Project Description

FOTSUN Special:

Interview with CLEWS

Interviewer: Jess Moog

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South Coast sisters CLEWS are bloody KILLING it this year. Their infectious alt rock tunes have scored them plenty of Triple J airtime, support duties for lovely band Holy Holy’s most recent national tour, and oodles of affection from the Aussie public.

These chicks are not only remarkably wicked singers, but are also amazingly wicked people! So go on and check out our fun chillaxed chat!

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So how are you guys?
Lily – We’re feeling amped, we literally just hopped out of the car five minutes ago, we’re feeling good.
Grace – We’re feeling ready

I know that obviously you both are sisters, but what urged you to start making music together?
L – We just had to wait until Grace finished school, but we just knew that we wanted to be in a band, we wanted a big band sound. Yeah so when Grace finished school we just kind of got cracking. We didn’t sing that much when we teenagers or anything, not properly.
G – I was probably still in school when we started doing a few gigs together, but the first shows we were doing as Clews were like just two guitars. But even from then we knew we wanted a full band sound, it just took us a little while to get a drummer and a bassist!

I actually went to Mollymook for my schoolies trip back in 2014. Such a cool place. Did your surroundings help to kind of inspire your sound?
L – Well by the time we started the band we were both living in Sydney. I haven’t really written for Clews since I lived down the coast, so we’re not really carrying childhood music over into this project. But I think just living there in general has influenced the way we think. I think if we grew up in the city we would’ve turned out quite different… we would’ve turned out as different people, so of course we would’ve written different music.

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Where does the name Clews come from?
L – I literally just thought of it and told Grace that’s what we were doing.
G – Yeah that’s basically it haha.
L – I just thought of the word and wanted a one-word band name, a thing that didn’t really mean anything. Well actually I googled it afterwards, very recently actually, and a Clew can be the ball of string that Theseus uses to find his way out of the Minotaur’s cave in Greek mythology, but I didn’t know that! I wish I did because that would’ve been so cool for it to mean something cool.
G – I remember Lily calling me and the whole conversation of her just saying ‘Grace if we’re ever in a band together one day, we should call ourselves Clews’, and then I was like, well, why not. I’ve got nothing better.

I have three younger brothers so I know what its like to bicker with your siblings. How do you guys go spending so much time together in recording studios and on tour and whatnot?
L – We’ve actually been really good usually haha it’s so weird that you should say that because we never fight but we just had one today! I was trying to park the car literally on the way up here and we got so angry at each other.

Fuck oh no!!!! Sorry guys haha!
G – It was only for like five seconds.
L – But we’re usually fine!
G – Its not like we’ve actually done many things yet though, like tours and stuff as a band. We spend a lot of time together anyway, so like we are always around each other and we don’t really get sick of each other, but maybe that’ll be different a few years down the track when we’ve done a lot of tours and we’ve cut our teeth even more, but yeah, we’ll see!

Like you said before, I feel like you’d have your fights, but get over them straight away, because you’re family.
L – Yeah exactly! And that’s what family is like.

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I’m sure you guys already know, but you were number 26 on Triple J Unearthed’s most played this year! That’s pretty incredible. I actually saw you guys support Holy Holy at the Cambo in Newy a few weeks ago, and I reviewed that show, it was so good!
G – Oh you wrote that review!
L – Oh you’re Jess! From AMNplify of course. Sweet, sweet Jess.
G – Beautiful review!
L – But that Unearthed thing was really, really cool. We had a lot of good company on that list.

Yeah! Heaps of FOTSUN bands are actually on that list. So what’s next for you guys? Dropping any new tunes in the next few months?
L – We’ll probably just do another single early next year and then who knows after that really! We still have to make a little plan of what we’re going to do. We have some ideas…
G – But nothing’s set in stone yet, that’s the main thing. We have ideas floating around, we just need to choose one.

So you DEFINITELY have stuff coming then?
L – Well yeah we only have like two songs out, it’d be nice to have more!
G – And we won’t wait as long between the next ones either. There was a long wait between ‘Museum’ and ‘Crushed’ haha.

Well things come up, it happens!
L – That is very true!

Anyways that’s about it. Cheers for your time guys, it was great meeting you!
L – Thank you!
G – You too!

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Check out CLEWS
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