"The New Pop Dialogue." - Snout - Off Shore Festival
by Chris Scaddan

Over the past year, Snout’s edgy pop songs and erratic live shows have impressed audiences across the country. The New Pop Dialogue was considered by many critics to live up to its grandiose title by taking popular music that one step further. On the eve of yet another few shows in regional Victoria, Snout’s singer and bassplayer, Ross McLennan Spoke to Forte about his songs.

What are you looking for in a song when you are writing for Snout?

I can’t help but be conscious of wanting to keep it like people think Snout is. I don’t necessarily do that when I’m writing a song, but I’ve always got one eye on compiling an album’s worth of songs that will represent and flow on in a consistent way with what we’ve already done. Up until about four months ago, the songs for the next record weren’t looking like that. It was all this sombre, moody stuff. Really good stuff, I was really happy with it. I thought they were some of the best lyrics I’ve ever written, but just not suited to the ‘marketplace’.

So it has come to that. Because of the success of the last album, you’ve got to construct something that the fans will still enjoy.

I think I’ve kind of always been that way. Not necessarily to do with music, but I’ve always had this ‘impress your friends’ mentality. It’s all really best avoided I suspect, but I think it’s kind of mutated itself into a little bit of a trying to be what people expect you to be and hoping that your next record gets put out. The fact of the matter is that every band thinks about it. They’ve always got one eye on the career aspect of it. I think it’s just complete bullshit to say that you’re not interested in that at all.

There has been such a progression in Snout from Cleans and Brightens to the latest record, The New Pop Dialogue. Has that had as much to do with changing the band members as your own musical progression?

Between What’s That Sound? and New Pop Dialogue it did, obviously because Cleans and Brightens and What’s That Sound? has the same band members. Cleans and Brightens was kind of finding your feet record really. A band with no idea but some good songs. Occasionally I like listening to it and there’s a couple of songs on it like ‘Brian Drain’ that I wouldn’t mind recording if we have an American release which will probably be a compilation of a couple of albums. ‘The Wall Goes Up’ is a song I really like but it is hardly anything like what we’re doing now. It’s almost Jesus and Mary Chain, three chords and harmonics and feedback kind of stuff. It’s a bit of a chameleon record. It darts around stylistically from one song to the next. It’s all over the shop. But that’s good, that’s what I like about it. A bit too much reverb though.

You sound as if you are quite critical of everything you do.

Yeah, I am. You always find fault with things but I really feel we’re going to get it nailed on this next record though. Everyone else seems to like The New Pop Dialogue and that’s the main thing.

Which songs that you have done are you most happy with?

I can’t really pick anything off the first two because I still don’t think we really understood what we were doing, sound wise. There’s plenty of stuff on The New Pop Dialogue that I think is quite good. I really enjoy ‘Hour of Power’, which we don’t play live. It’s done with loops and lots of organ overdubs. We may do it one day by reconstructing it and making it a different song.

Would you consider adding any extra members to the band, adding an organ to Snout’s sound?

No. It’s a pretty fragile ego balance in Snout. It’s a dysfunctional family kind of deal. I don’t think we’d be very comfortable with extra members. Maybe just a friend to walk on at one gig, but in terms of a permanent member, it just wouldn’t work. You can’t afford a breakdown in the connection.

Come and see the fragile, dysfunctional family that is Snout when it plays downstairs at Lamby’s on Wednesday, March 19 with Supagroop and The Tomorrow People and the Snout will be perfoming as part of the huge line-up that is the Offshore festival over the East weekend at Bell’s Beach/Torquay (March 28th to March 31st 1997).