After Pip was electrocuted, I reached a zen state: everything that could go wrong would go wrong," muses Nick Craft, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter with Sidewinder, as he sips his vodka. Sidewinder had just endured a hellish gig: a 240V electrocution on stage, a host of technical problems and some major personal crises. "The icing on the cake was when the projector screen fell on the drummer’s head. But we summoned the rest of our strength and the rest of the set was really cathartic," rejoins Pip Branson, who wields both guitar and violin when he’s not getting shock therapy. Sidewinder had pulled off a world-class save, and the audience loved them for it.
Mind you, Sidewinder’s new album Tangerine has that special breed of uplifting pub pop that wins hearts and minds no matter what disasters occur. Tangerine offers tight, anthemic numbers such as "Here She Comes Again" and "Titanic Days" as well as mind-bending experiments such as "Mad Woman of the Universe", which Branson describes as 'dub-reggae' on methadone". "It’s a very summery record," says Craft. "The problem with Atlantis, our last album, was that it was recorded in winter and it was released in summer, which is the wrong way around. Atlantis was the leaving Canberra and breaking up with girlfriends album. We’d left a safe environment and we didn’t really know what we were doing. But this album says, ‘It’s summer, I’m the happiest and most in love that I’ve ever been, and I’m stuck in a recording studio with three guys.’"
Tangerine delves into the electronic world more deeply than previous Sidewinder releases. It’s not so much a break with their past as a progression - and if everyone else is doing it, why can’t they? "Yeah, we’re using loops and doing what every son of a bitch is doing at the moment," Craft notes with more than a touch of cynicism, "but at least we’ve done it with taste. We haven’t done ‘Short Dick Man’ with guitars." Branson takes a more serious tone: "It’s a whole new field for us and it’s really exciting. Samplers are such scary things - last night as we played around with one we realised we could really go to town. But we’ve got to be ethical about this. We’re a live rock band, and if we can play stuff live and we don’t need the samples, we won’t use it. I don’t want to see it becomes a fifth member we can’t do without."
Craft sees the potential for samplers as unlimited: "I think the sampler will go through the same transformations the studio did in the ‘60s. The Beatles - hallowed be their name - took it to a new dimension and the same thing will happen to the sampler. Currently, people like DJ Shadow just use it like a tool. More like a trowel or hoe than a paintbrush." Pip shakes his head and grins. "You can’t make broad judgements like that. DJ Shadow still beats the arse out of me on a sampler."
It is a revealing irony that Craft mentions the Beatles and DJ Shadow in the same breath. Tangerine is influenced by both acid and trip-hop and the psychedelia of the late Beatles, and the members of Sidewinder can’t even blame it on their drug intake. "I hate trips, I think we all do," confesses Branson "I prefer ecstasy because it makes me happy. Psychedelic music is just something we’ve always done. We like to be an enveloping experience. When you listen to us live or hear a record, it reaches out and hugs you in its dark arms. Like a Coleridge kinda thing."
Sidewinder has come a long way since the early ‘90s when the band started out in Canberra. Back then, Sidewinder were the biggest pop stars the nation’s capital could handle, so naturally they had to make the move north. "Poor old Canberra. It doesn’t deserve a drubbing. It’s just a sad place," Branson concludes. There are certainly worse places for a band like Sidewinder, as they discovered on their first major tour. The lowest point in the band’s history occurred in rural NSW. "We’d been playing for weeks, and I was losing my mind," says Branson. "We’d played a hundred shows in six months and we were arguing all the time. We had to do this show in Goulburn and it was a nightmare. The crowd was awful and none of us wanted to be there. I couldn’t stand anyone around me and I was doubting everything we were doing."
"I love playing music, it’s my whole life," adds Craft. "The miserable moments are when you doubt the one thing you love. When you hate that, that’s when you question your very being
Despite such moments, the Sidewinder boys still like their own company and they stick together. As the other songwriter in the band, Martin Craft, is Nick’s brother, it’s earned them a reputation in some circles as the Brontes of the rock world. "Well, we’re not old girls’ blouses who walk on heaths and moors," Craft explains, "but we do all get along really well. Martin and I take comfort in the fact that we’re not just brothers, we’re friends." Branson can’t resist this remark: "Come on, I’m your brother as well!" Craft smiles and takes his time before he replies. "I was trying to find the words to say that. After that last gig I felt a tremendous sense of love... it’s like we’re all brothers." Hallelujah!
Love was going to come up sooner or later, and when vodka is involved, it’s generally sooner. Tangerine was written in the heights of love; but you can’t guarantee that kind of emotion lasting until your album launch. "It’s strange the way things go" says Craft, "Three or four years ago we sang about vague and abstract things to almost abdicate responsibility for what we were feeling. But with this record we took a tack. That’s what makes it hard for me to listen to some of the tracks because they sum up how I felt last year. I just don’t feel that way any more." Branson manages to lift the mood by noting that, although love and success are transient, "we can always open a pie shop." Judging by the quality of the sounds on Tangerine, I wouldn’t expect to be buying a Four & Twenty from the Sidewinder lads in the near future.
