With their second album all recorded and soon to be released, Wollongong’s The Pinheads are currently out on an extensive national tour that brings them to Adelaide this Thursday night, playing the Crown and Anchor.

Guitarist, Luke Player recently spoke with The Upside News about the band’s new music and the tour, which includes their first trip to Adelaide.

“We’ve never been to Adelaide before,” he said “We’ve tried a few times and we’ve had a lot of people saying ‘come to Adelaide’, but this is the first time we’re actually going to make it there.”

The Pinheads formed out high school friendships and mutual interests, such as bowling, which eventually led to the band’s name.

“We were all friends around high school time and we all did things together like bowling and swimming, and we all started playing instruments at the same time and it turned into a band.”

And if you can hear some retro influences in their material, there’s a reason for that.

“When we first started recording we listened to a lot of sixties stuff and tried to get the same sound.”

There’s also a distinct DIY approach to the way The Pinheads craft their music, recording on the farm where Luke and his brother, lead singer Jeremy, grew up.

“Me and my brother Jez, who’s the singer, we grew up on a farm and we’ve got a huge old horse shed because it used to be a horse farm. So we’ve set up a studio in that and he does all the mixing and recording. We’ve never had a producer of anything. We used to have a friend from Sydney from a band called Straight Arrows who mixed our earlier stuff. But our new album, that we’ve just release the single ‘Not Like You’ from, Jez mixed and produced that all himself.”

The new album, which is due for release a little later in the year, took form while the band were on a headline tour through Europe.

“We did a European tour at the end of 2017, and before we recorded the album, we played all the songs during the tour to tighten it up. Then we got home and recorded it in two days. We realised at the end of the tour that we were playing these songs better than ever so we decided to record it while it’s hot.”

The current tour is the first opportunity for The Pinheads to play the material from the new album in Australia.

“We played most of the new songs in Europe but we’ve held off playing them in Australia until this tour. There’s actually one song that we’ve never done live called ‘Spread Your Love’, so I’m excited for that. It’s really weird it’s a kind of free form, very droney with a Velvet Underground kind of feel – so I’m excited to try and pull that off live.”

In support, they are bringing their good mates Wash along for the national tour.

“I’m really excited we’re doing the tour with Wash, who come from Bangala near Byron Bay.  We’ve known them for a couple of years, we met them through Skeggs, another band we’re friends with. So we all toured together and got along really well. We’ve remained friends, so going on tour with them is heaps exciting.”

And having never been to Adelaide before, what can audiences here expect from the show?

“We like to the lead from Jez who lets loose quite a bit and we really feed off the crowd. It ends up pretty crazy most of the time, but in a good way.”

The Pinhead play the Crown and Anchor, Thursday 21st February with tickets available here.

Written by Matthew Trainor