A little patience
The Grates are playing a very special, very secret show to launch their new single - and, as Andrew P Street discovers, monitoring the state of the nation's water supply.
Patience Hodgson might be calling from her sunny Brisbane hometown but she's delighted that they've been getting a bit of rain lately, if only to replenish the state's reservoirs. Which, it has to be said, is an unexpected way to start a chat: most rock stars, after all, don't generally monitor municipal water levels.
"No, I reckon they do," she counters. "I reckon they would, because everybody that I've ever met that's in a rock'n'roll band - well, not everybody - but most people are fairly considerate. Like Claire Bowditch and Bob Evens - all the guys from Jebediah, actually - and the guys from Frenzal Rhomb and Magic Dirt: there are a lot of vegans and a lot of people that are environmentally conscious. So I reckon that you'd find quite a big percentage."
So if Time Out was to call Tim Rogers right now, he'd be able to give us a comprehensive rundown of dam capacities across Victoria?
"I don't know that he'd be able to give you a complete run down, but I think he pays attention. Tim Rogers is the first person I though of, actually, because he loves the land. He sings about it, he loves the touring, he seems like he's quite the Australian guy. I think he'd be paying attention. Maybe not with figures, but I reckon he watches his showers."
Well, given that The Grates are known for their elaborate stage sets, perhaps this is an opportunity to get a bit of an An Inconvenient Truth vibe going on: a few songs, some Powerpoint presentations, some charts and figures...
"We keep all of our politically stances in the band pretty personal, because we're pretty democratic. It's one of those things: at some point we decided that's not the path that we go down. And there's enough bands and blues and roots people that do it. We're pretty politically-free. But I hold my own personal opinions."
As you can probably surmise from the above, Hodgson is one of the world's perkiest interviewees - especially since she's incredibly excited about the upcoming release of their Teeth Lost, Hearts Won album. "We learnt so much, and I think everybody got a lot better about what they were doing. We learnt so much from the first time we recorded, and we also wanted a lot more from ourselves: we weren't easily pleased when it came to songwriting this time around. Like, for myself I put a lot more thought into my lyrics than I previously had: I was better at my job, John was better and his job and Alana was better at her job. So it was just..." she giggles, "...better!"
The band are making their live return with secret shows around the nation - and if you doubt how secret they are, Hodgson admits that "I didn't actually even know about it. But quite a few bands do it through MySpace: the Presets did them, and Cut Copy did them. So ours is just the same as that, but a little bit trickier because they're secret until 48 hours beforehand just to make them a little more fun and a little more special. And we try to do that with everything we do.
"Like, the last tour we did in Australia, with the ‘Winter Wonderland' tour, we didn't want to just go out and be a band on the road just on stage. So we had this massive gorgeous backdrop and it was such a pain to set up every day. Every day we were like ‘why are we doing this?' but they you'd get on stage and it would look so good! And we had these two massive Christmas trees that we'd covered in fake snow and it got all of these gorgeous animals made - there was this deer, which is behind my couch right now, and these penguins - to make it more of a special event.
But every night we'd have to pack up the trees and you had to take off every single branch, and every tree had about 50 branches, and every night, and everybody would do anything to avoid setting up those trees. But once you're on stage, all that stuff's forgotten about. And then you get off stage and you meet some people and you have some drinks and everyone's having a good time, and then all the audiences leaves and you're like ‘Arrrghh! The trees!'"
The Grates play their super-secret show on Tue 8 July - and to find out where it's at you'll need to check out www.myspace.com/thegrates or subscribe to the Time Out newsletter, by typeing your email address into the box below