Cool Sounds

“We wrote these ridiculous joke songs, about the internet mostly. One about having a crush on a YouTube streamer, one about online friends – they were all very silly. [We] took the band very much as a joke until about a year in, when we started playing live and recording and hanging out with the Ocean Party guys, who said we should actually play instead of writing joke songs.”

The sextet’s album Dance Moves is quite a departure from those roots as a technology-themed parody band, with an introspectively gloomy sound and emotionally charged lyrics.

“I was in Berlin visiting my girlfriend, and I stayed with her in her apartment while she was working,” says Lacey. “I just had a guitar and my laptop and wrote pretty much all of the songs. All the songs were written within a month or two, so it was a time and place thing. It was mainly long-distance relationship stuff, and living across the world and being anxious and worried and not knowing what’s going to happen next. That’s pretty much what all the songs are about.”

After returning to Australia, the album process began, and though much of the LP was recorded in Lacey’s Melbourne bedroom, the record sounds nothing like a home production. The tracks are smooth and gentle, sadly romantic and musically cohesive, something that Lacey attributes to saxophonist Liam ‘Snowy’ Halliwell, also of The Ocean Party and Ciggie Witch.

“Snowy produces and mixes and masters all of the stuff as well,” Lacey explains. “He’s extremely good at mixing badly recorded stuff. All of the Ocean Party and Ciggie Witch stuff that he does is done at home, and he’s really good at getting the most out of it.”

No matter how lo-fi the recording techniques involved, Dance Moves has been met with positive reviews, thanks in particular to Lacey’s crooning delivery and melancholy vibes. Cool Sounds are profoundly unique, not just for their sound but also in their quirky imagery and humour. The video for ‘In Blue Skies’ features the band not only matching Miley Cyrus by licking a hammer, but one-upping her by passionately making out with one, as well with as a variety of inanimate household objects, including a toaster and a basketball.

“Because we have very little money between us all, and we have very good friends who are filmmakers, we usually just go to them and ask if they’ll help us do a clip,” says Lacey. “We can’t give them much money, but we let them take full creative control. So with the ‘In Blue Skies’ clip, half the band was very hesitant and really nervous about making out with objects, but I guess it was something we had to do to get the clip done.”

As the project continues to grow and morph, Lacey continues to harness Cool Sounds’ idiosyncrasies and push their boundaries. This takes form both onstage – where he prepares nonsensical scripts for the entire band to read from in between songs – and in his plans for future records.

“For a lot of other people in the band, Cool Sounds is the side project, or another band,” says Lacey. “But for me, Cool Sounds is definitely a main project. It’s the only band where I write songs, it’s my baby, and it’s definitely my main focus.”