The Holidays

If you’ve seen The Holidays’ latest video clip for ‘Tongue Talk’ (the 3rd single off Real Feel – out now), you may have spotted some familiar faces. Not wanting to name-drop, the always charming and humble frontman, Simon Jones played coy when pressed about the making: “Yeah, it has a fair few cameos in there, mainly friends of the producers that were roped into it! Who can you spot? Even one of the producer’s cameos is in it! With Real Feel we wanted to experiment and make some really interesting clips. It’s been so much fun.”
The electro-pop trio has earned their well-deserved reputation for creating some of the most innovative and creative Australian video clips in recent years. “The way people discover and listen to music has changed. I’ve noticed that when I chat to people after a gig, especially young people, they talk about what they’re listening to on YouTube,” Simon reflected. “I find it kind of funny. To me it’s not really the ideal way to listen to music, but now it seems that song and video go hand in hand, so we’ve been really lucky to be able to make more clips this time round.”
Last time I spoke to The Holidays, Real Feel had yet to be released, though it’s no great surprise that it’s gone on to receive critical acclaim and solid radio support since its release last summer. On the back of this and an incredibly successful national tour in March, The Holidays are in high demand, with their ability to fill bigger venues every time they head out on the road.
“We’re doing just the east coast cities this run – we play Melbourne on the fourth of July. Playing the Hi-Fi is a dream come true,” Simon admits.
From there our chat inevitably turns to the Aussie music scene’s big, fat elephant in the room: why are all the live music venues closing? Luckily Simon wasn’t afraid to weigh in with his opinion. “It’s a shame that venues like the East Brunswick Club and the Nash had to close, and the Tote’s been threatening to close for years. ‘Is it a symptom of people not bothering to go to gigs anymore?’ Jones questioned. When we started out rock and roll was the big thing. It was the period of all those guitar bands like The Strokes, Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys. That music really lends itself to people wanting to watch them live; it has a visceral energy to it. “Now”, Simon explained, “sometimes having a good, solid recording down is more important in terms of getting noticed than playing live. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but it’s definitely the trend at the moment. There are a lot of laptop bands around these days. They run the risk of lacking feeling and being boring to look at.”
“With our live shows, although it costs us a lot of money and logistically it’s difficult to do, we make sure we play the whole album. There’s no point in having computers play half the songs while we stand there and karaoke, you know?” Jones laughed. “We try to make it as real as possible. We take all our percussion instruments – congas and a full drum kit – along with all our synthesisers that are so heavy and expensive. But we want to put on a real production, give people a show. It’s important.”
Catch the “real feel” of The Holidays’ show next month and get in early to check out Thief, the new electronic project of PJ Wolf. “We heard him on triple j and loved his song ‘Broken Boy’. We’re happy to have him with us.”
When&Where: The Hi-Fi, Melbourne – July 4
Written by Natalie Rogers