Yes.

In what kind of way?

Charlotte: It Thing only got a good six months of gigging in Hobart before COVID. Then we had like two years of COVID. During that time, we came up with the album. Then, we had to wait another nine months for all the band members to be here (to Naarm).

I feel we had the album in this weird suspension period, this weird hiatus period. Since last year, we've been able to establish ourselves as a band that plays gigs, not just a band that has an album out.

When did you get onto Marthouse Records?

Charlotte: Early 2021. We already had it lined up that Dougal was going to release the record before we recorded it, and we recorded it in May 2021.

How did you get connected to Dougal?

Charlotte: I emailed him. 'Cause I knew about Marthouse, I was just like, "Yep, let's see if we can get someone to put this thing out." I wanted a vinyl, but I was like, "I don't know how to do that." So, I'll see if this can work out, and I want to move to Melbourne, too. This could be a good way to figure out how to do that.

It was great I just emailed him and he was like, "Yeah, let's have a Zoom meeting." We did. He was so welcoming. It was awesome.

Awesome. He was telling me that Marthouse is about giving all of the artists everything that he didn't know so that he can help them.

Charlotte: That's literally exactly what he's done for us.

That's so good to hear.

Charlotte: Mission succeeded.

How would you describe the community created by the Naarm/Melbourne underground punk scene?

George: I feel very hardworking and vibrant. Especially since I've lived in Melbourne, a big city, you feel like you have less time, and I feel like everyone feels that way. It still feels like everyone has so much time and effort to put into things.

Charlotte: I think living in a big city and having less time makes you feel a sense of urgency, and that's why things get done here.

George: Yeah.

Charlotte: They know that if you don't do it now, it won't happen.

George: There's definitely that attitude.

Charlotte: People are organized. There's always something to do. It's pretty rare that there aren't at least two gigs on a weekend.

George: People work so hard to make things happen that it makes things so easy. It's not like pulling teeth to play a gig or to go see a gig, even to just have a jam.

Do you think there's something political about creating a community?

Charlotte: Yeah, 100 percent inherently. What musicians and artists do in an underground scene is the most human thing ever. It shows a sense of joy as an act of resistance. Not to quote Idles; I'm not quoting Idles. People always find that even if the art itself isn't inherently political, the action alone is. You're refusing (the system).

We're all workers. We all work. But the fact that we do something else as well, because it's so easy to just work, and everything else you do [be] survival-based. So having a third option: survive, work, and make something. That in itself is a bit rebellious. I think we're not encouraged to do that. Definitely not in the education system.

George: I feel that the community that live music creates is definitely the sort of community shunned by society.

Charlotte: You can tell by the actions of the council.

George: Yeah, exactly. It's not the sort of community a lot of people want. But, I think it is one of the most necessary communities to have. For creation and, obviously, music being such a primal human thing, it is definitely the most important community. And it sucks that it is political, but I guess everything is political.

Charlotte: Yeah, everything is political.

Has music helped you both build a community?

George: 100%. Yeah, definitely.

Charlotte: I'm genuinely struggling to think of anyone in my life who I'm not connected to in some way through music. Not just the music scene but also through a common interest in music. I don't think I have any friends that music never comes up with. It isn't something that we share as a hobby. Enjoying it or playing it.

George: Moving to Melbourne, we would not have as many close friends as we do if it wasn't for music. Having a common interest like that made it much easier to find a community.

Do you think it's both playing music and just absolutely loving music?

George: Definitely. Yeah. When we first moved, I wasn't playing in the music scene, but I was still able to make so many friends just by talking about music.

Whereas for Charlotte, obviously, it was a lot different because people could recognize, "Oh, you're in this band, I followed that."

Charlotte: Yeah, I think it's also a very human thing for people to see each other and feel alienated and isolated until you have a point of reference, "I've seen you at gigs, my name is blah blah blah. What's your name?" You just have a point of reference to begin a conversation. I think it's hard to make friends just through thin air. It doesn't really happen.

Not today.

Charlotte: I think that's why people play video games.

That's a great point.

Charlotte: Yeah, I'd probably game more if I didn't play music. I say more, but I haven't played video games since I was like 12.

What were your favorite video games as a 12-year-old?

Charlotte: Spore.

What's that?

Charlotte: It's like one of the old PC video games. You create a creature, and you can go through all the stages of evolution with your designed creature and see if it succeeds or not. All of mine were named after Weezer-related things. Ha!

How does the scene in Melbourne contrast to the one that raised the band in Hobart?

Charlotte: At the time, we could play three shows a week at the same pub. Now that's illegal here.

Why?

Charlotte: Well, you can hardly get booked at the same pub twice a month.

Oh, duh.

Charlotte: Yes. It won't happen. (In Hobart) It's like, well, where else are you going to play? Who else is going to play? So, of course, you can. That can be really fun sometimes because going to play a gig just felt like you were going to go take a shower. It was that natural. You knew what to expect. It's the same room, probably the same people. Let's be real, probably the same set. It was super easy.

George: It definitely helped a lot developmentally. I found it very helpful. It was literally, like, practice.

Charlotte: It was super easy and really fun. Things are higher effort [in Naarm], but I enjoy it more because there's more variation. You'll play to different people most of the time and almost always play with different bands and at a different venue.

Did playing on the same stage three nights a week help with your stage fright?

Charlotte: I don't know because when I think back to myself as a 19, 20-year-old, playing at the Brizz that often, It's almost like I'm thinking about a different person.

George: I feel so different on stage now than I did then. I think I have more stage fright now than I did then.

Charlotte: I was a bit weirder performing back then.

George: Same, yeah.

Charlotte: Yeah, I'd rip my clothes and rip my hair out. Now, I don't really do anything like that anymore. I felt a bit more punk rock as a kid. I don't necessarily feel like a punk rocker right now. I just feel like a person.

I feel like that makes sense. You're so angsty when you're 18.

Charlotte: So angsty, definitely in that moment.

You think you're less angsty?

Charlotte: Yeah, I'm a lot less angsty. I'm more happy.

Did the move to Naarm change how the band makes music?

Charlotte: It's hard to quantify. George and I are the two younger members of the band. The others are a couple years older. When we formed the band, the two of us were teenagers. Well, I was a teenager, a little kid, and the others were already in their early 20s [or] mid-20s. So, now I take it a bit more seriously than I did then. It's hard to say if that's the move or if that's just my brain actually developed [now]. So yeah, what do you think?

George: In Hobart, I know it was the same for It Thing originally. Our first practice was in my house with the band, then in a gross little basement room thingy. I remember coming to Melbourne and renting an actual studio to practice at. Psychologically, it felt more professional; you had all this good gear, and you could actually hear yourself properly. I feel like that, probably more than anything, had the potential to change.

Charlotte: That's true. We were the same in that [It Thing] practiced in Hobart, in the basement of our old guitarist and drummer's house. Now, when we practice, we all have jobs and busy lives. So, we've set this amount of time. So yeah, it does feel more professional. You're not just going to sit around and chat. Back then, we would do that.

I feel like that's important.

Charlotte: Yeah.

It's like, you have to bond with people to make it work.

Charlotte: That's true.

Can you tell me about the bonds to labelmates on Marthouse Records, especially when you were new to Melbourne? Did the label help you build community?

Charlotte: Dougal helped with recommending other bands we could ask to play with. Our first few shows in Melbourne after being signed to Marthouse were headlines because we'd fly up or, I was living here (in Melbourne), and the others would fly up. So we'd headline, and Dougal would help facilitate a connection between us and another band. Sometimes, when a band you've never heard of asks for a gig, you're kind of like, "Oh, I don't know."

Yeah, that helped; existing as part of the Marthouse community gave us a face. Otherwise, we'd just be a hand reaching out into the abyss. There are so many bands. If you don't know someone, you're not that likely to say yes. So, giving us a sense of not being autonomous was definitely really helpful to us. Now we've become friends with [other people in the scene].

Can you tell me about It Things recording style? How has it evolved since the first album, Syrup?

Charlotte: The first album was live-tracked, with vocals added later. The most recent stuff is live tracked with vocals added later. We recorded to a click this time; that was a huge development. Our album was not recorded to a click, so it might not even be in time. The stuff that we're going to come out with is recorded to a click.

[Also, now] it's a lot more high-fi. It's a proper professional studio. Everything before, everything we have released so far, has been recorded pretty haphazardly. Going [forward], we've taken [it] a lot more seriously.

George: We were so against recording to a click at first.

Charlotte: I don't know why; everyone records with a click.

George: Then we tried it, and we're like, "Wow, this is actually great."

When you were in Hobart, did you record in a studio?

Charlotte: It was a DIY studio.

When was the first time you recorded as It Thing?

Charlotte: Not long after we formed. Formed in mid-2019, it would have been in August or July 2019.

We recorded "Who Walks Your Dog" in our practice space. James, our drummer, recorded it, mixed it, and mastered it. So, yeah, [it's] very DIY, as most bands start.

George: That was the mix that ended up being the first single?

Charlotte: Yeah. And "Borrowed Time" was the exact same story.

Do your politics influence the lyrics you write?

Charlotte: I've said before, everything's political. So yes and no. I don't write protest songs. The reason for that is not because I don't have a streak of activism in me, I do. It's really hard to write a song about a specific cause and sound even a little original. I think everyone who can do that has a gift, and I just don't have that. I don't feel I can write a song about something serious without sounding really corny. So I don't do it. Those who do and make it sound cool, which is actually a lot of people, especially in Naarm, power to them.

What do you do instead?

Charlotte: I sing about a very small concept—a fantastical concept or a little part of humanness that I experience. Often, I will come up with lyrics very quickly and then figure out where [they] came from later. As in, "What am I talking about here? Why did I say that?" And then I'll be like, "Ah, this is what I've been thinking about lately, and that's why I said that."

"Who Walks Your Dog" is a pretty fantastic diss against people working in the capitalist engine. Can you share the story behind this song?

Charlotte: Initially, I was thinking a lot about [how] I hate the idea of having an hourly wage. The first lyrics, "the division by division," is [about how we divide] this imaginary number that doesn't mean anything by time, and I hate that. I hate eating something, like a bowl of noodles, and being like, this costs 23 dollars, that's like 55 minutes. That's disgusting. I hate that. So that's what that lyric is about.

It's more or less about thinking about time as money. And not enjoying your life. I suppose that's also political.

I've read that everyone in the band comes up with their individual bits of music, and then it's all brought together. Can you tell me more about It Thing's creative process?

George: It's a lot of spontaneous...

Charlotte: It's very collaborative.

George: Yeah, some of the songs will come from literally nothing, like, "Okay, we're gonna start playing something random." Maybe I'll start playing a chord, and then Tamara will follow that, playing the key or the other way around. Or we'll start with James [playing] interesting drum beats. From that, waiting till something sticks, really. 'Cause I feel like the songs, and lyrically for Charlotte as well, all the parts are very minimal. There are only a few different parts for each different instrument. So it's just about finding those little parts within a jam.

Charlotte: We're pretty perfectionistic in our shared idea of our songs. So we're very minimal, [but] if there's only going to be two sections in this song, they both have to be perfect. We don't want any of our music to be something we don't like.

We don't sit well if it's something like, "I don't like that." One of the songs we recently recorded, almost 95 percent of our music was written in 5 minutes, then there's this one song that took us months to find out what was wrong with it. We finally worked it out, but it was so painstaking. I think this song, it's not out; It's probably going to be our least listened to song, it's weird. It's not like other stuff that we've written.

I'm being a bit too candid. But, we picked it to pieces and put it back together again, and ripped it apart, and put it back together again, and rewrote, and it's because none of us like what we don't like. We want everything to be very fine tuned.

Charlotte: What was the last question you asked?

The last one? The creative process.

Charlotte: I think a lot of the time, when we want to write a song, we say, "Alright, hey guys, let's write a song." It will literally just be nothing [until] someone says, "Oh, stop, that's good." It's entirely collaborative.

Whereas before George joined the band, a lot of the time our old guitarist would first come up with a riff and then bring it to us. Now, most of the music side of things is developed on the spot. For me, lyrics [are] probably 50/50, the lyrics I have outside [compared to inside during the collaborative process].

DIY culture is the tried-and-true ethos of punk bands. Does It Thing have a strong DIY core?

Charlotte: Definitely, but not on purpose. I am a little bit of a control freak. So, a lot of our stuff is me really haphazardly [doing it myself] because I don't know how to ask someone to do it for me. Also, I don't know how to ask someone else to do it for me the way I want it done. That's why I'd say we're DIY.

Even [the] t-shirts we've had made were my drawings because I don't know how to tell an artist, "Can you draw something like this?" We are a bit DIY.

George: The last EP cover was one of Charlotte's drawings. The last music video, the band made it.

Charlotte: My brother does hip-hop dancing; he's 14. I thought how cool it would be since we've written that song that was quite thrashy, and I feel like hip-hop dancing is also really thrashy. I thought it looked so cute together and with a young kid like my brother. Tamara, our bass player, filmed it. We all did drawings over it. We all edited it. So that was completely DIY as well.

Now, our next release, videos, and stuff, are like the most un-DIY that we've ever been, which is still pretty DIY. It's hard to relinquish control for me, especially when you don't have money. It's hard to give money to people to do stuff for you when you don't have any. That's also part of it.

You're playing To The Lost—Naarm/Melbourne. Can you tell me about this festival?

Charlotte: I mean, we know a pretty limited amount. We know it's put on by [the band] Enclave from New South Wales, and I think they've done one last year.

George: Yeah, it's now an annual thing. There's a Sydney one as well.

Charlotte: It's all fundraising for Black Dog Institute, which is a suicide prevention [organization]. Which I think is a cause [anyone] would get behind. Most people in our age group have lost someone that they love to suicide. It's very tender. I think it's a really beautiful thing to do. It's [also] very nice to be on the lineup with so many people that we admire.

Can you tell me about the tour you're about to join Dr. Sure's Unusual Practice on?

George: It's going to be the first It Thing tour, which is exciting.

Charlotte: We're coming to Australia!

George: Like what you talked about earlier, with the Marthouse ethos. It's Dougal again, helping us out by bringing us on the tour, which is obviously [incredible].

Charlotte: He's like our dad.

George: Yeah, literally. It's obviously the dream [to] be taken on a tour by a bigger band instead of having to draw your own crowd as a smaller band.

Charlotte: Not just drawing your crowd, booking all the shows.

George: Learning how to do it, knowing what to do.

Charlotte: Yeah, it's overwhelming, so I'm really grateful.

George: Yeah.

Charlotte: It's gonna be really fun.

George: Yeah. There are a few places for both of us that we've never been to, so very excited. Some far North Queensland stuff.

Charlotte: It's a fun way to see a new place, and like we were talking about before, an underground scene is the flip side of society. To go to a place you've never been before and only see that. It's such an interesting way to see a new place.

George: What you see is the real thing; it's not the tourist pub.

Charlotte: We're gonna go see some bathroom wall graffiti and sweaty punters.

Check out It Thing on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itthingband/#

And on Bandcamp: https://itthing.bandcamp.com

Billie Estrine

Naarm/Melbourne, Australia

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