Baby Animals

“Recording Baby Animals [in New York] with Mike Chapman was…” She stops. Tries again. “When you’re young and you’re starting out, [recording] can be nerve-racking. We were just in a big studio, with a big producer, in a big city, with a big frickin’ budget.

“[Chapman] was a bit of commander,” DeMarchi says with a laugh that fails to disguise the slight hardness in her voice – not even 25 years’ worth of space can undo certain indignities, it seems. “He didn’t really let you get away with anything. If something wasn’t good enough, you did it till it was right. It was frustrating. It was hard.”

She pauses once more. When she resumes the story, her voice is softer, as though the older, wiser DeMarchi has taken over. “I think that was part of his tactic to get the best performance. It was just to irritate you. To get you to the point where you just sort of got loose and then you’d get really mad and then you’d do a great performance … You just had to focus on why you’re there and the songs and the performances. In between drinks, that is,” she laughs.

Whether or not it was down to Chapman’s unconventional measures, something about the recording process definitely worked. Baby Animals was a massive commercial and critical success, and its delightfully oversaturated pop-rock tunes still inspire respect and devotion to this day. Time has not dulled one second of a song like ‘One Word’, which the then-25-year-old DeMarchi wrote before the band had even been assembled.

“I think [Baby Animals] was our biggest record,” she says. “It was a daily process. We worked pretty hard on it. It’s there forever. We wanted it to be the best it [could] possibly be.”

That’s not to suggest DeMarchi has ever reflected much upon the album, or considered it to be anything more than one step taken upon a very long road. “It is what it is. [I] just sort of moved on from it,” she says. “We did another record after it, then I went and had kids. But Baby Animals [has] been the gift that keeps on giving in a lot of ways.”

Certainly there is still enough interest in the album to warrant a 25-year anniversary gig, and an epic two-part one at that. The upcoming Baby Animals show won’t just be a cursory tip of the hat to the record – it will be a full-blown celebration, a night packed with guests, nostalgia and an ample dose of the fierce live energy the band has been bringing to stages for so many years.

“The first set we’re going to play is going to be with the current lineup,” DeMarchi explains. “Then there’s going to be a small intermission film that’s got a lot of footage of stuff backstage back on tour in America. And then the next step will be the original band playing Baby Animals from beginning to end. Maybe we’ll throw in a couple of tracks we used to play that we haven’t played in a long time.”

For DeMarchi, resurrecting the original band was the only way to pay tribute to the record that started it all. “I always thought if we were going to do the first album beginning to end that we should do it with the original lineup. We’re all still alive and we all played on that record, so it just made sense.

“If I was a fan of this band, I would want to see that, I think. It’s always tricky, ’cause we haven’t played with those guys for a long time and I didn’t know if they wanted to do it. But I just think you’ve gotta go for it with things like that.”

Though the idea of playing a series of shows with people you haven’t seen in many years would terrify most, DeMarchi relishes the opportunity. For her, it’s like being able to play with two totally different bands on the one night – to experience the one discography through radically altered lenses.

“Personalities are what make a band,” she says. “We were a different band in those days because of the personalities. This current lineup has been longer than the first lineup was together. So it functions differently. Plus we’re older,” she says with a wry laugh. “It’s a whole different operation now. We’re not really on tour all the time like we used to be. We’ve got kids.”

For DeMarchi, time does not go hand in hand with exhaustion. Rust might never sleep, but neither does Suze DeMarchi. “I think I am excited, more than anything,” she says. “It’ll be great – I mean, I’ve been doing this particular band for a really long time. As long as you’re prepared, it’s always really fun to get up and play this stuff. I just love it. It’s always a bit of a party really, any gig.”