The former Napier/Hamilton band who near the start of 2007 shipped over to Melbourne, Australia for a different sort of experience will be playing in Hamilton once again. We catch with ol’ pal Matt Emery, vocalist for Amy Racecar on the new haps and sounds.

MM: Is it nicer having fewer members in the band now than before?
ME: Yes it sure is much nicer. Less people to argue with and be disappointed with. With just the three of us now, Karl, Ben and myself we’ve been playing together for a good few years including our time with The Clerics, and we work well as a unit. We live together, do our groceries together, we even take turns with each other’s girlfriends. Also we each do a lot of the ‘other’ bandy stuff, Ben does all our artwork, Karl handles a lot of our recordings and web stuff while I concentrate on eating doughnuts and drinking coffee.

Your new track “Part of the Romance” seems quite different to your older stuff…
When we got here we wrote about a dozen songs that were similar to our old stuff but after a few months we weren’t really feeling that excited about it and band practises started to become a chore. Hence we threw all that stuff out including a few recordings and started again. After a few stops and starts Part of the Romance was the first thing that came together that we all really liked. We used to mess around with a bunch of genres and make pretty messy music but we all agreed upon coming to Melbourne we’d like to refine our sound and actually put a bit of effort in to playing our songs well rather than just fighting each other onstage and spilling milk everywhere. In some ways we haven’t really changed much; I still sing the same, Karl still plays neat contrasting melodic lines and if anything Ben gets to cut loose a bit more and play more in the vein of Simian Lines, Goatse and other amazing bands he has been associated with.

Do you feel being in Melbourne/Australia has influenced your musical output in any way?
Not really other than we are back to living together here, which means we get to practise and talk about music a lot more than we did when we were last in NZ. We all gorge ourselves on new music all the time and so influences come from all over the globe. Its also really cool to go for a push bike down the road and get to finally see bands we’ve listened to for years.

Would you spank your child or just put them into “time out” ?
It would depend if it was something really bad like if they had eaten the last doughnut I prolly would give them a biff.

What are the future plans for Amy Racecar?
I think we’ll just keep on keeping on. Write more songs. Chuck them out there for people to listen to and play shows. We don’t have any grand plans and i don’t think we’ll be leaving this locale any time soon.

Will you be playing all new songs at your shows?
Possibly or maybe.

What do you feel Melbourne does better within its music scene compared to New Zealand in general?
In general there are more people and more bands and more venues. So statistically there are more of those people like the Sam Walshs and Blinks that love music and make things happen. There’s gigs every night of the week. There a bible’s worth of street press mags printed every week. There’s just so much going on. In saying that there are also some really dire bands here but of course what I may think is not so good is amazing to someone else so really everyone is catered for here. If you like that generic turge from ‘94 there are a gallon of bands here for you! New Zealand does all right for it’s population, some wicked bands have and are coming out of New Zealand all the time. I guess it’s a lot easier for folks to sustain an interest and enthusiasm in music over here when there is a lot more going on for bands.

Thanks to Amy Racecar we have 5 copies of their album “Conclusions” to give away, plus two double passes to their gig. To win either CD or double pass, be the first to email win(a)mammothmedia.co.nz and specify your prize preference!

amyracecar.com