A Band You Should Know: Shock Corridor
Photos by Bingham Thurgate and Harry Baker
Untethered to genre, Shock Corridor make the sort of music they like to listen to. Each track is a carefully orchestrated cocktail of brooding tones and cathartic release. They revel in the dark but make it playful with their coy smiles and cute, soft-spoken tenderness.
Their new single, “Drag Nets”, is theatrical and gutteral. Aptly accompanied by a music video that’s hair-raisingly good. With an album on the horizon, this is only the beginning for the bright-eyed band. I spoke to George Miller (vocals & guitar), Saskia Permezel (violin & vocals), Joe Nossal (synth, drum machine & trumpet), Paddy Walter (drums), Ari Guthrie (guitar) and George’s mum’s dog, Rascal, about band names, their diverse musical influence and partying with Boba Fett after opening for Floodlights last year.
Where does the name Shock Corridor come from? Is it from the film?
George: Yeah. We've had a few names. When Sas [Saskia] joined, we changed it to kind of start fresh and write new music.
When we first started, we were called ‘Wake in Fright’, which was a bit too on the nose [laughs]. My Dad's got this great bookshelf with a bunch of old crime books at his place, and all the spines had really good names. The name Shock Corridor just came about in that flow. I’m still the only one that’s seen the movie.
Paddy: I was going to say that there's no direct plot or thematic links, but, actually, I don't know because I haven't seen it [everyone laughs].
It's about a journalist, right?
George: Yeah, well, it's about this guy trying to get the Nobel Prize for research. He kind of says that he's psychotic and has to try and catch someone. The title just looked really good, which is why we chose it. Since then, people who haven't seen the movie are always like, ‘Oh, sick name.’
In my head, I imagine this one Jackass stunt where they all run down a hallway with tasers hanging from the roof. Have you seen it?
George: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve seen it. That's a really good music video idea [laughs].
It's pretty hard to find an original name these days.
George: Everything comes from something. We were just so tired of trying to all find and agree on a name. We eventually realised, it's okay, it doesn't mean anything.
Joe: Yeah, you think of any band, and you never really think of the name. After you listen to two songs, you're like, oh, that’s just the name.
George: It sticks pretty easily.
Picking a band name when I was growing up used to be the biggest deal. So I definitely relate.
Joe: And you gotta do the balance between kind of trying too hard to be clever and also trying not to care.
George: Shock Corridor just sounds quite theatrical as well, which I like.
Joe: Dramatic.
Paddy: Yeah, you can just project your own meaning onto it.
George: One of my mum's friends who's in her mid 60's was like, ‘Is that a euphemism for anal sex?’ Like, great, awesome, thanks so much. [laughs]
That's an imaginative interpretation. So you guys were all friends before you started the band?
Ari: Yeah, pretty much.
Saskia: We knew each other from house parties and stuff, I reckon, from when we were about 17. We were just around, and then post-high school, it was more.
George: Yeah. Sas did projections for us at our first public gig
Saskia: And I got a massive upgrade next gig. [laughs]
.]
Oh, cool, have you done much projection work?
Saskia: I did projection and set design at uni. I just wanted to be involved.
What else do you guys do outside of the band?
George: We all work, and then just uni. But music's kind of the main thing, really. Henry [bass & trumpet] just got an internship at the Bureau of Meteorology.
Oh, wow.
George: Yeah, they just call it ‘The Bureau’. I'm like, ‘What are you doing today?’, and he's like, ‘I'm going to the Bureau’ [laughs].
You told me you’re studying creative writing, George. How does that come into your lyric writing process?
George: I always really liked lyrics and what people were writing. I took a lot of initial inspiration from the frontmen of bands and lyricists like Ian Curtis. People who could make it interesting to listen to and match it musically really well.
That kind of made me want to do it myself, but yeah, I always enjoyed creative writing. At the moment, I'm trying to get a bit more liberated by it, which is what's good about uni. I’ve always wanted to write lyrics for music, and I think I'm very privileged to write for this kind of music.
Saskia: You're pretty good at it.
George: Thanks.
It's very emotive. For me, it brings out a lot of emotions I didn't know were there.
George: Oh, thank you. That's great. It's funny, when you yell it, everyone seems to pay attention a lot more. But it's cool seeing people who like the lyrics.
Saskia: You have a lot of emotion when you do it, too.
George: Yeah, I think it's part of the performance, and it makes it easier. It's kind of about negative emotions, which makes it vulnerable. But it's reassuring, writing about that stuff, that no matter how personal you think it is, people still resonate with it. So, those emotions at least are very common, even though they feel very specific.
I think as long as people don't think you're being phony about it, or trying too hard, or something, people seem to get it.
Joe: It's the easiest thing to see through, I think.
Paddy: Yeah. Especially in performances. The worst thing to watch is a dishonest performance.
You guys flow pretty freely between genres. It's kind of a cliche question, but do you like to be categorised, or do you feel like it's more of a burden?
Joe: I think I personally love that we don't really feel like we have to stick to any particular sound. If we have a new song or something, it's not like, ‘Oh, but it's not what our other songs sound like.’ I think that's definitely reflected in our music. It makes performances really interesting too.
Saskia: Yeah, it's theatrical. You bring in a violin and then suddenly trumpets, but then there’s beats going on and it's like, ‘what?’
Theatrical is a good word to describe it.
George: Yeah, I think we just wear a lot of our genres and influences on our sleeve.
Ari: Yeah, I find it easier to talk about influences rather than genre
Yeah, fair. What are some of your main influences at the moment?
Ari: I guess, one of the big ones is Massive Attack. We've tried to rip them off a bunch of times. What else is there?
Saskia: I love Dirty Three, and Warren Ellis, personally. And then I've recently discovered this new band called Quade. They're small, but they have crazy, really cool violin stuff going on.
Joe: Yeah. I think a big strength of our influence is that all of us share a lot of different music, like Paddy's super into jazz.
Paddy: Yeah. Most of the references that you guys talk about, I've never really heard of. But I sort of like that. Because I'm studying jazz, it’s a genre where people feel so locked into a certain style. But, it's nice to be free, not having standard of what the song should sound like. It's really fucking hard to figure out what to play when there's already a beat happening, [laughs] but it's part of the fun.
Do you have any jazz influences?
Paddy: Not specifically, but I think drummers like Yusuf Deyes have influenced me a lot, especially when we were starting out. I've realised the crazily wide array of genres that I enjoy. I think studying jazz gives me more flexibility. I couldn't play half the shit that I'd play in this band if I hadn't been studying Jazz.
It’s interesting that your influences vary within the band. I feel like it would create a lot of different avenues to go down musically.
George: Yeah, it all comes from areas that are quite wide, and so a lot of people can see the influence and stuff.
It's quite emotional, and there's a lot of yelling, but I think overall it's not difficult to listen to, which is important because I don't like listening to stuff that’s difficult to listen to, at all. Like math rock, I can't do math rock or any of that stuff. Or IDM? I've realised, it’s not intense dance music, but intelligent dance music.
Joe: Worst genre name of all time. [laughs]
George: Yeah. Yikes. But yeah, I think that's always been our sound for the most part. Just trying to make it accessible. I mean, I think.
Joe: Pretty accessible.
George: Yeah.
Saskia: Accessible to us.
That's all that matters.
Paddy: We've sort of just figured out that if we like how it sounds, it doesn't matter what genre it might fit into, if we come up with it, and we're all liking it. It's just like, ‘cool, let's do that’.
How was opening for Floodlights?
Paddy: So good. Like the two best nights of my life.
Saskia: So fun.
Paddy: They were so fucking awesome. Yeah, the best people ever.
Ari: And it was so nice to play, a good set-up like that at the Nightcat.
Paddy: It went literally perfect.
George: We were just totally riding off their coattails [laughs]
Saskia: Free beers, free tequila. And Fireball! [laughs]. Joe had an afterparty at his house, and everyone came. This guy in a Boba Fett outfit with a lightsaber just came in from the street.
Ari: I had a Lightsaber duel with him.
[Laughs] Mental.
George: Yeah, that was so good. It was also just the first time that we played with people who were doing really well as a band and stuff, and they were just really kind to us. They were so hospitable and lovely. And so encouraging.
I guess one last question. What's important to Shock Corridor when you're making music?
Saskia: Just playing what we want to play and having fun. I mean, it's so basic, but it's important.
Ari: Making sure it translates to a live scene as well. When we’re playing live, I never want it to feel like we're just pressing the spacebar. From the start, we think about how it sounds, with everyone playing.
Joe: I also think when writing, saying yes to everything. And kind of trusting other people's instincts. Sometimes it's easy to go ‘I don't know about that,’ but if you lean into it, it can lead to something we wouldn’t have expected
Saskia: We've also become a lot more open with each other.
George: I think this general pullback every week to sit with each other and work on things is super grounding. That's very important to me, to kind of make sure that's always maintained and nurtured.
Making music can be such an open thing and quite revealing, but having five of the closest people in my life to nurture that and put that into a final body of work is a very trusting and valuable feeling. The end result is always way more valuable than you'd initially think because this thing just changes in so many directions and kind of has this big weight to it.
That’s really nice. Everyone sort of puts their own feelings or ideas into it.
Paddy: Yeah. It's so lucky that we've all found ourselves coming together as friends first, and then the way we make music has always been so collaborative, it's so considerate, but also not too polite. If you think something, you say it, and it's, like you said, nurturing.
George: I think it also belongs in sharing stages with people, and it just becomes this very collaborative area where everyone is all kind of working towards something.
It's one thing to kind of be isolated in the creative process, but to put music out and then belong in a much wider community of all these people who are also expressing themselves in their own way is important to us. In Melbourne in particular, it's really great right now, just belonging in a sphere of really awesome people.