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Music

Update: There Is Still No Claire in Claire & The Cops

Fingers crossed that they are the only cop presence at our Sydney party this Thursday.

Claire & The Cops are a three-piece from Sydney who are already ticking all the appropriate garage rock boxes that include; playing with Palms and Scotdrakula, releasing a fuzzy distortion filled debut EP cassette tape and working with producer/rad dude Owen Penglis.

They will hopefully be the only cops turning up at our Sydney Noisey party this Thursday when they and fellow taser loving bands Weak Boys and Aloha Units take over Newtown's Waywards. Entry is free but you need to RSVP here.

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We spoke to vocalist Felix Lush, to find out who the hell Claire is.

Noisey: So the band name is in reference to your first band practice?
Felix Lush: When we started it was just Scarlett and I. Amy didn’t join till about the second or third rehearsal. Scarlet hadn’t played drums for about two years and I was pretty new to the guitar so to compensate for our general incompetence we played really loud. After about 40 minutes a cop car shows up at our door and we were told to stop playing. During our next couple of rehearsals Amy had started playing bass, my neighbour Claire kept barging into the room and shouting abuse before calling the cops. We did the noble thing and named our band after her.

Have you had any other altercations with the cops?
Once in high school I got high in my school uniform and got caught. The police were involved and they were trying to find the supplier like it was some underground operation. It was pretty funny now that I think about it. I was suspended for one day. Scarlett once ran away from home, but got cold so she went to the police station to get a lift home.

Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall and Straight Arrows influenced your EP. Do you feel that comes out in the sound overall?
If it sounds half as good as any of those artists I’d be stoked. It’s hard to objectively listen to your music but those are the bands who I’ve listened to over again and who make me excited about guitar music. I was in Year Eight when I first heard Something Happens by Straight Arrows. It blew my 13-year-old mind.

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Owen from Straight Arrows mastered the EP. Was that your plan from the beginning?
Most of our decisions for this EP were influenced by our complete lack of money. we recorded the whole thing at my house and I’ve been interning at Owen’s recording studio for a while now. So when I mentioned mastering he offered to do it for free. It was just a bonus that everything Owen touches ends up sounding a thousand times better.

Was the cassette release done out of necessity or choice? I guess you could say necessity. Originally we wanted to put out a vinyl but didn’t have that kind of money and our friends Mitch and Sam (from the S-bends and Born To Lose Records) had a bunch of spare blank tapes. Anything is better than CDRs, those jewel cases suck ass.

Noisey presents Weak Boys, Aloha Units and Claire & The Cops at Waywards, Sydney - Thursday February 26. Free entry, but you need to RSVP here.

Tom Hutchins would never get in trouble with the police. He also writes for We Talk, You Die.