Today we’re excited to announce Gimmie Records’ second release, the highly anticipated self-titled debut from Meanjin/Brisbane punk duo, Piss Shivers – Caleb Stoddart (guitar/vocals) and Gemma Wyer (drums). Their raucous on stage energy, which you may have witnessed at their shows supporting Amyl and the Sniffers, Civic, The Unknowns, C.O.F.F.I.N, Mini Skirt, and Arse, has been captured in a 16 minute and 30 second towering onslaught of explosion of focused fury and wry self-deprecation, by Pious Faults’ Tom Lipman’s live-in-the-room production style. Piss Shivers’ songs are emotionally charged and undeniably raw, manifested from being in one’s own head too much, driven by anxieties, addiction, a tumultuous homelife, and the premature loss of friends. The album has both depth and humour. Jack Mitchell from Guppy guests on the high tension track ‘Rats’ as well as painted the album cover art. The record was mastered by Mikey Young. Piss Shivers’ record unequivocally earns its spot as one of our top picks for Punk Album of the Year, that’s why we put it out.

We first saw Piss Shivers play in 2021 and were in awe of how full and huge they sounded. And, if you read Gimmie issue 5 you’ll already be familiar with them via the chat we featured with them (despite them never having released a song yet) and know that they met at a Propagandhi show, and of Gemma singing with Jello Biafra at a gig moments before acquiring a black eye!

We’re excited to be putting this record out. We love Piss Shivers and hope you will too!!

Piss Shivers finally have music coming out into the world. I know you were sitting on it for such a long time. When did you record it? 

CALEB: We recorded it in November 2021, it’s crazy it’s 2023 now. We recorded it in a National storage shed in Bowen Hills, which is where we currently practise. 

GEMMA: Deep underground. 

CALEB: It’s really tinny, it’s has the corrugated-iron-kind-of-roller-door-vibe. We tracked all the instruments live.

Who recorded it? 

GEMMA: Connor and Tom from Pious Faults. Tom agreed to record us, he’s looking to branch out and focus a little bit more on recording. 

CALEB: He wanted to practice recording so he said he’d do it for a couple of hundred bucks. 

GEMMA: Connor has done, like, audio engineering stuff before, so he kind of helps out, particularly with setting it up, like mic-ing everything and getting the sound right. You can imagine what it sounds like in a storage shed as opposed to a purpose built room. 

Maybe that’s why it sounds the way it does?

GEMMA: It has a pretty massive sound. When we practise there, if we take a recording on our phone, the drums particularly sound massive. That sound translated really well because obviously there’s only two of us, without bass. Having the drums and the cymbals and the big guitar sound fill that and occupy that space. It worked well for our sound. Tom mixed it and Mikey Young mastered.

How long did you take to record it? A few days? 

GEMMA: Two nights basically, all live.

CALEB: Then I just overdubbed another guitar. We recorded vocals at Dutch Vinyl…

GEMMA: In, like, a storage room filled with boxes of records. 

CALEB: Tom used to work there. After work I’d come up after the shop closed. 

GEMMA: That’s where Jack from Guppy came as well, to recorded vocals for ‘Rats’. We know, Guppy. We know she’s amazing. We gave her full control over that, and she came in and smashed it. She had a very specific idea of what she wanted.

It sounds pretty hectic. 

CALEB: [Laughs]. Evil or something!

Yeah. What else do you remember from the recording?

CALEB: I got grumpy at Gemma. We had this fight. In one of the songs ‘Hoodie’ when I sing a part it lets me know when I’m going to change, in the recording I thought the bit was going longer. I was like, ‘It’s three times!’ Gemma was like, “It’s four times!” I was like, ‘Bruh, it’s three!’ We were swearing at each other [laughs].

GEMMA: The whole thing was that you kept changing at three but you were counting four. I’d be like, one, two, three, four. You changed on the three. We were having a back and forth. Caleb was like, ‘For fucks sake!’ Tom was just sitting there listening…

CALEB: It was a bit awkward for him.

GEMMA: Tom was like, “It’s actually four Caleb.”

[Laughter]

CALEB: I was like, ‘You’re fucking gaslighting me. I know how it’s supposed to be.’ Then I was like, oh, yeah.

GEMMA: Basically, I’m always right [laughs].

CALEB: Also, we were going to do another bit of tracking and there was a bloke that was sleeping in one of the storage sheds down he was very angry and told us to “Shut the fuck up!” He was bashing on the roller door and we were all like, holy fuck! 

GEMMA: Jack was there, we were going to record her vocals for ‘Rats’.  We didn’t end up doing it because we didn’t want to piss off this guy again. 

CALEB: He went on a five minute rant of ‘Your mum hates you and your grandmother hates you.’ Very psychotic. 

GEMMA: It was really trippy. We were like, everybody be quiet, oh shit, hide.

CALEB: He was yelling. 

GEMMA: You were just warming up. It was so annoying because bands practise there all the time and nobody’s ever had that issue before. People run business out of there and I reckon there’s a few people that live in them.

CALEB: There was a guy there the other day belting it out singing, he must have been playing electric drums because you could hear him banging on something. 

GEMMA: There’s still like a piece of cardboard that I wrote:  hi, we’re just recording music, if you want to talk to us, please knock lightly, that we ended up sticking on the outside of the roller door. 

Let’s talk about the songs on your self-titled debut. What can you tell me about opener ‘Red Stripe’?

CALEB: We wanted to do like more of a hardcore song, like L.A. hardcore. Lyrically, it’s just about being brain dead [laughs]

GEMMA: It’s a common theme [laughs].

Do you write all the lyrics, Caleb?

CALEB: Songs are about alcoholism, drinking, displeasure. ‘Red Stripe’ is one of my favourites to play. 

Do you have a favourite song, Gemma? 

GEMMA: Funny, actually, because it’s sometimes my least favourite to play. I really like ‘Onerous’. 

Why is it your least favourite to play? 

GEMMA: Because there’s this part that fucking every single time… 

CALEB: This is the first time I’m hearing this [laughs]. 

GEMMA: The fill that I do. I don’t know what to call it. Like, the drum roll kind of thing. When we were recording, I feel like we were pretty tight. I felt drum fit. I felt like we had practise so much that we were really ready, but that was the one part that I couldn’t nail in recording. So in the record now, in the first section, I do that fill, I do it properly, and in the second one, I do like a sort of really stunted kind of like half, four notes instead of eight, and it really sticks out to me. It’s so frustrating to listen to. We tried it, like, ten times when recording, and I just couldn’t get it. They were like, “oh, it’s fine, no one will notice.” And now it’s forever on the record. And I’m just like it really gives me, like, a skin crawl. But I think our newest song that we haven’t recorded is probably my favourite to play now.  It’s called the ‘New, New, New Song’ [laughs].

CALEB: I’ve got vague lyrics in my head, but it always changes.

What’s song ‘Onerous’ about?

CALEB: It’s about being stuck in my own head. 

A lot of the album, except for maybe ‘Eyes Off You’, is in that theme. 

CALEB: Yeah. It’s all about being stuck in your head. Getting down about yourself, struggles with lifestyle choices.

Is that how you were feeling when you were writing this collection of songs? 

CALEB: Yeah. I was definitely in a place when I was writing it, coming up to writing the lyrics I wasn’t very happy. 

Was there anything in particular that was contributing to that? 

CALEB:I was doing a lot of drinking and drugs. I wasn’t happy in my work. I had a lot of friends falling out or moving away. That all contributed to that. 

GEMMA: Big time. 

CALEB: Yeah. You just go through the motions. I’m definitely in a way better place now. It’s funny, it’s kind of bittersweet sometimes singing, I want to die! Actually, I don’t want to die now. I have a nice job. I’ve got a cool girlfriend. 

Do you think letting all that stuff out through music, though yelling about it, helped?

CALB: Yeah, it did. It was cathartic. I don’t know if it is now. I feel like I’ve tried to change the way I look at them so I can sing them without being so bummed out.

GEMMA: Being detached a little bit. 

CALEB: Yeah, maybe it’s like, there’s always someone going through that. For me, even when I’m going through a shit time, certain songs stick out. So I’ve kind of tried to change the thing of like, well, maybe I don’t feel like that anymore but maybe if someone else bought the record and heard the songs they’d be like, fucking hell, this is exactly how I’ll feel!

Some of the saddest fucking things I can think of musically, like, a real harrowing song, can really make me happy. You think it shouldn’t be like that but listening to something that’s just so fucking sad and harrowing it can bring joy. 

GEMMA: That human connection, I guess, that you get through knowing that other people experience what you’re experiencing. You feel like, I’m not alone. You’re matching the vibe. Of course. Yeah, I get it. 

‘Hoodie’ is a relatable song. Every time over the winter I’ve put my hoodie on I get that line from the song in my head: I want to hide in my hoodie forever.

CALEB: [Laughs] True? When I was a teenager, I would sneak out of home a lot. I just love putting my hoodie on. If I’m walking home late at night I’ll have my hoodie on and it’s like, don’t talk to me. It’s like my safety thing [laughs]. It’s like the headphone trick, no one will want to talk to you.

Tell us about the song ‘Eyes Off You’ that I mentioned earlier. 

CALEB: That song was kind of just like a dumb one that we wrote. I kind of came up with the lyrics on the spot. It was at least something different for us. 

GEMMA: It’s a slutty club song.

[Laughter]

I guess there’s that feeling for everyone, you’re drunk in a gig and you see someone and you’re like, oh, they’re kind of cool. That’s a universal thing too.

It’s a fun song that definitely provides a lighter moment on a dark album.

GEMMA: Yes, definitely. I guess it’s you’re having a dark day, you have a few drinks and go out and have that moment of…

CALEB: Oh, there’s a really cute person over there.

GEMMA: Then you go home and sleep it off…

CALEB: And a few more beers and you’ll be back to it. To “I’ve cooked it”.

GEMMA: The funniest part about song is that when we first started playing it, I vividly remember a time at The Zoo where we started playing it at completely different tempos. That was quite a big gig. And, like, I cooked it massively! 

[Laughter]

CALEB: There’s a bit in the song  where I’m like, blah, blah, blah, because I didn’t want to keep singing it [laughs]. 

What about song ‘Chained’?

CALEB: It’s about [sings] marijuana.

GEMMA: They’re all about marijuana in a way.

CALEB: The first bit is kind of ripped off an Offspring song.

GEMMA: Oh my god, you said you wouldn’t say that.

CALEB: But it is [laughs]. I do this thing where I’m playing and then I’ll sing random words. When playing that song I just had the line in my head: Every day it’s the same… that’s from an Offspring song. 

GEMMA: Shut up.

[Laughter]

CALEB: The other part of the song is about losing someone. The songs have different meanings sometimes, there’s different little bits of things.It’s a fun one to play, its fast.

GEMMA:  I know. We originally called it ‘Mosh’ because we were like, please, someone mosh at our shows.  I feel like that’s the biggest dream of mine, to have a crowd moving. I haven’t really had that before, like, in CNT EVN. You kind of feel like, I guess, it’s not gonna happen. Seeing that movement and that energy in a crowd is the best.

CALEB: The show we played at Mo’s Desert Clubhouse when we played with C.O.F.F.I.N was kind of weird, half the crowd’s these tanned, blonde surfer chicks who were like “raaaaah” “blaaaah” and smacking each other on the walls. It was fun to watch. They were the last people you’d think you’d see going wild in the pit. Such a funny dynamic.

GEMMA: How about those lights? Hectic.

CALEB: They were a bit too much. 

GEMMA: It’s really off putting when you’re playing.

CALEB: It was a bit overkill.

Yeah, the lights were almost like a strobe but it’s just they were changing so fast, like every second. Way too much. It’s distracting from the band and it just becomes not fun. What can you tell us about the song ‘Aren’t Ever’’?

CALEB: When I was younger, my mum was pretty depressed and had a lot of episodes. I feel like I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. The line: You aren’t ever going to believe it… crying in the night and screaming or whatever. I often get up really early and watch Rage, from six until I was in high school. I’d focus on that and zone into the TV when all this shit would be going on around me. 

Music has been really helpful in your life, an escape? 

CALEB: Yeah. I just didn’t think that, well as a young person, I was ten, you couldn’t really talk about what was happening and no one in the family ever really acknowledged it. The second half to it is getting into the mischief. There’s a period, a couple of years ago, I had a friend overdose, and one go to rehab. Then sometimes I’d have to go to work and be like, oh, I have a nice job… like you don’t know what someone is going through.

GEMMA: As a teenager you are totally egocentric. You’re focused on your own identity and working out who you are and your whole being is sort of inward focused. Then you get to the stage where you understand a bit more about yourself, are more confident in yourself, and you can start to look outwards. I guess, start to observe those things in other people and think about it like the iceberg. You see a tip of someone’s experience. Their behaviour is that outward thing, but what’s underneath? You have no fucking idea. It’s better to give people the benefit of the doubt all of the time. No one really wants to be horrible, no-one wants to be mean. I’d like to think that we’re all doing our best, but some people have a lot of shit going on, I guess. 

We touched on it earlier; what can you tell us about song ‘Rats’?

CALEB: I had rats in our house for a little. The lyrics speak for themselves. There were some people that I worked with and I was like, yeah, you’re a bit of a rat [laughs], you talk shit behind my back. I was like, what else can I associate with rats? Rats in my work. Rats in the phone. Rats in my house… 

Jack has a pretty unique style, like how she screams in Guppy. I was really happy with it.

GEMMA: It makes it more dynamic.

Gemma, would you ever have a go at doing Jack’s vocal live if she couldn’t be there?

GEMMA: Sitting behind a drum kit feels really safe to me, but, like, vocals are such a it’s just you, it’s not you in an instrument, it is all you. It feels so vulnerable and really scary to me. We’ve tried to practise but I’m uncoordinated and it’s hard to sing and drum. Watching Ben from C.O.F.F.I.N, I’m like, fuck! It’s wild. He’s so good.

Or like when Jake Roberston plays at speed in SMARTS and sings.

GEMMA: It’s wild! Maybe is I was a more confident drummer. I used to get sick before we would play. I would feel so nervous, not even consciously. Say if we had a gig on a Saturday, on a Thursday I’d start being like, oh, I don’t feel too great. I’m feeling really jittery, I’m feeling really irritable, whatever, not feeling good. I’d realise on the Saturday when I was sweating bullets and freaking out and be like, fuck. I’ve been really nervous this week about the show. Performing in front of people was really, really big for me. So I think having the drunk, it’s almost like the barrier, I like being behind that. It’s my little fortress [laughs]. The vocal part really freaks me out because we there was a point where we lived together when we made an electronic thing…

CALEB: I was making beats and really wanted to do a Crystal Castles project. I still do.  I really wanted a femme voice to scream and be distorted over the top of this track. I got Gemma to try and do it.

GEMMA: I had to make him just go outside. He couldn’t even be in the house when I was doing it. So no vocals for me at this stage.

We super love song ‘Energy’!

CALEB: I met this person who was like a Ritalin child, heavy Ritalin child. He went off the rails and fried his brain. I thought that was an interesting concept. Amphetamines and frying your brain.

Musically, when we first started playing, I really wanted to be a Danzig-style vocalist, cos I love the old Misfits songs. I stopped doing that. I think ‘Energy’ was kind of in that vein. I feel like I just yell everything now [laughs]. In recording there’s more dynamics.

Was that kind of intentional? 

CALEB: Yeah, I definitely want to have that in the recording, but when I’m playing live, I get so nervous. It all comes out on stage.

GEMMA: It’s better now. We used to set each other up, freaking out from nervous. I’d say, oh, I feel nervous and he’d be like, “Don’t say that, now I’m nervous.” 

[Laughter]

We wouldn’t talk all afternoon so we didn’t freak each other out. 

CALEB: That’s when we first started playing. We haven’t played much together.

GEMMA: It’s started to feel good. Playing is something that I’m actually starting to look forward to. It feels like a bit of a build up and a release. I never really understood when people said that before. People would be like, “I love getting up there. It’s so much fun.” I’d be like, you’re fucking crazy! That is a crazy thing to say. But now I kind of get that. It’s that adrenaline rush. You go for it and then afterwards you’re riding that adrenaline wave. 

The last song on the album we haven’t talked about yet is ‘Gold Chains’. 

CALEB: ‘Gold Chains’ is a song that we wrote together. 

GEMMA: With a bottle of wine in COVID, sitting on the backstairs.

CALEB: Let’s write a song about this guy who’s…

GEMMA: Selling drugs [laughs]. 

CALEB: He just quit his job and dropped out of school and he’s got a gold chain and is still doing it, but it’s like nothing’s going right. There’s a slight narrative there. 

GEMMA: It’s the cheesiest song. The only song I’ve had any lyrics put on is of course rubbish lyrics.

[Laughter]

It’s like, what rhymes with chain? Good direction! 

CALEB: Co-writing lyrics is a fun thing to do!

Piss Shivers launch their album next Saturday August 12 at The Bearded Lady, West End. Get tickets HERE.

Get Piss Shivers’ debut self-titled album from Gimmie Records HERE.