Bands are always rabbiting on about being democracies. It’s a nice idea, but like Karl Marx’sCommunist Manifesto, a practical assessment suggests it’s a little naive. Take lead singers, for instance; whether they like it or not, vocalists tend to be the centre of attention. However, for Dom Haddad, the frontman of Brisbane’s Millions, there’s no hogging the limelight.
“I feel like we’re a band,” he says. “It’s not like it’s me running the show or anything. Even though it’s easier to pay attention to just the vocals, I don’t really ever feel like the focus is more on me than on anybody else. I think that’s mainly also because we all try to do everything together.”
This is the attitude Millions took into their debut LP, Max Relax,which came out in August. Attempting to regulate the input of individual band members is essentially futile. What’s more important is that each contributing party is committed to the music being produced. Haddad and his three bandmates – guitarist Ted Tilbrook, bass player Campbell Smith and drummer Louis Tilbrook – realised the band’s strength derives from allowing each member to do their bit.
“We would like to be our own band, separate from everybody else,” Haddad says. “That’s the only way people will ever remember anything you do. You don’t want it to sound like someone else. I think what’s best for Millions is… everyone’s got their own particular style of playing. If we are able to emphasise that through our songwriting, I think that’s what will separate us from other bands.
“There’s just so many guitar bands,” he adds. “I hate the term ‘indie-pop’, which gets thrown around so loosely all the time, because that just really clumps so many bands together. We definitely want to try to stand clear of that term, just because we want to have our own identity and not get clumped in with the rest.”
Prior to Max Relax, the last thing we’d heard from Millions was 2012’s Cruel EP. A couple of factors necessitated the reasonably lengthy interval between releases. Firstly, the band’s original drummer James Wright exited the fold, which led to the recruitment of Ted’s brother Louis. He was actually living in the UK at the time, but it became apparent he was the most appropriate man for the job.
“We didn’t want to get someone we didn’t know,” Haddad says. “We really wanted them to be a part of the band. Louis was the only [drummer we knew] that wasn’t playing in a band at the time, so we asked if he wanted to move back to Australia.”
After solidifying the lineup, Millions then had to seriously assess where things were headed stylistically. “We all listen to a lot of different music, so we weren’t really sure whether the band we were starting to be pigeonholed as was the band that we actually are,” Haddad says. “We just tried to do things a little bit different. We really spent a lot more time pushing the songwriting and seeing what different ways we could take it.
“A lot of the songs are quite a step away from the earlier stuff we’d released. Because there’d been such a big gap between writing and releasing music, it was kind of natural for us to not be writing the same way.”
The result is a multi-faced, 11-song collection. Max Relax jumps from the jangly psych-pop of ‘Clementine’ and ‘Allure’ to the driving garage-soul of ‘Always’ and into moments of withdrawn doo-wop, such as ‘B Chill’. When it came to actually composing the album material, once again the band refrained from appointing a commanding officer.
“It’s not like we have just the one songwriter. We all write together. After we looked at it as a whole, we were like, ‘We still haven’t really clearly defined who the band is.’ It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it just means that some people hear the album and they’re like, ‘I really don’t like this song but I really like this song,’ and it’s different for lots of other people. It’s interesting for us.”
Now that Millions have wrapped up the record and placed these songs together as a family, perhaps contemplating what comes next will be an easier task. Haddad remains ambivalent about what the future holds, but he says they’ll persevere with the existing modus operandi.
“I think we’re trying to work out the best way the four of us write together and how that works. Hopefully that means we will write more and have more songs to choose from. We’re pretty happy with what we did. It was all still a learning curve, it’s the first album and we’re constantly learning.”
Millions make a pretty good case study for how to effectively operate as a democracy. Judging by their example, bands can work together in relative harmony while also making space for everyone’s opinion. There’s no doubt that this is made easier by the fact that Millions’ four constituents are basically best buds.
“We’re all pretty close friends,” Haddad says. “We’ve been stuck around each other long enough now to know each other pretty well. It’s obviously normal to get annoyed at each other, but we also know each other pretty well. It’s usually pretty smooth. There’s no real chance for any egos or anything.”
Max Relax out now through Stop Start. Catch Millions atBeach Road Hotel on Wednesday November 26 (free entry) andNewtown Social Club Saturday November 29 (tickets here).Also appearing at The Lair, Metro Theatre on Sunday December 14, tickets here.
