Doggy Style
Aussie trio Sick Puppies ditch the hugs and get frisky
By: David Jenison
Hugging people one minute and taking them down the next, the Pups—a.k.a. vocalist-guitarist Shimon Moore, bassist-hottie Emma Anzai and stickman Mark Goodwin—certainly reflect the change in their new album’s title, Tri-Polar. In stores July 14, the disc reunites the Aussie trio with the Rock Mafia production duo behind their breakthrough Dressed Up As Life, but how does the same team jump from love hugs to bear hugs?
“There was plenty of fuel, a lot of hard times, strain, personal problems and all that jazz, and we just put it all into the record,” says Moore. “There’s no way you can prevent it from flooding into the music.”
“When you’re on that one-track path, you tend to suppress all the other stuff that may come up along the way,” adds Anzai, who thinks Life’s success led to bottling up emotions until they recorded again.
“When you perform, everything is very visceral. This album is an expression of that kind of raw emotion.”
These visceral, raw emotions come through in the new music. “Survive” references British punk acts like the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks, while “I Hate You” channels the tuned-out drone of Seattle grunge. The band even exploits hard/soft, build/release dynamics with the power-packed “So What I Lied.”
“All of that stuff you have to internalize on the road . . . we let out on this record,” says Shimon.
Though this is their second stateside album, the Pups’ timeline actually dates back a dozen years. Moore and Anzai, who met in high school in ’97, started the band with original drummer Chris Mileski shortly afterward.
The band first got on the Land Down Under’s radar when the group won the Trip J with “Unearthed” in 2000, a venture where Australia’s publicly funded, nationally broadcast radio station gives indie bands a chance at the national spotlight and a shot at competing with one another for a supporting gig with bigger-profile acts. Prior Triple J award winners include Silverchair and the Innocent Criminals (of Ben Harper fame).
Next came the embrace heard ’round the world.
During the band’s early years, Moore worked at the local mall where Juan Mann came each Thursday with a “Free Hugs” sign. With permission, the singer filmed Mann, but he didn’t do anything with the footage until the hugmeister’s grandmother passed away a few years later. Moore and Anzai had relocated to Los Angeles at this point (and picked up drummer Mileski with an Internet ad), but the singer cheered up his hometown friend by setting the “hugs” footage to their song “All the Same.” After uploading the clip to YouTube, the rest, as they say, is history.
Three years later, the band famous for “hugs” wants to prove these Puppies have teeth. Tri-Polar still seeks out the perfect pop melodies, but this time they’re delivered with a rabies-fueled snarl.
Shimon concludes, “There’s always a negative and a positive way to look at stuff, and you can eliminate the negative by focusing on the positive, but that’s the most difficult thing in the world to do.”
As “You’re Going Down” picks up spins and a new album heads to retail racks, the Sick Puppies launch their new tour on Wednesday with an X103.9 Presents show at the Glass House.
Sick Puppies with Veer Union, Cromwell at the Glass House, 200 W. Second St., Pomona, (909) 865-3802, www.theglasshouse.us, July 8. Doors open at 7PM. $15.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
