Snout’s singer, songwriter and leapin’ bassist Ross McLennan has no of committing his every waking hour to conquering the world. “It comes down to how much of your life you want to write off,” he says. “I think a large part of the thing about being popular in America is about the magnetic north, where that’s the centre of the universe, America, and I can’t be real unless I’m real there. I’m just over it.” Instead McLennan and Snout – guitarist Greg Ng and drummer Ewan McCartney – reap satisfaction from playing to appreciative audiences around Australia and concentrate on creating unique and challenging beat-pop sounds: as found on the bands new album, Circle High and Wide. 

What kind of rock music made an impression on you? 
All the time during my young teen I was playing rock, but I wasn’t much of a listener because I only listened to ‘60s stuff, and pretty much just listened to the Beatles, the Beach Boys and a little bit of the Who. Although in that era I did dig the Sunnyboys and that kinda stuff, stuff I felt sounded vaguely beat-orientated. Just because they wore skivvies and had bowl haircuts, it’s just one of those things, it appealed to my aesthetic completely. That’s kinda what I tried to look like at school. It’s way part of my sub conscious mind, it’s not something I would even try to escape and I’m past justifying it. More and more it’s becoming about music and less about explaining, which is good, one of the benefits of being around for a while and having a modicum of respect. 

Having been playing for quite a while now, you have no ambition to leave Australia to further your career?  
I don’t have that much ambition where America’s concerned, basically can’t be fucked. I just want to tour areas that are close to us: Asia, Japan, that kind of thing. It’s all to do with motives, isn’t it? From an artistic point of view, if you’re looking for kudos there’s nothing like world class attention to make you feel good about yourself. But from my point of view, it’s a lifestyle thing. I like living here and I pretty much think the whole world is just about as fucked as Australia, if not worse, and I’d like to make my patch of the world better. Over the years I’ve lost the desire to rule the world, it’s not really an issue. 

Do you perceive a tall poppy syndrome?  
A little bit. There’s a kind of cluster of poppies underneath the big poppies and we’re a motley little crew and that’s our scene. The ones that are taller in that tend to have a hard time and the ones that aspire to be a seriously tall poppy cop a bit of despising. We’ve got it on a small scale, from “indie” bands, purely through being so ubiquitous and getting a lot of air-play. I see it happening to other people more than to us though. Our degree of moderate stuff is not even worth kicking a stink up about. Other bands who’ve copped the tall poppy syndrome have become strange in the way they relate to people. Those tall poppies develop really detached worlds. You’d think a small place like Australia would be past all that, but they do say small towns are the worst. 

What about a sense of community?  
I’m pretty cards-close-to-the-chest sort of person, but I feel a sense of community with my brother [Link: Meanies, Tomorrow People] and with Ashley [Naylor: Even] becase we’v basicall acknowledged that we’re a pack of insecure neurotics, and we have a secret handshake and it’s all okay to act like a fuckwit, all will be forgiven. And musically we’ve all bared our souls to each other, so there’s an understanding of what we’re all going through with our sad-ass ego stuff. There’s definitely an unconciuos mind of this-is-a-really-small-place-will-we-survive? And probably a fear of actually getting out there in the wide world as well. 

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