Fairchild are an indie pop band hailing out of the Gold Coast, Australia. Their debut single ‘Burning Feet’ is from the forthcoming self titled EP, due to be released in July. Produced by Catherine Marks (Foals, Death Cab For Cutie, The Killers) and mixed at London’s Assault & Battery Studios.
The band formerly known as ‘Fairchild Republic’ have shared the stage with a wide range of acts including Neon Indian, Parachute Youth, Last Dinosaurs, Flume, Cub Scouts, The Griswolds, The Medics, The Jungle Giants, Millions, Battleships, The Cairos, The Belligerents, Northeast Party House and Glass Towers.
01 How did you get started in music?
The band initially formed during highshool and has had several line-up changes/additions along the way. Everyone has had slightly different paths/influences growing up with music.
02 Where did your direction come from?
Our sound has definitely changed alot over the years which is a natural progression of trying to constantly want to develop and improve. We have always been drawn to making melodic songs that you can hopefully sing a long to. Finding a way to instrumentally gel everything together is the challenge that we are always working towards.
03 Who were your major influences and inspirations and who do you despise?
Individually we all have slightly different influences but as a band I said some of the bands we have admired collectively are The Temper Trap, Foals, Phoenix & The Killers. I wouldn’t say we despise anything, there is so much different music and trends out there these days so will leave it at that.
04 What inspires you to make your current type of songs and sound?
We just recorded our debut EP in January which has moved into a slightly different direction on what we have previously released as ‘Fairchild Republic.’ (Have just re-launched ourselves as ‘Fairchild’ this month). We where really keen to experiment with our sound and came across a producer named Catherine Marks who has worked with bands like Foals, Death Cab For Cutie, The Killers & Interpol. It was a great experience to work with her and she played a huge role in helping us move forward to develop areas of our songs that we haven’t been able to do previously.
05 What can someone who has never seen you live before expect from your live shows then & possibly even now?
We try to make our live show as energetic as possible and hopefully people feel that they can either dance or sing along.
06 How do you begin your songs? What types of themes and subjects do you deal with?
Songs usually begin with either a progression or riff being brought to the band and building it up from there. It varies how long this process can take but is obviously very important that we feel the melodies are working in with what the idea is doing instrumentally. Usually the lyrics are the last piece added and the themes and subjects can range alot. Overall the aim is that anyone that is listening can take away their own interpretation on what the song means. This time around, working with Catherine in the studio was a completely different process where one of the tracks we wrote in the there and the other two where from ideas that we previously had.
07 How did your music evolved since you first began playing?
Over the last six years, the music has evolved in alot of different ways. Varying from what bands are influencing us at the time and just generally working hard on trying to improve ourselves.
08 What has been your biggest challenge? Were you been able to overcome this? If so, how?
There has been alot of challenges over the years, being in a band can get pretty tough at times dealing with creativity, opinions and making decisions. Overall the band started out as friends before playing music together which in the end is probably what has kept as going this long. In saying that, there has been a few line-up changes along the way which probably has been the biggest challenge going through the process of finding replacement members. This has all worked out luckily and we are all still good friends with the guys that have moved on from the band.
09 Do you play covers? If you could pick any song, which would you like to cover most and why?
We don’t typically play too many covers, occasionally we through one in the set. Playing a few acoustic sets, we have covered Crystal Castles ‘Not In Love’ a few times which is a song we all love and is enjoyable to play stripped back.
10 Where did you envisage being in five years time?
Being together for six years for some of us, we tend not to look too far ahead and only plan on what we have coming up in the immediate future. But ideally, it would be great to be in a situation that we are all still playing in the band together in five years time.
11 Who would you most like to record with?
After spending two weeks in the studio with Catherine on our EP we would love to work on a debut album with her.
12 What should we be expecting from you in the near future?
We just released our debut single ‘Burning Feet’ off our EP which will be out around July. In between that, just will be playing a few shows and doing our best to get the new material out there.
Link to buy the current single: soundcloud.com/wearefairchild (Free download of debut single ‘Burning Feet’)
Web Links:
fairchildband.net
facebook.com/wearefairchild
twitter.com/wearefairchild
youtube.com/wearefairchild