This Perth band is a little hard to define. The members have a background in hard and heavy rock bands, but THE SIREN TOWER inject a very strong folk/Australiana flavour into their sound. That said, the band can still stand toe to toe with loud rock acts on live bills across the nation. And regularly do. ‘Power-folk’, you might call them. Have we just coined a new sub-genre?
Whatever the case, the band released a triumphant debut album a year or so ago, entitled A History of Houses, and have been riding a wave ever since. They are traversing the country again as we speak, this time on the back of the third single from the album, ‘King River’. The ‘power-folk’ travelling circus pulls into Newcastle very shortly, and as lead singer/guitarist GRANT MCCULLOCH tells ROD WHITFIELD, he is very happy to be breaking new ground for the band, just as they recently did in Tasmania.
“Yeah, same deal with Hobart,” he states, “first time into Newy. It’s cool, as you’re growing the band, hopefully you get out into new markets on each run, and expand on each tour. This time it’s Newcastle, and we’re all stoked, we’re really looking forward to it.”
What we can draw from that is that demand for the band in different territories is growing, do you think? “Yeah,” he agrees, “that’s always a really positive thing to see, because you work really hard, and these doors open up. It’s a battle of inches when you’re an independent, self financed band, so you just take ground when it comes.”
This current tour is likely to be it for the year for these guys, as far as interstate touring is concerned, because, as stated, it has been over a year since the debut album came out, and the band have some new material to write for their sophomore release.
“We might have a few sneaky things planned for the end of the year that we’re just sorting out at the moment,” he reveals, “they’re probably just going to be in WA, for our Perth fans. Next year we might have a couple of things in the works, but really 2014 for us is going to be about getting back into the writing cycle. We’ve been working really hard to push A History of Houses for twelve months now I guess. So it’s about time we look to the next cycle and start writing again.”
But before diving headlong into the writing process for the next The Siren Tower opus, we asked Grant to reflect momentarily on A History of Houses, and just how it’s been received since its release in mid 2012.
“Really well,” he enthuses, “it’s a funny one. The response we’ve had from all the reviews and all the people that come out to the shows and have a chat to us, it’s been amazing, well beyond our expectations. We knew we wanted to do a record that was of a really high standard for ourselves, we weren’t thinking about how it would be received. But the reception’s been amazing.
“In regards to the wider market,” he continues, “I work in media, so I know it’s a hard thing to slot into a pigeonhole. It’s sort of a sound that’s not really rock, it’s not really folk, it’s in this weird middle ground. If the radio and the industry can’t pigeonhole it, it’s hard to get a backing for it.
“The wider media reception is a slow process for us,” he goes on, “we’re really just trying to find somewhere for it to sit, I don’t think the media knows where it fits. We don’t care where it fits, from a music point of view, but from marketing point of view, that’s been a tricky one. For the people who are getting a connection with it, it’s amazing.”
We think good music is good music, no matter label you lump on it. But you can decide for yourself this coming Thursday night when The Siren Tower bring their powerful, soulful live show to The Great Northern Hotel.