Following on from the break up of Little Red, it seems that each member of the beloved Melbourne band have marched onwards to new musical ventures. Many in fact, while the group were still in the throes of their dissolution.
While keyboard player Tom Hartney was the first, departing to form Major Tom & The Atoms, he was quickly followed by the departure of ever-smiling drummer Taka Honda, who followed his punk spirit to the three chords and a tune of The Hondas.
Then came New Gods, a makeshift indie supergroup featuring Little Red refugees Dominic Byrne and Adrian Beltrame, along with members from Ground Components and Eagle & The Worm; who were last seen supporting alt-j for their packed out show at Melbourne’s Ding Dong Lounge.
Now following the announcement of his new side-project last July, bassist Quang Dinh has revealed a whole lot more of the latest Little Red spin-off in Naked Bodies.
Dinh leads his new quartet with “a head full of tarnished melodies and seared poetry,” humorously adding that “the little boy has dropped an octave” for the band’s debut double A side called Fiction Tree/Monkey Blues. Painted with spooked strings from Will Coyote, Brendan West’s low-slung bass (on loan from The Hondas), and the drum attack of Guliano Feria, Naked Bodies have released the first taste of their new music on the unsuspecting music public.
Noting influences from weary-eyed poets like Leonard Cohen, and Australia’s own Nick Cave and Gareth Liddiard, Dinh says Naked Bodies writes “in black – confused, bewildered and defeated, while the band navigates a meandering path between light and shade, at times veering into electro-shock chaos.”
Fiction Tree/Monkey Blues was recorded over two nights in Tullamarine by Alistair O’Brien and mixed by Steve Schram, who has leant his magic touch to the likes of San Cisco and, of course, Little Red.
The double AA single is already available online, and Naked Bodies already have a launch date set at The Workers Club in Melbourne on Thursday 15th November; so if you want to see and hear what Dinh’s transformation from pop-rock bassist to gothic-poet frontman sounds like, you better pop on down.
Wrangle your ears around Naked Bodies’ Fiction Tree/Monkey Blues below:
