Arrows is the debut album from Sydney prog rock project My Pet Rhino – the brainchild of songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Maratheftis.
Maratheftis has spent the better part of two decades lending his considerable guitar playing chops to a string of covers and originals bands, including Twinkling Stars and Mckenzie & Jon. But My Pet Rhino marks his first major statement as a songwriter and bandleader.
The record features lead vocals from US-based performer LeeLoo, who Maratheftis connected with online. Mark Spiteri is responsible for the robust and technically complex drumming. Beyond that, Arrows is entirely Maratheftis’ work.
My Pet Rhino
- Sydney’s new alt-rock force
- Debut single, Is This Really How It Ends? drops 9 May
- Debut album Arrows will be released on 23 May
- Follow them on IG here
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“Tracking and mixing took approximately 120-130 hours, but it was spread over the course of a year,” Maratheftis says. “Other than the contributions from the session musicians, the overall recording process was not super collaborative – I was definitely a bit of a dictator in this instance.”
The album is deeply personal for Maratheftis – some of its songs are rooted in his earliest experiments with composition as a teenager. So, given his undeniable musicianship, one wonders why it took 20 years for him to commit to making an album of his own.
“Up until this point I had only ever played in cover bands or originals projects where I was not needed as a songwriter,” he says. “I have always been very frustrated by the fact that I struggle to convey the songs I write to others because I cannot sing them very well.”
Connecting with LeeLoo helped Maratheftis sidestep this hurdle. But perhaps more significant was the realisation that he’d already written an album’s worth of material.
“A couple of years ago, I did a bit of a stocktake of the songs I had written to this point,” he says. “I found there were 13 fully formed tracks that I thought were really good and figured it would be a shame if I never did anything with these.”
During the making of Arrows, Maratheftis employed a no-two-songs-the-same policy. This tack was directly informed by his preferences as a music listener.
“I am not the type of person who likes to listen to music as background music or just for the sake of having noise – if I listen to music, I like to actively listen to it, and I want it to be the best, catchiest, most creative and distinctive music I can find,” he says. “Because of this I tend to gravitate to music which is either quite technical and performed by very proficient musicians, or music so simple, catchy and brilliant that it borders on stupid.”
The music on Arrows is influenced by everyone from Silverchair to Queens of the Stone Age and The Killers. But the record is distinguished by Maratheftis’ fondness for prog rock and metal.
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“I have always enjoyed playing and listening to grunge-style rock in particular, so naturally my songwriting would gravitate slightly this way,” he says. “But because I was spending a lot of time learning to play things like Dream Theatre, Joe Satriani, John Butler, Pink Floyd and John Schofield, it was only natural for me to try and integrate all these different elements together into my own music.”
One of Maratheftis’ goals during the making of Arrows was to marry the unconventional rhythms of prog rock with the accessibility of pop and rock music. The album’s opening track All The Same is a case in point.
“The main riff on that song is in 17/8 time, which is not something you would generally find used outside of the prog world,” Maratheftis says. “I am now convinced that there is so much catchy pop-style music hidden in odd time signatures that no one ever bothers to explore – it is probably the biggest untapped resource in music.”
The album ends with My Pet Rhino’s debut single, Is This Really How It Ends?, an anthemic ode to creative dissatisfaction. The song goes out with a bang courtesy of a clamorous group sing-along.
“Right from the outset of writing that track I really wanted to have the ending of the song sound like a huge crowd at a gig singing the words back to the band,” Maratheftis says. “I invited as many family and friends as I could muster down to the studio to lend their voices to the cause. In the end we got about 30 people turn up on a Sunday afternoon and sing along, and the result sounded awesome.
“It was super cool to be able to involve my family and friends in my little passion project, and I am super grateful to all those who turned up to make the track sound as good as it does.”
Listen to My Pet Rhino everywhere here.