For a group of musicians that couldn’t have seen themselves playing together five years ago, in the two years that Mood Spill have been a band they have established their unique sound and coinciding energetic live presence in the Australian scene.
Off the back of performing the main stage at Queenscliff Music Festival late last year, Mood Spill are gearing up to release their maiden EP on June 5 and embark upon a tour in various locations around New South Wales and Victoria to celebrate its uncorking.
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This EP is particularly monumental for band member Tom Riccioni, who consistently sits on lead vocals, guitar and songwriting duties, as the 7-track will be released on vinyl, the first vinyl project he has been a part of.
“It’s really exciting to have a small body of work coming out on an actual vinyl,” says Riccioni. “It’s the first vinyl release I’ve ever been a part of, so I’m feeling very excited. We’ve been a band for about two years now, and some of the tunes have been circling, at least in my world for the last four years, so it’s also just great to be releasing some of this music.”
And yet despite Riccioni bringing a lot of his lyrical and compositional ideas to the band, from the outset Mood Spill has committed to one another to make the project a collaborative effort. One which sees band members rotating instruments and songwriting duties regularly.
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“In our discussion, a few years back we decided we wanted [Mood Spill] to be a collaborative project,” he says. “I was initially coming in with most of the songwriting and had a pretty clear idea of arrangements in my head but early on the musicality of everyone in the project shone through.
“Everyone in the band is very adaptable and creative in their own way, which isn’t just limited to one instrument, everyone’s got their own ideas for arrangements.”
And it is this collaborative approach that amalgamated in the bands first ever jam, a stirring experience that saw Mood Spill construct their latest single release Kieran – a punchy 2:17 minute track, complete with guitar solo, driving drumbeat and lyrics that will have you gyrating, Keiran is the type of song that you want to listen to again and again.
“Oli [Morley-Sattler] and I have known each other for a couple years, but we ran into each other at a festival in Victoria, he was playing in a band, I was working in a smoothie van at the time. We organised to play some music together and just had this big ol’ slam jam on some instruments. It was in that moment that we were like ‘shit, this is pretty good’.
And from that very moment Mood Spill came into being, at least in its preliminary stages, but it didn’t take long for the collaborative nature of the band to become apparent. It was only in their first rehearsal that their chemistry translated into a song being written from a jam.
“From there,” says band member Morley-Sattler, “in our first rehearsal, we wrote a song within like 15 minutes of jamming. It’s the track called Kieran, a single, which is our latest single, which is what we are using to announce the EP.”
It is this chemistry and energy that can be heard in their recorded tracks but is better represented in their live shows – a resounding disclaimer that Riccioni and Morley-Sattler outline is essential to witness the full Mood Spill experience.
“As exciting as this EP is, the best way to connect with Mood Spill is to come to a show, and to feel our energy on stage.”
For a band that has not yet released much music, Mood Spill are emerging fast and hard as a group to watch. And it is with their EP vinyl release they have been supported by a new record label Unravelled, co-founded and operated by band member Adrian Verna.
For Adrian and Harry Baker, the other half of Unravelled, their endeavours stem from a strong passion for music, an ethos that Mood Spill so authentically personify.
Grab tickets to the Mood Spill tour here.
