Melbourne group Kid Sam are as familial as their name suggests. Consisting of just cousins Kieren Ryan (guitar/vocals) and Kishore Ryan (drums/percussion) make tense, dynamic music with a confidence that betrays their relative youth. Their self-titled album released earlier this year, recorded by Nick Huggins and released on the label Huggins co-owns, Two Bright Lakes, has quickly hit a nerve with listeners. As it should. The accomplished 7 track album moves deftly through lucid story-telling, soulful flourishes and insistent, complex rhythms, provided partly by Kishore's penchant for adding kitchen utensils - a wok and a saucepan - to his drumkit. The result isn't gimmicky, rather it colours the duo's surprisingly rich sound with an experimental edge. Coupled with Keiren's striking, swooning vocal narratives, and some loving though minimal production flourishes, the resulting music is worthy of the Saturday night joyride as much as it is the Monday morning come down. Think the soulfulness of Bon Iver, the twitch and explosions of the Dirty 3 and the cinematic reacch of Art of Fighting, and you're halfway there.

Community radio and Triple J quickly picked up track 'We're Mostly Made of Water', where it was heard by Newcastle band Firekites who tracked them down and asked them on a brief tour, the cousins' first outside Melbourne. Since then the band have toured up the East Coast and have just begun a month long tour supporting Jack Ladder. Which is where our phone call to Keiren begins...

Are you at home right now?

No actually in Newtown [Sydney]. We just came up here a couple of days ago to play with Jack Ladder at the Annandale and to do do this tour.

Is this the first one with him?

Yeah. It's been good.

Things have been going pretty well for you, since the record came out basically.

Yeah it's been a really good reaction. We've been really happy with it. It's been picked up by radio a bit and we've had some really nice offers for shows and tours and things - like the one we're doing right now - and yeah, it's been really nice.

It seems a genuine response to the music as well, it's not like you have some big marketing campaign spray painting your name on the footpath exactly.

I think I would feel kinda weird about that, if it was the same reaction but due to marketing dudes pushing it a lot (laughs). I feel really good about the way it's gone because it's purely been - I mean Two Bright Lakes have done loads of work, but they don't have the money to have billboards or something you know? So it's nice that it's been a good reaction for the right reasons.

Would it be wrong to think that your family is quite excited?

Oh yeah they're all really happy and super excited. So yeah that whole side of the family is having a really good time (laughs).

Do they come to shows?

Well they live in different parts of New South Wales so...Kishore's Dad and my parents came down for our album launch a few months ago. I'm from Taree which is up on the North Coast and Kishore's from Mullumbimby and places around Byron Bay. I think they will come to more I mean being in New South Wales they haven't had a chance yet.



Kid Sam - 'We're Mostly Made of Water'

I'm keen to talk about the actual record. When I first heard it I thought it was great, that you sounded confident and fully formed [for a debut]. How did come to this point, what have you been doing?

Well I mean, we've been playing together for like two and a half years or something, maybe even slightly more. We just played for a really long time and did small things, you know we'd play gigs and ten people would come. So it wasn't like we went straight from playing nothing until putting the record out. All the songs on the record, we'd played them live a lot so that's how they got to the state they were. If it appears fully formed then that's why, we'd had time to play them. Just without many people noticing (laughs). Which is fine.

There's something about Nick (Huggins') production that makes it sound very live and organic but with another atmosphere to it. Maybe it's just that Kishore uses weird stuff on his drums, but there's something that makes the LP sound experimental even though it is just fairly straightforward guitar and drums.

Yeah I think a lot of it would be Kishore's drumming and then also Nick - a lot of those songs I used to play and would just turn up a bit of gain on the amp and that would be about it. And when we got in the studio with Nick we spent a lot of times going over sounds and stuff. Which since then I've tried to do live. But we did a lot of work in changing the guitar tones and sounds which affected the record a lot.

It sounds like it makes you think about your music differently as well.

Yeah definitely. There were things we noticed when we went to record them that we hadn't really thought of before. I can't think of anything in particular off the top of my head but certainly you reflect on it a lot more when you go to record it.

I really like your lyrics and a lot of the narratives that go through your songs. Where did that come from? It sounds quite worldly, and there's a lot of songs about travelling and,  especially, violence.

(Laughs). Um. I have travelled a bit around the country, but I haven't really been exposed to that much violence (laughs) or anything and it's not a part of my life. But there's certainly a couple of songs that have that. I dunno, ideas just pop into your head and then you work them up into a whole thing. With the ones that there is that kind of violence, I didn't set out to write a violent song or anything, it just somehow seemed  to be the way that it progressed.

Is that something that you've noticed, that theme in hindsight?

Yeah there's a couple [of stories] there that people - weren't shocked by, but - have said 'Wow there's a lot of violence and stuff in there' and it's only after you've written it that you notice that's there. When you're actually immersed in the act of writing you're only half aware of these kind of things.

Do you labour over lyrics or is it something that comes fairly quickly?

On the songs on this record about half of them were written in one go, and then the other half were laboured over. A lot. And often after labouring over them you find that some other ones come quite suddenly. About half and half.

And likewise is it stuff borne from personal experiences, what you read...?

It's a mix of all different things. When I write lyrics I don't try and represent myself through my lyrics kind've thing, or really feel any desire to tell people about my personal experiences or share my feelings or anything. There's this thing I like, I don't know if it's quite right but it's something TS Eliot wrote. He says...what was it? 'It's not an expression of personality or an expression of emotion, it's an escape from personality and an escape from emotion. But then again you've got to have personality and emotion to escape those things'. I think that's pretty much what he said. That kind've sums up what goes on [with me] quite well I think. It's not about pouring your heart out, though that may happen to some extent in the process.

[The actual quote is: "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." - T.S. Eliot 'The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism' - 1922.]

It's very much on display when you're only a two piece. You've only got your rhythm and your melody and then your lyrics. So maybe more than other bands you're lyrics are quite on show.

Yeah I guess that's true. I kind've like us being a two piece for that reason, it leaves other things a bit more naked. Rather than drowning them out so much. As could happen.

Will Kid Sam always be a two piece? I've seen Nick play extra bits with you sometimes.

I can't say, but for the forseeable future we don't have any plans to get in other instruments all the time. Nick's played some guitar and we'll probably have him or some other people get up and play some guitar here and there. Kishore's girlfriend Georgia has been up sometimes and plays a bit of melodica and xylophone, and a few other people have done that too. Yeah, for right now, it's hard to say forever and ever.



Kid Sam - 'Soft, Grey Rain'

I know you've done some other little tours recently but is this the first time you've played much outside of Melbourne?

It's a really new thing for us to play outside of Melbourne. We only did for the first time with Firekites a couple of months ago at Oxford Arts Factory. And then we did that tour with McKisko and Fergus Brown and now doing this one with Jack Ladder. We have quite a lot in the last couple of months and we will again in the next few months. But yeah it's a really new thing.

It must be teaching you a lot about your own music, or at least how it transforms live.

Yeah maybe, I guess so. I haven't really thought about it too much.

In terms of the way people respond to it. Sometimes you play a set and your favourite songs are the ones that didn't connect with people and the ones you didn't think about are the ones people loved.

Yeah that certainly happens. Sometimes we leave out a song and someone goes 'Oh dude you left out my favourite song'.

Is that 'Sunday Bus'?

No this other one, like the other day we didn't play a song called 'Down to the Cemetery' and people kept coming up to me and asking me why we didn't play it. But I didn't realise people cared whether we played it. Kinda interesting.

I've been annoyed I haven't seen you play 'Sunday Bus' yet.

Yeah we'll we need to bring the acoustic guitar along. Too much work (laughs). We do sometimes and we will again.

You're going to have to play it on electric.

Yeah maybe, get an electrified version of it happening.

It seems like pretty soon you might start playing your own headline shows.

Yeah pretty soon though I'm not sure when. But yeah we should be...sooner or later. Thinking about it pretty vaguely. We've got a lot of other shows coming up in the next few months so I don't know too much about it.

KID SAM - LIVE DATES

Jul 3 - Northcote Social Club supporting Jack Ladder w/ Teeth and Tongue, Melbourne, VIC
Jul 4 - Karova Lounge supporting Jack Ladder w/ Teeth and Tongue, Ballarat, VIC
Jul 9 - The Harp Hotel supporting Jack Ladder w/ Kirin J Callinan, Woolongong, NSW
Jul 10 - The Brass Monkey supporting Jack Ladder w/ Teeth and Tongue, Cronulla, NSW
Jul 11 - Front Gallery supporting Jack Ladder w/ Teeth and Tongue,Canberra, ACT
Jul 12 - Two Bright Lakes Showcase at the Newtown Workers Club w/ Otouto, Touch Typist, Seagull and Psuche, Melbourne, VIC
Jul 17 - Jive supporting Jack Ladder w/ Teeth and Tongue, Adelaide, SA
Jul 18 - Hyde Park Hotel supporting Jack Ladder w/ Teeth and Tongue,Perth, WA
Jul 19 - Norfolk Hotel supporting Jack Ladder w/ Teeth and Tongue, Fremantle, WA
Jul 25 - Toff in Townsupporting Jack Ladder w/ Teeth and Tongue, Melbourne, VIC
Aug 7 - ’Cemetery’ video clip launch: Newtown Workers Club, Melbourne, VIC

www.myspace.com/kidsamband