Brisbane’s pop-punk upstarts Two Times Shy are soaring lofty heights as they let loose their …
“I am of the opinion that most bands tend to get worse and worse the longer they’ve been together…” Bill Stevenson, the drummer who helped Black Flag go super saiyan on My War who is also a founding member of pop punk trailblazers the Descendents, isn’t looking to mince words when he sits down for our interview. It’s an interesting line of thought for a guy whose 2017 Australian tour marks 40 years since the Descendents first formed. But hey, Bill’s a legend, you don’t interrupt a legend.
“… I don’t know why that is, but more often than not it seems to be the case. Who wants to hear a band’s 10th album? People just aren’t into that. I’m not into that! But I think with us, to put a record [last year’s excellent Hypercaffium Spazzinate] out and have people enjoy it and be in to hearing the new songs, that’s very flattering. The fact that we’ve made a good enough record that people wanna actually hear it, I feel really good about that.”
In Stevenson’s eyes, the band’s seventh record was just the shot they needed. After a ‘soft’ reunion in 2010 where the band decided to play about five or six shows every year, the response that Spazzinate garnered—many praised the band for deftly recreating the vibe of earlier albums without it coming across as boring revisionism—inspired Bill and the lads to think about heading out on the road a lot more… But, you know, nowhere near as much as they did in the ‘80s.
“Probably the main reason we haven’t broken up is because we haven’t pushed too hard to cram together like sardines in a van. When bands do that they tend to get sick of each other and break up.
[ Bill Stevenson ]
“We’re going to go to more places and do more shows… We’re not really going to be climbing in a van for three months, doing it the way we did it when we were kids, but we’re going to be doing more than when we were kids.
“Probably the main reason we haven’t broken up is because we haven’t pushed too hard to cram together like sardines in a van. When bands do that they tend to get sick of each other and break up. And we’re trying to do this in a way that reminds us of why we started doing this in the first place. Which is to have fun. And we’re trying to make it fun by not having it feel like too much of a labour.”
No matter how much the punk world would love to see lots more of the Descendents, Bill says the band is pretty resolute in how they’re going to approach things. The drummer says all the members respect the friendships within the band too much to do anything that might put them at risk of strain. But then he’s quick to explain that he doesn’t think there would ever be a scenario where such a risk would arise. The dynamic between the Descendents remains permanently frozen in 1986, even if the quartet have continued to age.
“The best way I could describe the dynamic of the band is that it’s changed completely and that it’s changed not at all. We still find the same things funny and we treat each other the same way, but because we’re more, for lack of a better word, mature, it’s a different version of our friendships. But we’ve all grown up together, no one went their separate ways, we’ve had one another in our lives the whole time. We’ve been through so much together; illnesses, divorces, having kids, all kinds of stuff. But here we are, and despite all of that it still feels the same as it did back when we started.”
Even if Bill is realistic about the band’s members ageing—“We just played a bunch of shows last weekend and I would have two cups of coffee with five espresso shots in them before we play. Now before we play I drink a lot of coffee, maybe even more than I used to, just to make sure I have enough alertness to play these drum parts that I wrote when I was a teenager”—the drummer is optimistic about the future of the Descendents. He even says all the band members are really focussed in on the Descendents and there could be a new album in the not-too-distant future.
“I always joke that we make a record every 10 years whether we need it or not. But I think we’ll do something sooner than that.”
Descendents’ Australian tour starts Thursday, 16 February, with support from Clowns in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane, and Nursery Crimes in Melbourne and Sydney.
Tickets available here.
Thursday 16 February – The Gov, Adelaide
Friday 17 February – Capitol, Perth
Sunday 19 February – 170 Russell, Melbourne
Monday 20 February – 170 Russell, Melbourne
Wednesday 22 February – Eatons Hill, Brisbane
Friday 24 February – Enmore, Sydney
