Beat Magazine 1997 Wed 24th December - Tue 6th January:
Going off on a tangent as you often do during interviews, I made a little faux pas while talking to Sandpit bassist Stephanie Ashworth. Trying to get the interview back on track I said, "OK, back to Sandro," referring to another Melbourne guitar based three-piece who've been getting publicity galore recently for the Hate Songs album. Sandpit, on the other hand have been a bit more low-key of late but are gearing up to release an album in the new year. The Sandro comment lead me to ask Ashworth if Sandpit had to put up with comparisons with other local bands because of the number of people in the band and the vaguest of musical similarities.
"In every interview I've done it's been 'Who've you been most compared to?' and obviously it's been American bands, which really shits me," she says. "I think we're tired of that that whole thing by now. As far as being compared to other Melbourne three-pieces, not really. We tend to be put in with bands that are not doing the standard retro thing, so not specifically any other bands."
Although the band receives airplay on the so-called National Youth Network, its hard to imagine Sandpit's music slotted between more obvious "rock" acts on the station. "We're in a situation where our music's not an obvious appeal," Ashworth says. "You don't listen to it once and go, 'Yeah!', it requires a few listens. There's no gimmicks involved with Sandpit and no standard structure. There's no hooks put in there for the listener, it's not consciously structured to take people on some pop journey. It's mostly dictated by the emotional content of the lyric."
Sandpit's new album promises to be a bit different from their previous release The Tyranny Of Creeps, a little more hooky as Stephanie explains: "The single is a tool of record companies to draw interest. We've got a single coming out in four weeks and I think, strangely enough, it's going to be a singles kind of album that's coming out. The first single is actually a really catchy kind of song so we do write songs that our record company considers singles but like most bands it's not a conscious effort. It's just like 'This is how it turned out' and when the record hears your demo they say 'This is the stand out track, I like it when I hear this one.'" Obviously it's in their best interest to pick out singles that are going to be special tracks. Fellaheen Records, which we're on, was recently bought out by Shock. They're not big in Australia but they're big in America - they have Superchunk, Pavement and Beastie Boys, Huggy Bear and Luscious Jackson. They have more international acts than Australian acts, but they have Ben Lee, Gerling and Fur. They're music lovers and they don't sign any band that they don't personally get off on and you have to respect that."
The Perth-born Ashworth is both well-travelled and well-read, having done seven years' study in both Melbourne and Sydney. Now as a full-time musician she sees those years an an experience more than anything. "I moved to Sydney when I was 17 - I got the hell out of there," she says, "but I didn't actually start playing with people until I moved to Melbourne, which was in about '91. I did many university years - three degrees in seven years. I'm really glad I did it because I did a year Perth, then I travelled to Sydney and then I travelled to Perth. I got the university tour of Australia while seeing great bands in each city and experiencing what it's like to live in each city. It's great to be educated but at the end of the day if you're just going to play in a band you end up wondering why you spent all that time there."
David Trethewie