Client Liaison Want Everyone To Dance And Be Rich And Popular

Client Liaison are self-confessed “inner city trendies” Harvey Miller and Monte Morgan, who believe ‘80s Australia was the real Australia. After watching the clip for their track “End of the Earth” you’re inclined to agree those were historical good times. Or you’re just laughing a lot. Client Liaison are only semi-laughing; the rich silliness of that era’s playboys fascinates them, because these are the dreams of ordinary men.

Noisey: I can’t tell if you’re bemused by Australian culture or are weird patriots.

Harvey Miller: Both. We’re sending it up, but there’s an underlying appreciation of it.

Monte Morgan: “End of the Earth” is essentially a criticism of the parts of Australia I don’t like, but then Harvey made the film clip as a celebration of Australia. It adds another level.

Harvey: It’s a double-sided investigation.

The “End of the Earth” clip does have all the best things in it— like Bob Hawke.

Harvey: If you look to our right there, that’s our A/V section. That contains our three 1980s video cameras. I’ll go grab something and show you. [Harvey comes back with an enormous shoulder-mounted camera thing] This is how we gain our aesthetic. As you can see, it even has a keyboard on the side. We joke that it has email capability. It doesn’t. [Holding up an Ansett mug] Do you see this?

An Ansett-branded mug.

Harvey: We’re putting out some singles soon. They’re launching early October.

Monte: The first one’s called “Feeling.”

Harvey: Interestingly, it’s not about Australia. I don’t think people expect that. Even though “End of the Earth” is a bit humorous, we’re not really a joke band. It’s more of a general pop song.

Monte: It’s like a power ballad.

You guys give the appearance of being into novelty.

Harvey: I don’t think we do in the sense of our live shows. What I’m trying to say is people dance, at our shows.

Monte: We wrote “End of the Earth” very seriously. There was no laughing involved. With the film clip there was.

Harvey: People dance at our shows foremost. People don’t laugh at the shows.

Monte: Some people do. Some people get really confused when they first see us.

It’s that clip. Your average citizen hasn’t seen a sweeping Alice Springs vista.

Monte: That’s a cliché, but a lot of people fetishise European history in exchange for Australian history. You know, the cultural cringe. They tend to dismiss a lot of things in the ‘80s as farcical or crass. We think otherwise. We’d like to return seriousness to that era. We enjoy it. We think people should not be ashamed of shrimp on barbies. That’s a sign of a wealthy country that offers a life of leisure.

And that’s where with Ansett comes into it?

Harvey: It’s Australia’s greatest airline. Christopher Skase owned it, another one of Client Liaison’s favourite people. It’s like Australia on the world stage, you know?

Monte: The people who would embody the Australia we champion would be Alan Bond, Skase, Farnham—the plutocrats and the playboys of that era. Again, I should stress every song we write is not gonna be about Australian heritage. It’s a constant theme, but it’s not in every song.

What else is baking your noodles?

Monte: We have a song called “Hotel Stay,” which is about taking a girl to a hotel.

Harvey: Yeah, cosmopolitan male vibe.

Monte and Harvey: [Singing] Pillows and robes/can be oh-so sensual, let’s/dim the lights/and see what we find.

That was sexy.

Monte: It’s a sexy song.

Harvey: It was originally going to be called “Motel Stay,” but Monte thought that was too cheap so we changed it to “Hotel Stay.”

Monte: Another one, which might be our next single, is “That's Desire.” It’s about how I think women are often beautiful because they’re rich.

For real?

Monte: Yeah. I think so much is based on how people dress and how they keep themselves, and rich people dress well and have class.

Harvey: It’s a crass generalisation we like to embody.

Monte: I noticed myself being attracted to rich women. So I wrote a song about it.

Harvey: In real life, we’re just inner city trendies who vote Greens. With Client Liaison, it’s definitely a character. We pretend to be cosmopolitan, business-minded conservatives.

Monte: Staying in airport lounges.

Monte: It does play on that, I’ve written a lot of songs recently about the desire to be rich, and how that’s a real desire for so many people.

Harvey: Creepily, it’s like every human’s fatal flaw. Like Monte said: in every human, there’s one little tiny bit that wants to be disgustingly rich. There’s a little bit of seriousness and truth to all this at the end of the day. If I had a billion dollars, I would relaunch Ansett. I would buy Alan Bond’s Australia II that he won the America’s Cup with, and I would sail it on a pilgrimage to Christopher Skase’s Mirage resort in Port Douglas.

Such passion. You two are deceptively well-organised.

Harvey: We’re hypercritical. Then again, we love creating that world. That’s really helped us online, with our aesthetic and our old world, Australian-heritage narrative.

Monte: We’re trying to make music that appeals to everyone, so we are trying to make pop music at the end of the day. I don’t like that idea that people don't want to be popular, that they don’t want to be rich. I think it’s more established in music now. Popular music is not so frowned upon. We’re trying to make money, we’re trying to appeal to a wide audience. We’re trying to get hits, really.

Harvey: Shameless.

Monte: I get a little honest in interviews.

Harvey: This shit’s like fuckin’ therapy. We never talk like this.

That’s very demystifying, to refer to Client Liaison as a brand not a band.

Harvey: The Client Liaison ethos or the Client Liaison sentiment? That’s a bit more poetic.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you probably have a comprehensive five-year plan.

Monte: Everything’s so slow on our end!

Harvey: I’m gonna be at Lake Como playing chess at George Clooney’s house.

Monte: Nah we’ll be touring on the Spirit of Tasmania.

Harvey: We’ll be touring on the fuckin’ Spirit! Hey we actually have looked into that.

Follow Toby on Twitter: @jane_tobes

Client Liaison will be playing our Melbourne VICE Presents show this Thursday at Ya Ya’s. RSVP here.

They’ll be releasing their single “Feelings” October 7. Get down to their launches:

19 October at The Toff in Melbourne

23 October at Goodgod in Sydney