A VOTE FOR THE FUTURE? THE ELECTORATE IS RIGHT
- Bernard Zuel
- Jun 4
- 6 min read
APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH given democracy sausage day is still fresh in the memory – and with almost as satisfying a result as said sausage (and onion, egg and bacon) from North Rocks Public School, if you’re wondering – thoughts turn to matters controversial, domestic and charged, as Josh Morris of The Electorate flicks on his camera.
Fellow members of the (now mostly) Sydney trio, bassist Eliot Fish and drummer Nick Kennedy, were otherwise occupied with work so can’t help flog their second album, By Design, but Morris is here to hear that I had been sitting this morning, my arse shivering, wishing for a summer of cicadas as described in the new album’s song of the same name. Not that the song, a wistful shuffle blending gentle acoustic, blue-sky electric and heartbreak melody, is sunshine and ferries making their way to Circular Quay. After all there are images of cracked pavements laid over bones of the past, as well as fog on the river; and morals questioned and statues falling down, as well as trams running.
Still Summer Of Cicadas did warm me on the inside even if, like the wearied city, I have a hole where my heart should be. Indeed, the sense of music valued, as much as the world described, explains why elsewhere on the album The Electorate ask for peace, love and kindness – as in “What is so wrong, have we all gone mad?/What is so wrong with peace, love and kindness?” sung over a twitchy beat and guided guitar.
But is Morris a dreamer? Maybe not the only one?
“It’s because I’m wearing round glasses that you can say that, right?,” he says, smiling. “Peace Love And Kindness and Summer Of Cicadas I guess are from the same point of idealism, or realisation. I hit this point recently, and it was maybe sparked by some of the conversations that Nick Cave’s been having around cynicism and hope and how hope is this act of rebellion, defiance, but playing in a band is a little bit like that, in a way. It certainly feels like an act of foolishness in a lot of ways, but for me it’s a great thing.”
(For those new to the band, the chances are you aren’t nearly as new to them as you think. Morris, Fish and Kennedy have been making this act of foolishness for a couple of decades. First it was together in The Templebears for an all too brief time in the early/mid ‘90s, then in various shades of local guitar bands from Big Heavy Stuff and The Apartments to Knievel and Imperial Broads, before reforming and refashioning as The Electorate in 2020 for a belated, impressive, classic pop-style debut with the telling name of You Don’t Have Time To Stay Lost.)
“I think for Peace Love And Kindness it was just a case of I’m politically engaged,” Morris continues. “I pay attention to some of what’s going on in the world, and I am really tired of common acts of decency being forsaken for benign acts of cruelty and ignorance. And I think [it was] fuelled by that desire not to be cynical.”
Cynical? Vous?
“I spent most of my life being cynical and its really fun, and really easy in a way, but it doesn’t feel like a positive step forward. And I kind of feel like I needed to be taking those steps to be a little more actively optimistic,” Morris says. “And yeah Summer Of Cicadas does tap into that, but also taps into how I feel about Sydney and living in the city for such a long time is a blessing and a curse.
“It’s great in a lot of ways but this is an emptiness to it, or a love of the shiny new. Even before I was an older man I quite liked the historical aspects of Sydney and some of things that get bulldozed in the name of progress or profit. I think Summer Of Cicadas is trying to grapple with all of those things.”
One thing about that description of Sydney, as pretty but shallow, which is not exactly unfair and certainly common, is that you can take The Electorate as an example of why that doesn’t always hold true. Here are three men who have been in bands all their adult lives, and don’t seem in a hurry to stop making music that might evoke The Cure and The Dropbears one minute, The Go-Betweens and Guided By Voices the next, while being ignored by perpetually ignorant radio.
Yes, the number of venues has been reduced over those decades – though again, in recent times there has been a steady return in some parts of the city – but Sydney’s still a city where people can care and do care. Where, in other words, optimism hasn’t completely succumbed to cynicism.
“I think it’s those small acts of kindness and positivity, that faith in humankind to be decent [sustaining us],” is Morris’ explanation.
Okay, enough macro, let’s bring it back to the immediately personal. Peace love & kindness is all well and good in our politics and society, but how do you manage it in a three-piece band of equals, with a couple of writers, a trio of singers and probably six or seven opinions?
“I think in a lot of ways we work really hard to be democratic in how we approach things. And I think the fact that our friendship … look, we were young and passionate and hot-headed and it was our entire universe when we were teens and early 20s. And when we broke up it was a bit close, we took the wrong things seriously back then, which is easy to do without a degree of perspective that you get with a little bit more time,” says Morris-the-elder.
“So when we came back together again it’s kind of been incremental. We got back together for a one-off show, and that felt really good, so we’ll do an album, and that felt really good. So we change the name and do another album, and that feels really good. I think we respect each other a lot, I think we’ve got a legacy of time and of a shared creative experience, which I kinda go into a little bit in the lyrics of [By Design’s opening track] End, where there is just something really unique about what we share. We all recognise that.”
Which is nice, but is it practical with more complicated, adult lives?
“Eliot’s moved over to Adelaide and we are working out how we make that work, and people were like ‘will you get a new bass player?’, but there was no way!” says Morris emphatically. “With this record what’s really interesting is that I always written songs and Eliot’s always written songs, but collectively we’ve written songs for this record, which has brought out the democratic nature of things more.”
Writing together is something which really only began out of the more jam-driven approach of this new version of the trio and this time three songs from that process made the cut alongside songs written individually. And it has also helped that all three are now contributing vocally, offering an extra harmony, but more importantly an extra idea.
“There is a sense of elation that happens when you are creating something out of thin air, that is unlike anything else,” says Morris, clearly riding on that wave. “We have not really had the fortune or courage to try and do that on stage but in the safety of the rehearsal space it’s a really fantastic thing to be able to do and it’s being open to that idea and having the time and patience and experience and the respect to be able to go, okay, let’s try it.”
You can’t be more optimistic – and foolish, but so what? – than that.
READ MORE
SEE MORE
The Electorate play Waywards, Newtown – July 5
LISTEN MORE
BANDCAMP: Listen to The Electorate – By Design
SPOTIFY: Listen to The Electorate – By Design
APPLE MUSIC: Listen to The Electorate – By Design
By Design is out now on Love As Fiction Records.
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