The Courier Mail
Australia
Rock till you pop
Joel Dullroy
06sep02

Reference: http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au

FOR some musicians, pop is the antithesis of real music.

Not for Aneiki's Grant Wallis, a guitarist of repute on Brisbane's rock scene, who spent 10 years of his life despising anything in the Top 40.

"This is the first pop thing I've ever done. To me this is a challenge. It's actually quite hard to write a good pop song.

"There's a definite refining of the song-writing process, it's keeping it simple, and taking all those self-indulgent little muso things and throwing them out the window."

Wallis took his love of avante garde rock with him when he entered the world of pop. The results can be heard on Aneiki's soon-to-be-released debut album, Words In Place Of Objects, which is built on an undercurrent of guitar rock that make it sound more Garbage than Savage Garden.

There are still the hallmarks of pop – Jen Waite's sweet vocals, catchy choruses, the three-and-a-half minute formula – but the Brisbane duo say they aren't averse to having a distorted riff rip between the synths and sound effects.

Despite their song Pleased To Meet You being one of the most played tracks on radio last year, Wallis says he still doesn't listen to commercial radio.

"I'm the teeny bopper," laughs Waite, a former back-up singer for Savage Garden.

It was the Garden's Daniel Jones who first offered to produce the duo's music, and although his own commitments meant he could help with only a few tracks, they still credit him for being the catalyst and investor behind Aneiki.

Rumours of the band's development saw Savage Garden's huge fan base bombard Aneiki's website before a single song had been released.

Now the circle is complete, with Aneiki supporting the other half of Savage Garden, Darren Hayes, on his solo Australian tour.

Jones also lined up the studio in Sweden where the album was recorded in a stint that Waite and Wallis call "the best three months of our lives".

The duo first met while performing in a covers band playing in pubs and RSLs up and down the Queensland coast. As other band members drifted away, the group was reduced to Wallis and Waite.

"Grant's one of my best friends," Waite says of band dynamics, though she says the chemistry between them is purely musical.

Wallis continues to feed his rock habit through various side projects which he refuses to identify, but says they are quite different from Aneiki's music.

Following the lead of many independent artists, Aneiki have established their own record label, Merridianmusik, to gain more control over their work.

"It's a smart way to do it because there's a buffer between us and the record company. We've got someone to bounce off, we can say 'we don't really want to do that Christmas album'," Wallis says.

That buffer also helped when preparing for the album, which was to be a step away from the singles.

"We wanted the singles to be perfected pop, but for the album we wanted to be as artistic as we wanted to be.

"We've been waiting for this album to come out for a while and it has been quite frustrating. We did get pigeon-holed a bit because of the singles, and we'll be happy about getting the full picture across.

"With the album we didn't want to put any limits on ourselves or what we were writing," Waite says. "We wanted it to be a pop album, but we didn't want it to be typical Aussie pop, generic and all the same.

"It was a decision to make it eclectic in style so the songs didn't all sound the same. The fact that Grant didn't come from a pop background helped with that."

Waite, whose vocals have become instantly recognisable thanks to Pleased To Meet You, says the song's massive airplay brought its own problems.

"Trying to get radio to move across more than just that song has been a bit of a battle.

"Radio has a love affair with that song, and it's hard for them to move on or to add another single because this one is still recent. But it's not a bad thing, it's a good problem to have."

• Words In Place Of Objects is out on September 16 through Roadshow Music.

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