Let’s hope Tony Abbott never hears Northeast Party House’s song ‘Youth Allowance’. A dance-rock banger, its frenetic chorus repeats, “Let’s all get on Youth Allowance!” and “Disco biscuits, Youth Allowance!” as if government financial assistance is the ticket to easy weekends of non-stop partying.
Maybe if you’re a musician in 2014 you’re so broke that people on Youth Allowance look like they’re swimming in money? But if the government finds out you can afford to leave the house on it, they’ll have something else to cut.
Let’s not think of that. The state of the nation is depressing enough, and Northeast Party House aim to make you forget these things. As their name suggests, they’re here to make you party, although they haven’t actually been to that many parties. “Due to our quite dependent synth element to the band we haven’t played a lot of house parties,” says synth player Sean Kenihan, “because usually they don’t have a PA that can handle the noise that we want to produce through it. The guitars are fine because you’ve got the amps and stuff, but we’ve got quite a synth-driven element, which you can’t really reproduce at a house party.”
It’s been like this right from the start, when the band’s founding members – Kenihan, singer Zach Hamilton-Reeves and guitarist Jack Schumacher – were attending the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School together. They added guitarist Mitch Ansell and drummer Malcolm Besley later: “We just came across them across journeys,” says Kenihan. The band’s self-titled debut EP included the first song they wrote together, ‘Dusk’, which starts off sounding melancholy but pretty quickly turns it around with lasering synth stabs and an epic guitar solo.
“That first EP is very accurate as to what we sounded like early on, though there were a lot of songs we never recorded ’cause they just weren’t very good,” says Kenihan. “They were mainly loud, over-the-top, energetic, synth-driven party songs that we made to get people dancing and have lots of strobe lights. We had a hype man at the time when we started called Moritz, who used to control a DMix onstage, which controlled our strobe lights, and he used to hit a lot of crash cymbals and that kind of thing and hype the crowd up.”
Hyping the crowd up worked out pretty well for Northeast Party House. They played their first headlining show at Melbourne’s Blue Tile Lounge, “which should only fit really about 30 people in there but about 150 of our friends crammed in there. It was ridiculous, there’s some footage online of it.” That footage ends with Hamilton-Reeves ecstatically shouting, “We got a crowd surfer!”
Big moshes and constant crowd-surfing have become a feature of their live show, encouraging the band to step up to match the crowd’s energy. “We all love to dance. I think onstage we move a lot, much more than most bands do. I think we have to now. It’s more us competing with the crowd for how much we’re moving. When we used to move onstage it used to be trying to get the crowd into it, and now it’s completely turned on its head a lot of the time. Our last show at Brown Alley [in Melbourne] was completely out of control.”
Northeast Party House have been surprised by the strength of the reaction, though most of the time it’s a pleasant surprise. The songs on their album Any Given Weekend, which they released in May, are more in line with the intensity of their audience, like the chunky guitar riff that guides ‘Youth Allowance’. “But before the album was released,” adds Kenihan, “none of our music really married that kind of image. That was more of a live thing that started to happen and it’s a reputation that’s kept going.”
Working on the album has kept the five-piece away from its audience for most of this year. The band’s last show was on New Year’s Eve, supporting Midnight Juggernauts, who of course played at midnight. “That was a fun gig. That was at the Prince Of Wales in Melbourne, just over New Year’s Eve. It was us and a whole bunch of DJs, that kind of thing. It was a good night. Some good, fun vibes. It wasn’t too over the top, it wasn’t like playing a festival over New Year’s or anything, it was good to be able to go out, and see friends afterwards.” They were also treated to the unusual sight of John Safran performing a DJ set. “It was hilarious because John Safran is such an intelligent man and such a terrible DJ, simply because that’s not what he does.”
Now that the album’s finished, they’ll be able to get back to touring, which they’ve been looking forward to for a long time. “That’s the way it is with bands – I think by the time you release one thing the band’s already excited about the next thing that’s happening,” says Kenihan.
But what comes next won’t be radically different for Northeast Party House, who are planning to stay pretty close to their roots. “I guess our album is energetic party tunes – a lot of it – as well. It’s not like our goals have changed, but I think the music’s progressed or matured a lot.”
Any Given Weekendis out now through Stop Start. Catch Northeast Party House at Newtown Social Club on Saturday June 28, tickets available online. Also playing at Beach Road Hotel on Wednesday June 25, The Lair (Metro Theatre) on Sunday June 29 and Newcastle Small Ballroom on Wednesday July 2.
