.

.

Interview with
TIM MAXWELL + CRAIG SELAK
from
LOSER

(September 2nd 2021)

.

Photo: Ian Laidlaw

.

Karl: Hello?
Tim: Karl?

Karl: Yeah this is Karl
Tim: How’s it going?

Karl: I’m good, thanks. Yourself mate? Good to finally hear you
Tim: Yeah, um, as good as it can be, being in lockdown (laughs)

Karl: Yeah nah I’m feeling you there mate, it’s pretty much the same up here in Sydney
Tim: Aw, you’re in Sydney, fuck

Karl: (laughs) Yeah nah we’re rivalling you on days spent in lockdown at this point ay
Tim: Yeah crazy, booked in my Pfizer  and all that, that’s all cool

Karl: Yeah same ay I got mine tomorrow
Tim: Yeah nice

Karl: Nice
Tim: First or second?

Karl: First
Tim: Nice

Karl: Groovy. Righto man is it just you today or is Craig coming in as well?
Tim: Nah, Craig should be right here
Craig: What’s going on players?

Karl: (laughs) G’day Craig
Craig: How are you Karl?

Karl: Yeah I’m good yourself mate?
Craig: Yeah I’m good man, I’m two coffees down, just prepping to hit out number three in about an hour after lunch

Karl: Yeah nah that’s all—
Craig: Yea just had my second

Karl: That’s a good plan mate, yeah, nice
Craig: I use instant as my free  coffee. So it’s like when I wake up, I have an instant, which is like a pre-coffee to wake up, and then I have my coffee-coffee. It’s like my actual coffee, you know, like a barista one
Tim: Yeah

Karl: Yeah nah I always start off- I got like a Nespresso machine so I just start with two pods for the day
Craig: Love a double pod.

(Laughs)

Karl: Groovy groovy. Alright guys well um I don’t wanna waste your time too much cause I only got twenty minutes so um yeah I’ll just get kicking off with the questions if that’s alright with you?

(Tim and Craig agree)

Karl: Alright cool just one more out of personal interest than anything, just because I’m a big fan of The Bennies, what was it like opening for them earlier this year?
Craig: Well, I should probably take that one, it was fucking awesome. The thing about The Bennies is, um, you know, when I left the band in 2018 it was very much on the best terms anyone could leave a band I think. We’re still besties, we still talk all the time, It was very much “I’ve been in that band for ten years and I wanted to try something new, and something more true to the kind of music I’d grown up loving which is much more Loser. I think I ended up playing with The Bennies because they’re my best mates and I wanted to play in a band with them, but this was the kind of music that I loved. So to have it come full circle and support them was just awesome. We had a great time, we ended up jumping up and doing a couple songs with them, it was a blast. Cause I mean even Tim- I met Tim while playing with The Bennies so we’ve been friends for years now through all that, so it was actually a really nice time.
Tim: Yeah

Karl: Cool
Craig: My old band (indistinct)  used to tour with The Bennies like two four shows or something in 2014 I think it was yeah. Back when I had hair.

(Laughs)

Karl: That’s unfortunate mate, but it goes quick don’t it
Craig: Ah man, it just goes where it goes. All you gotta do is put your should  back and rep what you got I think

Karl: Yeah, oath, oath (laughs) Righto, well, question number two for you guys. How do you feel like your sound has evolved over time, cause I’ve been listening to a couple of your albums over the last few days, and your most recent one, and um, it’s sort of slowly evolving through more like a really punky sound and now you’ve got like this sort of nice blend of hard rock, punk, old-school metal, like Pantera-y style like licks and stuff like that, so how do you see it?
Tim: Hell yeah
Craig: Yeah, I feel like at the start, when we first started as a band, we didn’t really know what sound we wanted to go for. I knew I wanted to do something that was in the vain  of like, you know, alternative rock somewhat. But you know, I don’t feel like a lot of bands really find their sound on their first record. But um, a lot of it was really influenced by ’90s music, especially like the first two releases. And then when it came to All The Rage, I revisited music I grew up with like Green Day and Offspring and all that, and everything that was on Video Hits. I’m like “well, I need to give people the same, like younger people the same experience that I had listening to that music. So that’s why this new album has a lot more of that incorporated in it, but it still keeps the heavy side of things because now I was a metalhead for years, so there’s gonna be like solos, there’s gonna be riffs and all that, so it’s just trying to like, I mean like these days there’s not really any rules on genre hey, so like we didn’t have a problem with like doing one song that sounded like Queens of the Stone Age, and the next song could sound like Green Day, you know. It’s like, people get bored if they’re hearing the same thing song after song. So I feel like we had to evolve.

Karl: Yeah nah, fair enough. I was thinking about that the other day. Genre is becoming such an old term now, it’s almost irrelevant at this point.
Craig: Yeah. Genre is heading the same way as gender now, which is cool, so see an evolution you know.

Karl: It’s more like a vibe, music nowadays, you know, as opposed to a specific category. So in that vain , how do you think you’ll evolve your sound in the future? Where do you see it going?
Craig: I just think that we’re not gonna really overthink it and we’ll just um, see what comes out. I mean like we have a lot of older songs that are more in the vain of ’80s rock sorta stuff. But we knew- I felt that if we release new songs, gotta have the longevity, so like go through everything that we wanna do before we then (hit the stadium rock magic?)

Karl: (laughs) Nah fair enough, fair enough. Keep it simple, ay. Yeah.
Craig: Yeah exactly.

Karl: Nice, nice. So this is sort of um, a bit more for Tim, unless Craig you wrote lyrics. What was the inspiration behind your lyrics for the most recent album?
Tim: A lot of it was like getting over my anxiety and coming to terms with it all really. That build in with all the pent-up rage from the lockdown and, you know, having to spend time alone with your own thoughts and all that. Craig helped a lot with the lyrics and stuff, we’re always writing together. There could be certain songs where I could tell him, like what it’s about and why I was feeling that way and he could jump in and help me, so it was great.

Karl: Awesome, awesome.
Craig: Yeah it’s definitely- most songs start from a Tim nucleus, and then we love to bounce ideas off each other which is kind of how the band started. We were doing that together. Even if I was writing songs for Bennies, or he was writing songs for someone else we would always send them to each other as friends and kick them around. So it was kind of natural to then do it with our own music together and yeah Tim’s definitely the main contributor there, but I’ll jump in if, like Tim said, if Tim said, if he’s sort of into a song and he’s stuck or just wants a second opinion. And then I might dig my teeth into the subject as well, and throw a few ideas in there and we kind of just see what sticks together. It feels really natural and nice.

Karl: Yeah, nice. Yeah, it’s always surprised me, looking into music history, how often the vocalist doesn’t write the lyrics, and it’s interesting to see what bands do, like what their processes are, and yeah it’s cool to see that you have that collaborative feel.
Tim: Well actually, to be honest, I lied.I just put everything into a lyrics generator.
Craig: Yeah, and my job is to spell check.

(Laughs)

.

.

Karl: It’s just you and a thesaurus is it? (Laughs)
Craig: Yeah, you’ve never felt any emotion (Laughs)

Karl: Ah, bloody hell. Alright so um, on the subject of language and metaphor and such, this is sort of aimed a bit at Tim but nah I guess it goes to both of you. There was something in your press release that said: “Your impetus for writing lyrics without hiding behind metaphors”  came from that breakdown you were talking about. So what part of it specifically made you feel like you wanted to use less metaphors and be more explicit?
Tim: I think it was like turning to getting on medication and helping my mental health out. It made me want to just like realise that I’m not the only one and I really wanted people to, rather than trying to like decipher the lyrics, it’s just straight-up this is the way I feel. And that’s what it says, you know, it’s not like I’m trying to hide. It’s all about getting that message out, to make people feel less alone.

Karl: Mm. Yeah, I like that, There’s a power in vulnerability you know?
Tim: For sure
Craig: Absolutely
Tim: It was a lot more… I always talk about the songs, so it’s written from a real storytelling vibe, and I never really do that, but it felt like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders when I could just sing something like that you know?

Karl: Cool yeah nah it makes a lot of sense.
Craig: I think as well, with the world of social media at the moment, there’s a whole thing about projecting who you wanna be, or who you think other people think you should be, and like you said, there is a freedom when you say ‘fuck all that, this is just what I am’. And it’s amazing how much more that connects because there really is real humans on the other side of the screen, you know? And really, the whole point of social media is to connect with other humans. Society’s  become this trend of to only project, not connect. And I think it was pretty brave of Tim to realise within himself that you don’t need to play a game. He can just put it out there. I’m just proud of him as a band mate and a friend to see him go through that evolution.

Karl: Yeah there’s nothing better than artist evolution and personal growth. It’s always a very beautiful thing.
Craig: Yeah, for sure.

Karl: Yeah, so, I guess, again, in the vain  of the lyrics and  the songs, what are your favourite songs on the album and why would that be?
Tim: I’m gonna say, there’s this song at the end of the album called Meant To Be and I feel like… it’s just the way I wanted to write a ballad, you know what I mean? A lot of albums just have some acoustic song that just goes to a huge part at the end or whatever, but I just wanted to make this as cool as I possibly could. I was really influenced by Powderfinger’s Odyssey Number Five, and the guy who mixed our record worked on Odyssey Number Five which is crazy, you know, and that song is called Meant To Be, and I’m a big believer in fate, and I feel like this is all meant to be, as cheesy as that sounds.

Karl: Righto, cool cool. And I was doing a bit of research on that one actually, and you said you had Anton Hagpop, Matt Grey, and Sam Johnson working on the album. What was that like? Is that a big step up from your last few records? How was it?
Craig: Well yeah this is the first time Tim and I have produced an album as well, so we got Sam Johnson who we’ve both recorded with in previous bands, like he’s done a lot with bennies and everything so we love Sam. This time around though, cause Tim has built a home studio, what we did was we went to do the drums with Sam at his studio, Tim and I produced and recorded everything else for the album, and then we sent it to Anton to mix. So that’s the first time we kind of… Normally it’s Sam records it and Sam mixes it and we get a master, and we’d always be happy with that. But this time we felt like, you know, let’s just back ourselves in and if our recording techniques suck, then we can go back to Sam because he’s the best. But we felt really good about what we were doing, with just Tim and I producing it, and then when Anton sent back the first mix, it was like he’d been with us the whole process, and understood exactly what we were going for, so it was actually like a real treat and a dream come true. You know, he’s worked with Silverchair as well, which is one of my favourite bands, and to have his name, and just to get to know him as a person was fucking awesome.

Karl: Bloody oath, there’s nothing better than that ay.
Craig: Aw man nah, it was crazy because it was all just like a bit of a happy accident. I just saw some advertisement they’re working with a producer on Instagram, and then I listened to the song that he recorded or whatever and was like ‘wow this sounds like Foo Fighters good’. There’s like a guy in Australia that’s doing this kinda rock, and then we hit him up and yeah

Karl: Sweet. Just on that, actually, on the sound, I really like the guitar and drum sounds that you got for this album
Craig: Yeah, they’re gigantic

Karl: It’s so intense, I really… it’s hard to say because you listen to other albums and you say ‘aw that’s a Marshall, that’s a Randall, that’s a Fender’ whatever, but you’ve got so many different instruments and they all just sounded huge. How did you get those sounds? Did you use any specific gear?
Tim: Yeah, so about maybe a year and a half ago, we all switched over to Multieffects processes. ____  Helix, you know. And ____  not really liked that brand, and then once these came out, it sort of just changed our lives. Most of the, well no, all of the guitars were recorded through a Helix, bass is pretty much recorded through a Helix ____ , and they were just like, we were using most of the time Voxes.

Karl: Aw yeah. That’s real ’90s.
Tim: But not a real amp. Just like emulations but goddamn like I remember Anton. I was scared as fuck to send him the stems cause I didn’t know what to expect, and he was actually really stoked like ‘I love this sound’, like ‘hell yeah’.

Karl: Yeah, oath
Craig: Yeah that was a nice confidence booster to think that like we’d never produced anything before, we were just following our own ear of what we thought we wanted to hear, and so we started going pretty ham with, you know, darling  in Helix tones and ___  amps, and then we’re like ‘okay, we like the sound of it, but the real test is when we send it to a guy who’s worked with big bands, who knows what it should sound like. It was a bit of a nervous wait, if he sent it back being like ‘what the fuck is this’, me and Tim would probably have bailed out right then. But him say ‘oh it sounds great, what did you use for the guitars’ we were like ‘aw fuck let’s keep going then’. Just trust your ear, trust yourself.
Karl: Yeah
Craig: You know
Tim: Exactly
Craig: Going onto the drum sound. The reason we go to Sam is because he’s just got a bunch of amazing rhythm  microphones that we don’t have access to, and pairing that room sound with Anton’s triggers, that’s what you get.

Karl: Yeah that’s really cool. I understand that’d be a weird one to think like aw, you send off those stems you know, they’re like a piece of you that you’re sending off like ‘I hope my baby doesn’t get shut  down’.
Craig: Yeah, you’re like ‘are we good enough’. We like this sound but are we just a couple of dickheads who love their own sound, or is it actually working? That was pretty scary.
Tim: There’s still like, when I listen to the first single Upside Down, there’s a bad edit, like at the start of the vocals. So we obviously chopped together a vocal take or whatever, and there’s this little spike and it annoys me every time.
Craig: I’ll put my hand up for that one.
Tim: We call our bad edits ‘Craig edits’.

(Laughs)

Tim: Because if you don’t listen to the vocal on solo… 
Karl: Have to go back and listen to that actually, I missed it.
Tim: It’s very subtle

.

.

Craig: There’s a few Craig edits littered across the album but you know what? Adds a bit of something to it.
Karl: It’s got its own flavour.

Craig: Exactly. On that same topic, all the acoustics you hear were recorded through an iPhone.
Karl: Yeah, I saw that comment, it was really cool. Talking about how you copped that from (King Gears  and the Lizard Wizard?)
Tim: Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of people do it, but they sort of made me do it again. And the thing is is that an iPhone right, like I mean, you’re making a call, it has the natural compression on it straight-up, so if you were to record an acoustic guitar two feet away or whatever, you’re gonna get that natural compression and it surprisingly sounds fucking amazing.

Karl: Yeah, I’d never heard of that before. That’s- that’s crazy.
Tim: Yeah

Karl: Righto, so we’ve only got a little bit of time left, so I’ll ask a few last questions before you guys, I think you’ve got a few little interviews to do today. So, did recording your album in your childhood home remind you of how you felt when you first heard your influences, and did that help you sort of get in the mood for recording?
Craig: Surprisingly no, because I wasn’t really playing guitar when I lived at this house like seventeen years ago. It was not until basically when my parents were renting this house, the next house we were going to, that’s when I first picked up a guitar. And that’s when, you know, I was shown like Sabbath, Green Day, Pink Floyd all that. So yeah, that started a bit later.

Karl: Cool, cool. Yeah nah I thought that, you know, I mean, I’m living in my parents house at the moment, and it’s the one I’ve grown up in pretty much my whole life. Yeah, But yeah, I thought about walking around the house you’ve grown up in you can sort of see where you did things as a child, you relive memories as you walk through the house.
Craig: Yeah, for sure.

Karl: Nah it’s cool though, it’s cool. Ooh, we’re almost out of time here actually. So, last question. It’s a common theme that the ’90s was the best time for everything in many different fields. So in light of that, do you think all the world’s problems could be resolved by reverting to social trends, music, and fashions of the ’90s? Go.

(Laughs)

Craig: Yeah, I wouldn’t revert all social trends back there, but in a heartbeat I would revert music back there.

Karl: Cool cool. Righto, and just before we run out of time, how long will it be until we hear one of your songs in a Tony Hawk game?
Craig: Until we can convince Sony to sign us to a publishing deal, that’s how long it’ll take. But from our end, we’re ready.
Tim: I listened to an interview with Tony Hawk and Mark ___  the other day, and Mark was like ‘why don’t you put us on any Tony Hawk contracts’ (laughs) and he’s like ‘oh it’s not my thing man, like I don’t do that’.

Karl: Yeah I just do the kickflips.
Tim: Yeah, that was such a well-timed re-release last year, when Tony Hawk came out again. I was awake till midnight for that to tick over and start playing it.
Craig: Yeah, awesome.
Tim: Yeah, heaps of Aussie bands on there. So, hopefully, you know, they re-release number three, we might get on if we bribe the right people. (Laughs)

Karl: I’ll keep my fingers crossed boys.
Tim: Thank you, man.
Craig: Thanks so much Karl, appreciate the chat dude.

Karl: Nah, thank you. It was very nice to talk to you guys. You’re very relatable and just really easy to chat to. Thank you very much for your time.
Craig: Hell yeah. We appreciate the coverage, and hope you have a good rest of your lockdown and you can get out and do some cool shit when it’s done.

Karl: Yeah nah hopefully you guys come out to Sydney, I’ll catch you guys live ay?
Tim: Dude, we’ve tried a lot of times, we’ll keep trying.

Karl: Oh fingers crossed for that too.
Craig: Yeah, awesome man.

Karl: Okay, cheers boys.
Craig: Thanks, Karl
Tim: See ya mate

.

Photo – Ian Laidlaw

.

Follow LOSER
Website – Facebook – Spotify – Instagram

.

AMNPLIFY – DB

Press Release 13th September 2021 (below) HERE

LOSER’S
new album
‘ALL THE RAGE’
is out now!