Intercooler- Cool World

The biography for the Brisbane quartet, Intercooler, playfully boasts that the band would not have come into fruition had it not been for a substandard Mexican guitar. Since this momentous occasion, the boys have released their debut and sophomore albums Old School is the New School and Forever Or Whatever respectively. Their resolute and constant presence on the touring circuit, complemented by incessant bouts of songwriting and the necessity of having to each work second jobs, makes for one busy group of individuals. In spite of these demands, Intercooler’s bass player, Joel Potter, took some time out to speak to The Dwarf.

For many bands, the interesting anecdote about the guitar would be sufficient to pique an interest in potential fans. However, Intercooler’s Wikipedia article also proudly notes that they were responsible for knocking Jennifer Lopez off the pole position on the now defunct television series, Fly TV. As Wikipedia is easily edited by users, is there anything else Joel would like included in their article?

“That we are actually billionaire tycoons and are posing as poor musicians to gain a life of hard knocks experience. We also just want people to love us for who we are and not for our obscene fortunes. Much like Eddie Murphy’s character in “Coming To America,” one day our friends and girlfriends will be pleasantly shocked to find out”.

This is quite a creative response from Turner, who says he would one day like to attempt writing. Add to this mix, Phil Ballantyne (vocals/guitars) who enjoys drawing, Darek Mudge (guitars) who records music for other bands and Damon Cox (drums/vocals) who also plays the drums for the group Mary Trembles, and one is able to conclude that this imaginative group have no shortage of outlets for their original works.

In the meantime, the band are heavilly preoccupied with touring. In the midst of a long, continuous run of shows, Joel claims the group are performing more tightly than ever before. These performances are also positively effecting audiences who are stopping to absorb the music they are hearing, rather than dancing or chatting. “It’s just a shift towards more atmospheric songs”.

Intercooler’s live shows are a close reflection of each member’s tastes, which includes a vehment love of pop music. Joel describes their gigs as a mix of loud guitar with lots of melody and harmony, which serves to evoke good feelings in the listener. This statement is an apt one, as the boys are renown for putting on a high-energy rock show, while continuing to intrigue audiences with additional layers and textures and a few acoustic songs.

Moreover, a quick survey of the band’s audience can often prove to be an interesting one. This reporter remembers seeing the group in Newtown in 2005 and seeing the spectacle of a lone man in a crushed cowboy hat. Answering to the name, ‘Stoltzy,’ he was a mesmorizing figure as he rocked out to their music. “Good ol’ Stoltz (laughs), that was a fun show… Sometimes you get a whole bunch of people going nuts. Sometimes it’s like everyone is watching and there is one random person on a freak out. Like the town may have a character, homeless guy, up the front doing his trademark boogie. I also remember a guy, this little bloke, who could do that Russian Cossack dance perfectly”.

While many musicians wll admit that relentless touring can be gruelling, it does help when you have humourous people along for the ride. On tour, “There is always some in-joke on the go. I think spotting red-haired gingers was the latest one. The longer the tour, the deeper the madness of the humour gets. Something you can’t understand until you’ve missed twenty nights sleep and not eaten a decent meal in as long. We used to travel with a sound guy who was a real country, bush-wacker bloke and he was full of filthy pearls of wisdom that kept us all with tears of laughter. He was the most cliché Aussie. Particularly when we were in the States a few times, he was the biggest hit there since ‘Crocodile Dundee’”.

Another thing that has certainly been a big hit with the critics is the group’s latest album, ‘Forever Or Whatever’. Produced by Magoo (Midnight Oil, Regurgitator, Butterfingers) and with the assistance of Darek’s home studio (NB: Darek replaced former guitarist Michael Caso), the group was afforded the opportunity to devote copious time to the recording and pre-production process. The differences in songs are readily noticeable, as previous ones were confined to being written loudly in the jam room.

In one article, Phil had described their album as “more mature,” but Joel believes that this makes the songs sound boring. Instead he feels that they were able to exercise more control over the writing and put more thought into the arrangement and instrumentation. In the process, some songs were written simply and sequentially. For other songs, they adopted a more haphazard approach, a patchwork of riffs, bass lines and drum loops. ‘Hold Me Again’ best exemplifies this method and Turner believes it is their most adventurous track, from a recording perspective. In addition, the album also has a children’s choir on ‘Ok Girl,’ some of their mates clappng on ‘Wasted My Day,’ a siren on ‘Hold Me Again’ and Magoo’s dog, Lemmy also makes a guest appearance.

This eclectic mix of noise reminds me of a story I once heard about Ben Ottewell from Gomez. He recorded music at a Cambodian street festival, while on vacation and this was subsequently used on their album, ‘In Our Gun.’ Have Intercooler captured their own unique sounds?

“Phil carries a dictaphone all the time. We were on this bus in Morroco once, from Casablanca to Tangier. Everytime the bus stopped, they let on a stream of beggars. This one time, there were a few we could not understand, and one guy somehow made a sound through a hole in his throat. It was obscene, the combination of all their voices, this guy’s high whistle and the chickens and animals. Phil taped it and we gave them food and stuff but somehow it got erased along the way. It is tragic, as it documented the feel of the place better than any photo. Sometimes sound and smell mean so much more than sight. It’s strange we don’t do more of what Gomez did, leave that one with me, because I think you’re onto something”.

Maybe I should advise Intercooler to send the royalty cheque care of the Dwarf, but instead we talk about their work on new material. “There is this one song that’s this huge, gloriously happy, pop thing with Mexican trumpets. It’s a great song, I’m not sure, but perhaps like an R.E.M. ‘Shiny Happy People’or a B52’s ‘Rock Lobster’ (laughs). Who nows, whatever takes our fancy when the time comes”.

No doubt the new material will reflect the group’s creative muse and inspiration of writing songs about love, including that lost and never realised. “The energy to be inspired enough to put pen to paper comes from the extreme side of our nature and the extreme feelings we have in life, like love or a breakup or death. These things take you out of your comfort zone and drive you to change things, and if this is impossible, you can write this down as a sort of release. I guess Paul McCartney is right in a way, some people love girls or guys or cars or drugs or money or black clothes or eye makeup or whatever. It’s all a love of something. I don’t thing that’s what makes it sound good. What makes it good is that it must be totally honest”.

Some people may think songs written with such conviction are a thing of the past and Joel offers us his early memories involving music. “My earliest memory of music is from my Dad’s collection, The Doors’ ‘Riders On The Storm.’ I have this memory of him explaining what it was about when I was four or five. It went a little over my head then (laughs)”.

Turner also admited to enjoying eighties pop music like Madonna and Michael Jackson. But it was when he received a copy of AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’ whilst in high school and hearing Brisbane band, Budd, that stirred a love of heavy, thundersome guitar riffs and in turn, made Joel want to produce rock music of his very own.

Finally, Turner says the band hope to return to the US and UK for a brief stint before emersing themselves in the production of a new record. You can catch them live at their remaining Australian tour dates below, or help them devise some new hook for their Wikipedia biography, not that they need any assistance in this arena.

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