Gay Paris

It’s an unusual way to commence an interview, but Monks’ self-appraisal goes some way towards explaining the furious demeanour of the band’s new LP, Ladies And Gentlemen, May We Present To You: The Dark Arts, which is out this week. While it’s not an overwhelming head-thump, and promises to fuel some unruly onstage scenes, the record is steeped in hearty aggression.

“We end up doing things we think aren’t heavy, and people just think everything’s heavy,” says Monks. “We think we’ve written a pop song, and apparently it’s not. If you talk about primal energy, maybe we’re talking about the natural state of the band. We’re a better live band than we are anything else, I think. That said, I feel like we’ve been quite ambitious in some of the things we’ve done that I worry about how to replicate live.”

Now, Gay Paris haven’t gone ahead and made an overwrought studio LP with orchestral detailing and countless extra tracks of percussion, but The Dark Arts does contain a few moments of relative extravagance.

“We got the Bad Bitch Choir to come in and help us out,” says Monks. “We got Nerdlinger and Rick Dangerous and The Silkie Bantams to come and do some vocals. I think ‘Sackcloth’ [‘The Sackcloth Saint Of The Cornfield’], there are 72 vocal tracks, so we got a bit histrionic with vocals. But I’m willing to sing in three octaves live, given the power of Satan. That probably won’t happen… reality being what it is.”

As Monks has already suggested, for the most part the album circumvents anything that remotely resembles the pop sphere. However, that’s not the case with the record’s lead single, the aforementioned ‘Sackcloth’, which is easily the most accessible song in Gay Paris’ three-album catalogue.

“We tried to put some other vocals over the chorus, and then I was like, ‘I’m just going to sing the guitar riff,’ and we were like, ‘Actually, we’ve got a hook.’ But then the first road test it got was on tour with Sleepmakeswaves. We were playing wedged in between math rock instrumental bands on either side of us, so I don’t know if their audience is a good way to judge how it goes live.

“We’ve got a lot of friends that have heard it who are like, ‘It’s the song, man.’ What’s the song for Gay Paris? I just think it’s a catchy rock’n’roll song.”

The album recording and release was made possible by a crowdfunding campaign; a strategy Gay Paris also used to finance 2013’s The Last Good Party. In the unstable world of contemporary music, crowdfunding has become an effective DIY outlet, giving some power back to the people. However, it’s rarely a stress-free exercise, and it’s probably not guilt-free either.

“The guilt is definitely there, but guilt is part and parcel of being in this band, which should be about art but is also an exercise in… it’s exploitation, I guess,” says Monks. “We exploit ourselves and we exploit the people who apparently appreciate what we do.

“I said, after we crowdfunded The Last Good Party, that I wasn’t comfortable with doing it again. I put trepidation and my moral concerns on hold because the band is a democracy and the other three guys were up for it. It is fraught, it’s perilous, I don’t think that it’s great, and I do see a drop-off in the success of it. Or maybe people are asking for more.”

As is the band’s eccentric wont, the Dark Arts PledgeMusic campaign included some fairly audacious rewards for those willing to fork out large sums of money. Namely, there was the opportunity the drop acid and play Dungeons & Dragons with Monks, and the chance to join Gay Paris on a pub crawl around Sydney.

“The pub crawl was purchased by a pair of fine gentlemen in Brisbane, and we haven’t engaged our end of the bargain yet, but we will be taking these fellows drinking,” says Monks. “Unfortunately, no-one thought it was worth paying a lot of money to play Dungeons & Dragons with me. Happily, I did shortly thereafter get sick of not doing acid and playing Dungeons & Dragons and found my own group to do such activities with.”

Gay Paris’ relationship with listeners isn’t always quite so positive. It seems the blatant accessibility of ‘Sackcloth’ has confused some newcomers. “People who got to hear it as their first taste of Gay Paris, just through some YouTube comments, were like, ‘I heard you were going to be like Clutch. This is weak.’ Or, ‘This is hipster c**ts trying to be metal.’ I just thought, ‘This is great. If you still think that’s trying to be metal, what fucking metal are you listening to?’ It must be either the greatest or the worst metal in the world.”

The ‘metal’ tag is often thrown around in discussions about Gay Paris. The validity of this claim is debatable, but it’s of no great worry for Monks.

“I wish we were a more metal band. We’re not cool rock’n’roll dudes. We’re metal dudes. I’ve got no beef with being called metal or hard rock, or hipster for that matter. We are the band that we are. I think us doing the tagging, it’s quite false, because I don’t see there being picket fences that you can’t jump over or kick down.”