When it comes to influences, The Goon Sax aren’t exactly your typical 17-18 year olds. They make pop music, but it’s pop music that has more in common with Orange Juice, XTC and the mid-80s Postcard Records roster than, say, the pop made by Drake or Katy Perry. Their list of influences mostly come from a time before anyone in the band was born, with the band excitedly reeling off acts like the Pastels, Talking Heads, Galaxie 500, Bob Dylan and Arthur Russell when I ask them about their favourite bands.
However, it’s fellow Brisbane natives The Go-Betweens that the band get compared to the most. Louis’s father is Go-Betweens founder and respected music journalist Robert Forster, which invites many commentators to immediately draw connections between the two bands; even if it’s pretty lazy. Superficially, there are some similarities; both acts certainly make music that is bookish, literate and deeply self-aware, but while Forster senior’s band goes for lush, orchestral pop, his son’s band is extremely lo-fi in comparison. In fact, you’d be better off thinking of the Television Personalities, The Feelies or The Vaselines if you wanted an ’80s indie band as a point of reference.
For the members of The Goon Sax, their sound stems more from their abilities as musicians as it does from any master plan to ape the styles of the past. “Originally, I never intended the music to be so ‘soft’,” explains Forster, who is quick to point out that the trio started out wanting to be a punk band. “Before Riley joined we didn’t have a drummer and we were practicing on nylon string guitars, so we kind of ended up sounding this way.”
“Not having much drumming experience also helped,” adds Jones. “We ended up sounding like a lot of bands I like almost by accident. Even though I wasn’t able to do very complicated fills or anything like that, I think the simple patterns I could play really suited the music.”
As well as necessity, the band’s home city of Brisbane has also played a big role in shaping their sound. “It’s a really interesting place!” exclaims Jones. “It’s quite a small city and not very culturally diverse, so it’s kind of surprising that there is so much going on.”
“There are some very good bands in Brisbane,” adds Forster. “Blank Realm are a really great band and we really like Per Purpose and Scraps – there’s a lot of really good people doing stuff here”.