With vocalist Matt Savage

I was first introduced to Melbourne punk band Destrends via a sponsored Instagram ad promoting their latest single at the time; Straight. I remember thinking it was a fresh punk song with a unique Australian cadence and a day or two later that they announced their east coast tour – I like to think I manifested that.

Growing up in a small country town —what’s a queer arty kid to do? Escape to Melbourne and start a band of course! Taking on style and attitude elements from some of the Australian greats as well as the post punk scenes of the 70’s and 80’s, Destrends play with theatrics, grit and relatability through their music and boast a fully DIY ethos.

Can you give us a brief rundown of the band’s formation and journey up until this point?

I actually grew up in a country town called Deniliquin. I was a little weird queer kid — obviously a musician, into arts and everything. It was a very agricultural football town basically, so I escaped to Melbourne at the earliest convenience. The first person I met was Billy because we were dating for a while and he was living in Geelong. So, I had moved down to Melbourne, but I ended up going to Geelong every weekend to see Billy. I got into that pub scene down there and he moved to Melbourne eventually.

We were looking for a singer and trying out different drummers and nothing was really sticking. I was like hey my brother actually plays drums but hadn’t had much to do with him. We were a 3 piece initially, so I was on bass, Billy on guitar and my brother Nathan on drums — still looking for a singer, I just fell into it, I just did it out of necessity basically. Traditionally I’m a bass guitarist that’s what I grew up doing.

We got Liam in who’s our drummer now, my brothers dropped off, he has a family now. And Angus our bass player, I met him through the Rockdogs football club. Every year there’s this one football game, its massive, over 10,000 people come and its musician’s vs community radio presenters and no one knows how to play its ridiculous, the ball just roll around on the ground.

You released your newest single Shame back in Feb, can you tell us about the track, its creative process and the video clip?

I think when I was writing that song I was just not in a space where I felt proud of. When you get to point in your life where you’re like what the fuck am I doing? I’m in the wrong relationship or I’m hanging out with the wrong people, or I know it can be better than this. The thing is, you actually know what you can do to fix those problems, but I feel like I didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with anything and things progressively got worse. Just thinking back through that process, I realised I have a really loud inner monologue and sometimes it can be quite negative. So, I think Shame was like trying to find my way out of this, like you can judge me all you want but I judge myself harder than anybody else, nothing you can say is going to be worse than what I’m already telling myself.

The music video was filmed at a place called Montsalvat, it’s an artist colony out in Eltham which is northeast of Melbourne, and I think it’s been there since the 1920s or 1930’s. They built all these amazing structures that look medieval, they look like castles. We shot Shame around the grounds at different spaces and then we looked back on it and said hey the chapel actually works the most for this, so we went back and re shot the whole thing and kept in contained to the chapel. I liked the idea of the chapel or some kind of religious thing like I feel like it’s trying to find redemption or trying to find peace, it went with the vibe of the song. We had a really good time doing it and the people out there are amazing.

You’ve been on your East Coast tour; do you have any highlights?

We loved the whole thing it went so well. We purposely did smaller rooms just because we like the vibe and we hadn’t been touring interstate for such a long time. The thing that I liked about it the most was… I guess myself being a queer kid from the country, I came to Melbourne thinking I’m going to find my people here, I’m going to fit into the gay scene and I’m going to have this sense of belonging but I realised I’m just hanging out at dive bars with other musos, which is great, its where I belong but  I think there was  a lot of queer younger people that came to our shows that feel probably a  bit misunderstood by that scene and just talking to people like that, that the songs have connected with them and that was super special for me.

At your Brisbane show at Junk bar, you did an awesome cover of PJ Harvey’s Good Fortune, Shes a huge love and inspiration of mine, who do you look up to personally in the music scene?

I grew up fairly isolated so it’s probably not that alternative in terms of what I grew up listening to but there’s so many Australian artists in the 80’s and especially front people where I’ve taken inspiration from like Chrissy Amphlett from the Divinyls or Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil or Doc Neeson from Angels. There’s lots of Australians around that time that just have a lot of energy to their performance which I think I try and take in and replicate.  As a teen I was more into art rock or things that were a bit more theatrical. I’m a big fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Kills, Bjork and that kind of realm. Taking on that fairly rock and roll vibe and adding a theatrical flair is yeah, something that inspires me.

That’s something else I was going to ask, what things from these bands do you incorporate into your style and sound 

I just like having fun with what I’m wearing and I’m not necessarily making a statement about anything, but I just don’t think that clothes should be gendered, I just wear things because it’s fun. I paint my nails, or I might wear something that’s seen as a bit more femme sometimes and just playing around with that idea.  I think we take a lot from the post punk scene from the 70’s and early 80’s. Punk but stylish punk…and throw in some accessories!

I especially love seeing what bands wear in their stage shows, I get inspired by that a lot as I’m very into fashion and style

I’m absolutely hopeless, I could just pick what I’m going to wear and just take that and that would make my life a million times easier, but I pack a huge suitcase of all sorts of shit, things that i don’t need that I’m lugging around. I’m like Matt can you just decide what you’re going to wear, just take that one outfit. I travel like Priscilla Queen of the Desert basically — and I don’t even wear half of it. 

What Aussie artists are you loving at the moment?

I think this is what everyone will say, but totally claiming Amyl & The Sniffers, they’re taking over the world. 

I have to ask, did Amy Taylor do backing vocals in your track Mindfulness? It sounds so similar.

Someone’s asked us that … it was Georgia Dodds! She was playing bass for us for a little bit, it was really fun. She got to the studio and I asked her how loud she could scream, and she went this loud and I said perfect. Georgia did an excellent job. 

What do you have planned for the rest of the year?

The most recent single is off an album, so we’ll be releasing that. We’re super DIY, we want to do everything independently. We have no manager, no booker, no label and we’re going to keep it like that for as long as possible. There will be an album release which is cool, 80% of the tracks no one’s ever heard. We’ll do more video content and we’re hoping to do an album tour before the end of the year and doing it a lot more extensively than we did. We’d go to all the major cities again and also do a lot of regional shows too. There’s lots of cogs turning at the same time. 

I just want to say too…4ZZZ are such an amazing community radio station, it punches above its weight in terms of really supporting Aussie artists and we felt loved from them and supported by them, it’s such a great thing you guys have up there.

Follow Destrends here