More about: Body Type

“Shocking things that are banal”, says Body Type’s guitarist Annabel Blackman, who is summing up the themes and atmosphere of the band’s debut album Everything Is Dangerous but Nothing's Surprising as well as, coincidentally, the state the world has descended into since they recorded it over two years ago. 

Though we’re all familiar with the banal, Body Type have also had plenty of experience with the shocking. Forming in 2016 with no prior musical experience, the Sydney-based four-piece quickly journeyed from pub gigs to international festival slots. Six years on and exposure to the music industry’s deep-rooted sexism, battles for creative control and a departure from their label have culminated in a desire to redefine the band on their own terms. The change has manifested as their most unrestrained, daring work yet.

Annabel’s words on the shocking and banal are met with instant approval from bandmate Sophie McComish, who sits beside her in a studio in Sydney. Ahead of their album’s release, the pair radiate elation, punctuating their most profound revelations with laughter and finishing each other’s sentences over a glitching Zoom line. Off-camera, their drummer Cecil Coleman rehearses, allowing snags of a future record to leak into the feed. She is rewarded by occasional glances of approval from her bandmates. Georgia Wilkinson-Derums, Body Type’s bassist, is notably absent from the scene—and has been since early 2020 when she moved to Perth, a state which, at the time of our conversation, is one of the most locked-down places in the world.

Border closures, however, are no match for the impermeable bond intrinsic to Body Type’s music. Their true admiration for one another is their central power—one that has not faltered beneath the weight of professional adversity or even global disaster. That’s not to say navigating Covid has been easy for a band forced to dramatically halt as their career was accelerating. “It was devastating. Devastating. I don't actually know how we got through it. We all had our own independent crisis during that time,” Sophie says.

But, contrastingly to many of this year’s forthcoming releases, Everything Is Dangerous, But Nothing's Surprising is not an album about lockdown. In fact, it was recorded on the cliff edge of normality in early 2020, a time before the word ‘isolation’ was permanently etched into our subconscious. And yet the raucous energy of songs birthed from a period of stifled creativity almost perfectly convey the frustration of life under lockdown. Their cries for creative control echo the collective yearning for freedom and excitement over the past two years.

The similarities haven’t gone unnoticed by the band, who have had time to contemplate the wider meaning of the record in the period since recording. On there they noticed a recurring theme of initially disturbing things that are so commonplace they become monotonous, a phenomenon that captures the zeitgeist of modern life. Annabel explains: “It was kind of written about things going wrong a little bit, all the time. The way you kind of bumble through life and just fuck stuff up and you get a bit disappointed in yourself, but then keep going. When you’re accumulating little failures.

“I just had this mental list of all these things that were shocking me a little bit. Ever since then I feel like the title has also resonated with us. It just feels like with label stuff and world stuff, things just keep going down and it’s like ‘wow that's really terrible and I can't even process that’.”

Despite an admission of failures, the pair exude a particular brand of coolness that comes with their irremovable authenticity: the driving force behind a record created entirely on their own terms. However, this authenticity was a fight to maintain within an industry that champions perfection—hence the departure from their label. “We kind of amassed this team of incredible people behind us, but after a while, we just noticed that our values weren’t aligning with some people and things just started to feel a little bit restrictive,” Sophie says.

“It took us a while to realise that we weren’t going down the path that we intended to go down. So we were just kind of like ‘wait a minute, this is not what we believe in as a band. We can just do this by ourselves so let's just do it. Let's just get in the studio to record these songs and see what happens’.”

What followed was a cathartic release of pent-up rage, driving their evolving sound and epitomising a desire to be in control. But did the instability of going independent tarnish their friendship? “No, absolutely not. Maybe it strengthened it actually. This is all numero uno,” Sophie says, gesturing between herself and Annabel, “We’re in this together, it’s very very tight. I've never really experienced this with anyone before, it's more familial actually than friendship.”

Annabelle concurs: “I think we became a bit more resolute in what we want and need when making our music and how we want to make it. We realised we loved making lots of noise and having a bit of a wild time.”

This unity is unmistakably present on Everything Is Dangerous, But Nothing's Surprising, their most tempestuous work yet that demonstrates a destruction of creative boundaries. Here, they are free, marrying genres monopolised by male artists with scathing commentary on an industry plagued with sexism. It’s a record about reclaiming control that simultaneously allows their sound to run wild.

Perhaps that's down to their listening habits at the time, with Sophie immersing herself in ‘90s and early-2000s rock: “I was kind of going through like ‘hmm, all of the biggest bands in the world, rock bands and guitar bands, are all men. Why is that? Let me listen to that and see if I can also do that,” she says. And it’s evident in ‘Sex and Rage’, an ode to the Eve Babitz novel of the same name, filled with Strokes-indebted riffs and animalistic drumming. 

The entire album glitters with emotionally-charged lyricism, revealing the all-consuming restlessness they felt during its creation. Opening with ‘A Line’, there’s an immediate plunge into their fuzzy, distinctively Australian take on punk, before launching into frenzied anthem ‘Brood’, steeped in intense urgency and fury. 

And they’ve got a lot to be furious about. From the start of their career, the ‘all female band’ title has worn heavy while they simply endeavoured to take up space in a genre historically occupied by men.

Sophie says: “Some guy asked us when we were playing in New York a few years ago: ‘whats it like to be a woman in a band?’ And we were just like ‘are you kidding me? Is this still a question that people are asking?’ It's the same as it is being a man in a band. There’s no difference, except that we fucking get periods on tour. And we can still fucking rock while we’re bleeding.”

The late 2010s saw an influx of artists proudly weaving feminism into their marketing campaigns, seeing its descent into a millennial buzzword. According to Body Type, this led to a constant pressure for female artists to champion a political message, something not expected of their male contemporaries. 

Sophie says: “I would like to hope now that after the Me Too movement and all of these bigwigs being called out, that the idea of being a feminist is less of a novelty and more just inherent to everyone’s being. Of course we’re feminists and all the things we’re singing about [are in] the female experience, but I hope that that’s just a given to everyone and it doesn’t have to be put on this pedestal again.”

Annabel agrees: “You don't have to expressively be part of some kind of feminist movement, its still empowering if you’re just doing a thing.”

This rejection of industry pressures on female artists continue through much of the album, most notably on ‘Charm’, a brutal depiction of a music industry exec offering unsolicited advice. “He told us that if we didn’t rehearse more, if we didn’t get better at our instruments, then the charm was gonna wear off and the industry wouldn’t wanna pay attention to us. And we were like what charm do you mean? The charm of us being women?”

“We don’t need him to tell us that we have charm or don't have charm. We don’t even want charm,” Sophie says, laughing. Annabel interjects: “And isn’t it the novelty of us being kind of ramshackle that was attracting people in the first place? And now you want us to move on from that?”

This “ramshackle” aesthetic is a defining feature for many bands birthed from Australia’s jagged coastlines, defined by their affinity towards a rawer, DIY production style that allows fuzzier music to thrive. “Because of dole wave or whatever, everyone's pretty into being a little bit sloppy,” Annabel says, with Sophie adding: “Yeah! It’s ok to be a bit shit.”

But the culture of intentional sloppiness in the local scenes contrasted harshly against traditional industry expectations, as Annabel says: “Maybe it's just the level of extreme pressure on us to tour and do everything in such an intensive professional way, you don't have time to be a little bit shit. You have to just be perfect.”

Their sound was not a sacrifice Body Type were willing to make, with years of unwanted observation—often rooted in misogyny—fuelling a desire to make an album truer to the scene they planted their roots in. And they’re not alone, as Sophie references an interview from fellow Aussie rocker Amy Taylor of Amy and The Sniffers: “She said ‘there’s been so many shit male bands in the world, why can't we have a few shit female bands for a while?’ 

“That’s really relatable because women are just put on this pedestal to be perfect all the time and we’ve never thought of ourselves like that. We’re not here to try to be perfect or technically amazing or whatever. We’ve just got a message and we sing about it and if people like it then great and if they don't, whatever,” Sophie says, flashing her middle finger at the camera.

This message is a potent one throughout the album, emphasised by an exciting soundscape that’s propelled by chugging baselines and bestowed with their most frantic, impressive guitar riffs. It’s a record that begs to be heard live. But as Sydney emerges from lockdown, the local music scene is in a chokehold from government bodies that (like our own British government) fail to prioritise culture. Lockout laws have plunged a burgeoning scene into disarray, forcing venue closures that suffocate the city’s community of artists. On the day of our conversation, the band mourn the loss of yet another venue, Sydney’s The Lansdowne Hotel, which Annabel explains is “the only one with a really good PA.” 

“The rest are cute little small places where you can’t fit many people. There’s nowhere really ideal to have a pretty legitimate show. There’s such a gap”.

But Body Type are keen to encourage creativity that thrives despite obstacles, hoping to inspire the slew of what Annabel refers to as “lockdown rockers”, that have cropped up over the past two years. Their advice? Create music anchored in friendship: “The best thing I’ve ever done in my life is start a band with three other women. We’ve been around the world playing our fucking songs: that is so cool and something that we never thought would happen. I hope people can feel that when they hear our songs or see us play, that we care and we are really passionate about whatever the hell this is,” Sophie says.

And you can feel it—the passion is ingrained into every groove on this record. And it’s an attitude that isn’t reserved only for your speakers. As a band celebrated for their stage presence, Body Type are yearning to get back in front of an audience. “There’s only so much social media posting you can do to try and get your fix. I’m ready for the real thing. I’m ready for live, real live engagement. I wanna spit on some people,” Sophie says, before quickly adding: “Accidentally!

Everything Is Dangerous but Nothing's Surprising is out now.

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More about: Body Type