Rat vs Possum: "Give a drummer a keyboard and see what happens."

Rat Vs Possum have been touring the country in support of their ace new album Let Music and Bodies Unite, a tour which wraps up this Friday with a massive year-ending knees-up at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. Keyboard/singer Kieran O’Shea spoke with Tim Fisher about feedback, how their songs come together, and the profound impact of “The Simpsons Sing the Blues.”

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Can you briefly tell us who’s in Rat Vs Possum and how you all got there?

Kieran O’Shea: A couple of years ago, Matt (Kulesza) was asked to play a show in Melbourne somewhere, and disappeared for a weekend and set up a bunch of loops for it, came back and asked me to play drums. It’s an instrument I’d never played before but I was really keen to give it ago. So that first show was just the two of us. Then Daphne (Shum), who’s also in the band, was having a house party so we played our second show there, and got Andrew (Noble) playing drums and I moved to keyboards.

Five or six shows after that we asked Daphne to join the band, and played a show in a warehouse in North Fitzroy. We played as a four-piece for around a year with different friends playing bass at different shows until we realized we needed a fifth person, so Adrian (Tregonning) joined playing bass permanently at the beginning of last year. Since then the instruments we play have stayed the same.

You casually mentioned you’d never played drums before. Is that give-anything-a-shot approach something that galvanizes Rat Vs Possum? Is it something you carry into everything you do?

Well, initially it was just that Matt needed someone to drum and I was happy to.

When we started we had way more instruments than actual band-members, so it was just whatever goes. If a song needed a certain instrument, one of us would have it lying around so someone would pick it up and play it. We just thought there was no reason not to have lots of instruments on stage – we weren’t an electronic band at the time so we kind of had to if we wanted all these different sounds.

As time’s gone on and we learnt our instruments and what we like out of them a lot more, we’ve all started investing in one specific instrument. I bought a couple of synths, Matt bought one as well, and when we realized some songs didn’t need bass Adrian got a midi controller with his laptop. The keyboard Daphne was using was one that’d been thrown around airports so much it gave up and died so she got a laptop and midi controller too.

Over time it got to the point where we it got too hard to drag it all around the country. Playing Melbourne was fine, but going interstate we started getting these horrendous excess baggage fees. We don’t have any money so that was killing us – we’d be spending our wages from shows before we’d even left the airport. I daresay in a year’s time we could have another 20 instruments on stage; we don’t give it too much thought. We like to have a lot of options so things don’t get formulaic. Sometimes it’s not just having instruments around you, it’s having some awareness about you – seeing what would happen if you gave a guitarist a bass, or give a drummer a keyboard and see what happens.


Rat vs Possum - 'Fat Monk'

With all the equipment you use, the sounds you can come up with are pretty much bottomless. Given that, do you have a really clear idea of what Rat Vs Possum’s sound should be?

I don’t think we have a clear idea. It’s something as simple as somebody coming up with a riff, say for the sake of argument on a synth, and we’ll start jamming on it and adding layers. Then just through discussing what’s happening while jamming it out we’ll start to realise if it’s becoming a healthy type of song, or more of a disco Detroit housey rhythm. So if Matt’s playing a riff with a really jagged, ravey sound, I’ll counter it with something softer and more bass-y. That’s all we do. There’s not much thought beforehand, it comes from playing with each other, and making sure sounds don’t get lost in a sludge of sound.

Then it’s trial and error. We’ve been playing the songs from the new album since May, so what I’ve been doing recently is picking new sounds to play the same parts. The songs never really stay the same for that long. We play them for a couple of months then might get a bit bored and work out ways to get some fresh air into them.

It sounds like a long process, and there must be rehearsals where you don’t feel you’ve moved anything forward or when things might not work. You must rehearse a lot.

We do. Because this band is so collaborative, we have to be in the same room to work on a song, so we rehearse twice a week. One of those will be one where we just focus on a set for an upcoming show – what order we’ll play the songs, how we’re going to change them – and then we’ll always have a separate rehearsal just for new songs and ideas.

It took us a really long time to work out that’s best for us. There was a point a few years ago when we were rehearsing too much and were blending what we had to do with that time in a really bad way. We might have spent four hours working on a new song so by the time we got to working on a set, everyone was exhausted.

There’s been so many times when someone’s come to the band with an idea that hasn’t worked because what might sound amazing at home coming out of your speakers just won’t work with four other people in the room. Now we’ve got to a good point where if anyone’s got a good idea they keep it really simple because they know there’ll be four other cooks in the kitchen.

So you almost have to stop yourself from working something up too much and wait till rehearsal.

Everybody spends time rehearsing on their own working on their own parts, but probably not on new songs. It’s more taking stuff away from rehearsal and working on your own parts to figure out the best way for it to fit into the song.

Where do you find the time?

That’s an amazing question. Where do we find the time? It’s fun. I think all of us are quite happy with our jobs and stuff; we’ve all got to pay rent and being in a band doesn’t pay for anything really, we’re lucky to pay for flights, so we just find the time.

We rehearse Tuesdays and Sundays. Tuesdays we find are a bit flat because everyone’s just come from work but Sundays are just great, we’ve got the whole day to ourselves and it’s a really productive time. But just like any band, you make the time because at the end of the day it’s much more enjoyable than what anyone’s doing to pay the rent.

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