Interview: Richard In Your Mind

Richard In Your Mind: Tribal jams and three dollar steaks

SYDNEY'S Richard In Your Mind have been on a great run lately. Their new album, My Volcano, is garnering rave reviews from across the country. They also won the NSW leg of the Big Day Out competition this year, and they've just added a new member, Brent Griffin - the artist also known as SPOD - to their lineup. So it's no suprise singer Richard Cartwright is sounding chipper, but the reason behind his attitude is as much a factor of culinary and financial delight as it is the success of his band.

"We've been touring non-stop, I mean I got off a flight from Melbourne where we played a show and went straight to work, so it really has been non-stop,'' he said.

"The good thing now is I've got a day off before we fly to WA and I just found a hotel in Sydney that does three dollar steaks. It's an extra two dollars for mash or chips, but just getting a New York steak with pepper sauce for three dollars...Sydney can be an expensive place to live but finding something like this definitely makes it worth it.''

Richard In Your Mind are playing the Prince of Wales Hotel with Cloud Control and Split Seconds on Thursday night, and for Cartwright it's the first time he's been toWA since 1996, where he met a girl called Ashleigh who sent him a vinyl copy of Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation for Valentine's Day. He also holds an affinity for a former Perth band The Tucker B's, who share some similar characteristics with Richard In Your Mind.

"We take our music seriously, I mean that's why we do it and we want to do it for a living, but I think part of that is it's really fun to do, and if we're having a good time we hope the audience will have a good time, so we put a bit of effort into our stage show,'' he said.

"It's a lot like the Tucker B's, they're serious about what they do but they dress up in robes and they put on a show, and we don't really dress up but we're not above having a confettii cannon, of if there's a wall we can use to project some visuals we'll do that, and we want to break down the barrier between us and the audience.

We've got some percussion out and given it to the audience for a bit of a tribal jam, we're not going to do that every show but it's an effort that we make because we want people to have a good time.''

This sort of off the cuff experimentation is synonymous with their last release, 2009's Summertime EP, an experimental departure from their low-fi psychedelic pop roots. The experiment was a success, and some of the sounds have carried over into My Volcano, along with producer SPOD - aka Brent Griffin - who has, at least for the moment, joined the band officially. According to Cartwright, it's a combination that is working well.

"He's got the mixing experience, so if we want to cut something up he's got the technical knowledge to do it, and while SPOD and Richard In Your Mind don't sound too similar, he knows where we're coming from so he can make that sound. It's weird talking about him because there's a bit of SPOD in Brent, and there's a bit of Brent in SPOD. He's a busy guy so if he needs to go off and do his thing then that's fine, but for the moment we're glad to have him with us.''