The raw rock ‘n’ roll energy of The Unknowns and the infectious power pop of The Prize are exceptionally well-matched on their new release—a 7-inch featuring two tracks from each band: The Prize’s ‘Hotel 44’ and ‘One Day at a Time’, alongside The Unknowns’ ‘Heart in Two’ and ‘One Night Only’. Drawing inspiration from the rollercoaster of touring life and the complexities of relationships, this collection captures both the struggles and euphoria experienced along the way.
Gimmie sat down with Unknowns’ guitarist-vocalist Josh Hardy and Prize’s drummer-vocalist Nadine Muller, who were indulging in some day drinking, to discuss their recent activities and upcoming plans for the near future.
NADINE: We’re getting drunk now, at 12:32 on a Wednesday! Josh just moved to Melbourne.
JOSH: Me and my girlfriend moved down about three weeks ago. It’s been really good so far. I spent so much time here so it’s pretty fitting I moved.
NADINE: I’ve been hanging out with this guy a lot. We’ve been rehearsing a bit now with the tour starting next week. Josh and I have had a couple of jams too.
JOSH: We’ve been rockin’!
[Laughter]
How much prep goes into tour?
JOSH: Not much [laughs].
NADINE: We’ve got someone filling in on bass for this tour so we’ve been rehearsing a bit more to teach them the parts. We’ve been doing two or three days a week, we usually just do one. It’s always fun.
JOSH: We’ll probably rehearse the day before it starts. It should be alright, I think.
Is there anything that you worry about going on tour?
JOSH: I guess lining your ducks up, making sure you remember all the songs, and how they go.
NADINE: I feel excited about this one after just getting back from Europe because it’s a lot less stressful. Travel time between shows isn’t an eight or ten hour drive in the van. It’s gonna be pretty easy in comparison to what we both just did a couple months ago.
What’s some of the coolest things you saw while on tour in Europe?
JOSH: This time I made an effort to wake up earlier and go check out cities we were in. It’s pretty easy to go places and not check out much. You just see venues and service stations
NADINE: That’s all I saw.
JOSH: This time in Paris, it was the first time doing touristy stuff, which was nice. I didn’t see the Eiffel Tower, but I saw what’s that big archway thing, Arc de Triomphe.
NADINE: Did you get any trinkets?
JOSH: I didn’t.
Did you Nadine?
NADINE: Our guitarist, Ausi, was collecting lighters everywhere we went. He ended up with 25 lighters. Our (he and I) flight got cancelled on the way home. We got stuck in Phuket for 24 hours. When we were boarding the next day, my name got called over the speaker, they said, ‘They’ve pulled your suitcase aside. There’s some stuff in it, we need to go through it.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ It was really stressful. I got driven in a little van down to a security room under the plane. I was like, ‘Oh my god, what did I leave in the suitcase?’ They took me to this room and pulled out this suitcase and it was Ausi’s. I was like, ‘Well, that’s not even mine.’ They’d put my name on his suitcase.’ You’re only allowed to take one lighter on a flight. They kept putting it through the screening machine and kept pulling out lighters and there ended up this like table full. I got back on the plane and he’s like, ‘What happened?’ I was like, ‘You’re the fucking lighter collector. You almost got me stuck in Phuket!’
So, he lost all the lighters?
NADINE: He got to keep one—a Paris one.
How did you first hear about each other’s bands?
JOSH: I listened to Mr. Teenage, Nadine’s old band with Carey, Joe, and Nic—they released this 7 inch I really liked. I thought it was fucking cool. Then Nadine started The Prize so obviously I listened to that as well too.
We started talking via Instagram two years ago and realised we had very similar tastes, and that our bands needed to play shows together.
NADINE: You guys were friends with my dad from The Chats touring with the Cosmic Psychos. And then The Prize’s first tour was with The Chats.
JOSH: For the Get Fucked album.
NADINE: It was a lot of fun!
JOSH: We’ve been talking about doing a split release for ages. We discussed it a year ago, then life sort of happened. But we finally got around to putting it together. It’s good that it’s finally happened and it’s coming out. It’s a classic old school kind of split: two songs each band a side. Ben [Portnoy] from C.O.F.F.I.N did the artwork, which I’m stoked about. No A and B-sides.
NADINE: Two A-sides! We just got back from tour [in Europe] and we hadn’t written the songs for it yet. We had 10 days to get it written, recorded, mixed and mastered. It was a good test for us, because usually we can sit on a song for ages and chip away at it and overthink it. This time there was no choice. Just—get it done! Both songs were about being on tour.
JOSH: Those songs that I wrote, probably about a year and a bit ago, it was the same sort of thing; I wrote them coming straight off a five-week tour of the States. They’re about being away for loved ones for so long. We recorded it in February last year.
We’ll have the records, hopefully, the day that the tour starts on the Sunshine Coast. It’s creeping up.
What are you been listening to lately?
JOSH: I’ve been listening to a lot of like Nervous Eaters. I also got this record from this band called The Klitz, like Blitz, but the Klitz—a Memphis no wave-y garage band with an all-female lineup and it’s produced by Alex Chilton [The Box Tops & Big Star], which is pretty cool. Been listening to that a bit.
Being in Melbourne now, I’ve been buying heaps of records from Rowdy’s and Strange World. Strange World are really sick, because the prices are reasonable and he’s doing bistro for Crypt Records and all these cool labels. They’ve got heaps of cool stuff in there at the moment.
NADINE: For a couple of months now, I’ve been listening to the first Blondie record. I just keep putting that on.
Roky Erickson too. Josh and I did a Rocky Erickson cover the other day, ‘Nothing in Return’. As a two-piece band.
JOSH: I had a friend that saw him 10 years ago and apparently Roky had this guy side stage that would run out after every song and have to tell him what chord the next song starts on. Roky would have no recollection until this guy would like tell him.
NADINE: I saw him play Meredith festival 10 years ago. I was side of stage. I watched some footage from it and you can see me dancing, it’s amazing! [laughs].
What else are your bands put to for 2024?
JOSH: The Unknowns are going to Europe in October, which will be exciting! And we’re writing new songs. I’ve pretty much written three quarters of a new record. Mostly, we’ll play shows in Australia and save as much money as we can to record it this year, so it comes out next year. We’ll see how we go—that’s my goal.
NADINE: We started recording an album a couple of months ago and we’re just finishing it off now. So hopefully it’ll be out mid-year.
JOSH: What have you been up to?
I recently interviewed Lydia Lunch, which was amazing. She’s known for being confrontational but she was incredibly nice and lovely to me.
NADINE: Mr Teenage supported her once at The Corner. I was really intimidated to meet her afterwards. She was pretty staunch, but she was nice to me. I feel like a lot of females from that era have a reputation of being staunch. They had to be. You watch interviews from like the 70s or 80s or even early-90s and the way that a lot of interviewers spoke to them was kind of, I don’t know…
JOSH: Condescending?
NADINE: Yeah, fully! I’ve seen interviews with Debbie Harry and the interviewer talks about her putting on weight. It’s like these women had to go with the ‘fuck you’ attitude because that’s what they received. They had to be prepared for whatever someone’s gonna throw at them. I feel really lucky being a female in music now, that all those women did the hard yards, and now I can walk into something and be like, ‘No one’s gonna fuck with me.’
But when I was a teenager, I was playing in my first band, an all-girl band—this memory really stuck with me—I did a radio interview and we were off-air for a minute and the guy was like, ’Is there anything that you don’t want to talk about?’ I was like, ‘Well, you know, my dad’s in the Cosmic Psychos and I don’t want to talk about that.’ I was 17, and I was always really paranoid and self-conscious about people being like, ‘You’re riding your dad’s coattails.’ I don’t care anymore, though, because I’m thankful for him exposing me to music and playing drums.
As soon as we went back on air the guy goes, ‘So, your dad’s in the Cosmic Psychos!’
No! That’s terrible he did that to you, I’m sorry.
NADINE: Then that guy came to our show that night and after we played, he came and apologised. He’s like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I just thought you guys were going to be shit. You’re actually good! Sorry I put you in that position.’ That’s something on a very small scale of what I imagine a lot of women in music have had to deal with.
JOSH: Punk was so male-dominated. I’ve got a book that was released by this American lady and it’s about all female punk bands from the late-70s to the early-80s in America. Nikki Corvette did the introduction and that’s what she was saying, that you had to be fucking staunch to do stuff because it was so male-dominated. She said you’d get kicked off line ups or put down the bottom of bills just because you’re female— it was so fucked.
On Gimmie, since day one, we’ve never pointed out someone is a female musician—everyone is a musician.
NADINE: And that’s amazing. That’s a great approach. It should always be like that.
It’s so fun playing music, and we’re so lucky we get to do what we do. I stopped playing music for years and then when I started again, I felt like I found myself again. Music is the best. It forms so many connections: with the audience, with other bands, with your band—that’s healing.
JOSH: Sometimes you have one shot, so I figure you may as well—go for it! I’d rather do it and things go wrong, and learn from that, than talking about how you could have done something.
The Prize/The Unknowns split 7-inch out on Bargain Bin – GET it at the BARGAIN BIN 2024 TOUR or via Bargain Bin Records. Follow @the_unknowns_ and @theprize___. Catch them on The Chats’ – Bargain Bin Tour kicking off this week.
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