Bad Llamas: ‘I’m an absolute sucker for a catchy song and I remember that I used to go running to the demo because it’s got such an energy to it!’

Christchurch, New Zealand jangly rock band Bad Llamas have released their debut album Hindsight, which pays homage to their BritPop roots but sprinkling it with a good dose of Antipodean shimmer.

The band comprises Sam Brown and Andy Kindon, who swap duties on lead vocals across the album, with Brown also playing guitar, with Kindon on trumpet, Daria Dyagileva (keys), Jimi McLaughlin (bass) and Cameron Oswin (drums). Of their band name, Brown says: ‘Me, Andy, Jimi and our first drummer were probably jamming for a horribly long number of months before we realised we actually wanted to go gig but we had not yet found a band name! So we believe Bad Llamas was the best of a bad bunch, really. You know when you get a bit delirious and know you have to think of something?! I think Bad Llamas was a name that no one hated enough for us not to use it (laughs).’

Kindon describes Hindsight as ‘pop rock, it’s very poppy’: ‘The melodies are meant to be catchy, the rhythms and the riffs are very catchy,’ he said. ‘People do often say we’re quite Brit-poppy but that’s probably a lot of our influence.’

‘Like a lot of people that you meet out here, you end up staying longer because it’s an easy place to live’

Interestingly, they are an international bunch. Brown is from Birmingham in the U.K. originally and I ask him how long he’s been in New Zealand. ‘I’ve been here for – I’m looking at my watch, like I’m going to give you the exact time, to the hour,’ he said laughing. ‘It’s been just over 10 years. My wife – my girlfriend at the time – got a job here. We originally came over here for a year – and we’re still here. Like a lot of people that you meet out here, you end up staying longer because it’s an easy place to live.’ Kindon moved from Warrington in the northwest of the U.K seven years ago: ‘Me and Sam had a mutual friend in the UK. I nearly moved to Dunedin here but my friend in the U.K. put me in touch with Sam, who was part of the reason for convincing me to move to Christchurch over Dunedin -and one of the reasons was that I saw he was in a band! I left a band that I very much liked in the U.K. when I moved here. You know, as you do, you leave some things behind. So knowing someone that played music was quite a draw. That’s how me and Sam met. We played music pretty much from the week I moved here and then we found Jimi online and Daria (who moved across from Russia 21 years ago) through a Facebook advert.’

‘Riesling’ which features Brown on vocals and a seriously hooky bass line, is one of the standout tracks on the album: ‘Me and Sam wrote that song in about 10 minutes,’ Kindon said. ‘I had that intro riff. I think we were jamming. Me and Sam were just hanging out and I played it and Sam wrote a song around it. He came up with some rhythm guitar/melody/words pretty quickly. Before you know it, it was a full song. It’s one of the few songs we’ve actually written like that but it came about very organically and very quickly.’

I love the unusual chord progression in the intro riff and ask them what it is: ‘It’s a good job we’ve got Daria on the call so she can give us the actual technical names,’ Brown said. ‘I think it’s a weird E7sus4 to a Dsus2 to a B7. When Andy played that riff, I made him play it for about five minutes straight away (laughs). You know when you hear something that’s a bit of magic? I would just say listening to this album, it must be a bucket list item for anyone, really. I know I say that in the most dull, monotonous voice in the world but I save it all for the stage! It was probably the most different sounding of the songs up until that point that we had. Daria plays synths as well, so the outro really came into itself. It’s been a signature sound that we do with a lot of our songs live.’

‘Can’t Take You Anywhere’ is the first one that came out and I thought: “Bloody hell, that sounds like a real band!”‘

Is there a track on the album that they view as the “glue”? ‘That’s a good question,’ Kindon said, clearly thinking about it. ‘I think a couple do for me. Mine isn’t personally ‘Riesling’ but a run of two or three. I think ‘Dance Forever’, ‘Hindsight’ and ‘Can’t Take You Anywhere’. ‘Can’t Take You Anywhere’ is the first one that came out and I thought: “Bloody hell, that sounds like a real band!” Actually, the rest of the album took some work but I think particularly some of those early songs sound very well done. Not blowing our own trumpet necessarily. ‘Hindsight’ is one of my favourite songs on the album. I’m an absolute sucker for a catchy song and I remember that I used to go running to the demo because it’s got such an energy to it!’

They describe ‘Can’t Take You Anywhere’ as ‘a classic lockdown song’: ‘It’s one of those songs that started out as nonsense lyrics but then they started to become their own thing,’ Kindon said. ‘I certainly didn’t sit down and go: “I’m going to write a song about this” and then do it. I rarely do. A sort of theme just develops, even if you can’t put your finger on it yourself. I think if there is some sort of commonality between the sections that people can latch onto it, hopefully.’ Dyagileva cites ‘What To Do’ as her favourite song on the album: ‘It’s the most fun for me to play, personally. I’ve got the most going on. It’s my mum’s favourite as well. I think it reminds me a little bit of home.’

There’s not any one band that has captivated the whole band in terms of influences, according to Kindon. ‘It’d be an impressive band!,’ he said. ‘Actually, The Beatles, everyone is a Beatles fan. Brown interjects: ‘You can’t play modern music and not like The Beatles!’ The others laugh: ‘Daria and I like a lot of the same bands and me and Sam do, too,’ Kindon said. Brown agrees: ‘I think an obvious, topical one at the moment is that Andy, Jimi and I are big Oasis fans, especially with Andy and I coming from the U.K.. The three of us are going on a trip to Melbourne later on this year to go and see them, which is great. We like British bands from the 90’s and all those noughties bands and I really like Motown and soul.’ Dyagileva jumps in: ‘For me, it’s Linkin Park, I love their new singer (Emily Armstrong), and Muse and Franz Ferdinand.’ Kindon adds Manic Street Preachers to the list: ‘There’s a band from London called Teleman, who I really like, they sound very unique,’ he said. I say that I know them. ‘I love their first three albums. I listened to a lot of Crowded House growing up and I like a bit of drum ‘n’ bass, I’m not married to one genre.’

‘I needed to trick myself into some positivity, which is where the song comes from’

For Brown, ‘Sometimes’ is not just a lockdown song but a song of hope. I say that I love it and that it reminds me of the Finn brothers: ‘At the time, no-one knew where we were going, and it just felt like everything was easy to be quite negative about,’ he said. ‘My first son was born in May 2020. New Zealand, I don’t know if it was on the sphere of your news cycle at all, but it did quite well with COVID, and we managed to get out of lockdown early. We came out the best, actually, I think, out of anyone. It was pretty good. We lived like normal after that first six-week period for about a year, but at the time, we were a bit unsure and I needed to trick myself into some positivity, which is where the song comes from.’ The crips guitar solo, played by Kindon, has a timeless, vintage feel. ‘I hated it when I first recorded it because I thought I played it terribly,’ he said laughing. I’ve since grown to like it as well. Originally, we wanted it more overdriven-ey but our producer put that tone on it, and I actually think it does work quite nicely. It’s got a slightly vintage feel to it, I think, that guitar. It was done on a Flying V with old strings. It’s not mine, it was one in the studio that the guy who recorded it suggested, a vintage Gibson Flying V, wasn’t it, Sam?’ Sam nods: ‘Yeah, I think it was a proper one, it was cool!’

Do they have dream pieces of kit that they’re hankering after? ‘It’s completely fallen out of my head now. To be fair, my keyboard is pretty top-notch,’ Dyagileva said. ‘I’ve got an old Stage and a Moog synth. I’d like a nicer one (laughs). My one’s about 15 years old, I’d love a more modern one. I’d love a nice Korg for an organ sound.’ Kindon has other plans. ‘What are those amps with the rotating speaker?,’ he asks the others. ‘A Leslie cabinet, that would be cool. I was offered one, actually, as a gift. Someone was getting rid of it. I just had nowhere to put it,’ he said sounding a bit crestfallen. ‘I’d love a Les Paul, a proper one but they’re very expensive.’ Brown is mulling what his dream guitar would be: ‘I like my guitar, it’s an Epiphone 335, but I guess a Gibson version of that would be great. I’ve got a Vox AC10 amp, which I love, and I just love the sound from the simplicity of that, so I think I wouldn’t change it. Maybe just getting a bigger one if we ever needed it, I guess would be the thing. A working amp would be great, wouldn’t it, Andy?!’

I ask what’s happened to all their amps. ‘They always die,’ Kindon lamented. ‘I’ve had this Roland Cube 60-watt thing that has outlived every other good amp I’ve tried to buy! I always put it away in the cupboard and then have to get it back out when my other amps break and it just carries on! I’m looking at my enormous Vox Valvetronics 100-watt thing that I bought for $1,000, which worked about four times and then broke! I think they’re notoriously unreliable, which is why I think someone flogged it to me.’ Brown interjects: ‘It’s been in the shop a lot as well, hasn’t it, mate, more times? ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s all right, I’ve got it holding up a shelf!,’ Kindon deadpanned.

‘I think the song becomes the person, it belongs to the person who’s listening to it at that time‘

‘What To Do’ opens with a beautiful Billy Joel-like intro and I ask Dyagileva whether it was the starting point for the song: ‘No, I came in when all of that was already written and Jimi had already put down some piano. It was pretty good for someone who’s not primarily a pianist, so I just kind of based it off that and just added my own little bits and pieces to it.’ I ask if it’s about the music industry: ‘I don’t know if we’ve ever actually talked about it but it’s about people who are a bit left behind in society and there are certain expectations of them,’ Kindon said. ‘There’s a song by one of my favourite bands Manic Street Preachers called ‘Design for Life’. This song is about exactly the same thing, how people expect certain things from certain social classes, which sounds very deep for a song that just says “what to do” about 15,000 times (laughs). I don’t know if people hear that but I think the song becomes the person, it belongs to the person who’s listening to it at that time.’

They’ve poured all their energy into the closer ‘Catch A Ride’, a big brass-filled rollercoaster of a song that takes the listener out on a high. Incredibly, Kindon only picked up the trumpet for the first time a couple of years ago, having wanted to learn it since he was a child: ‘It was good put on the end of the album because we always close with it in our set,’ Brown said. ‘It’s a leave them wanting more type of song. It felt like a novelty song at first when I started writing it. I wrote a really drab first verse (laughs) and then an amazing – comparatively to the first verse – second verse. And I thought: “I don’t feel that these two verses can be the same song”! So I went back to the first verse to give it a bit of a spruce up. It links a bit to Andy’s meaning with ‘What To Do’, I certainly felt my life at a certain stage being lost, just living the same, week in, week out, with no prospects, nothing to look forward to. I thought: is this what I’m going to do for the next 40, 50 years of my life? I was then afforded a chance to go abroad and it was a “get me out of where I am” feeling and realising that actually you sometimes just want to be home.’

Which musicians would like they most like a night on the town with? ‘You gotta go with your gut answer,’ Brown said enthusiastically. ‘I’m a massive fan of Queen, so I’ve got to say Freddie Mercury – I’d pour him a drink and try to get to a stage where we could be jamming!’ Dyagileva has other plans: ‘When I was growing up, one of the most important bands to me was T.a.T.u (a Russian pop duo), which sounds utterly ridiculous considering the environment they were in. I’d like to meet them and ask the one that hasn’t turned out so weird (laughs) what it was like spreading the message that “love is love” in a place that does not condone that message.’

Kindon looks deep in thought: ‘If you’ve only got one shot, I think I’d have to choose a Beatle,’ he said. ‘I’m always drawn to George Harrison because he seemed like an interesting person, very down to earth. I love some of George’s songs so much, All Things Must Pass (1970), is one of my all-time favourite albums. I’d love to get into the nitty gritty of some of the songs he wrote and quiz him as to how they came about.’ Brown interjects: ‘He’d make you play the ukelele!’ Kindon laughs: ‘Oh god, true, he would!’ Brown continues: ‘It’s an interesting thing, actually. When we were in the early stages of the band, you, me and Jimi, our favourite Beatle was always George, we were always drawn to him – not that we have a favourite Beatle, we’re all grown men (laughs).’ I tell them that his son has talked about how he would record 50 guitar lines for a song and then, right at the end, scrap them and start again.’ Oh wow, I hadn’t heard that,’ Kindon said. ‘I have heard that when he was recording ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ that he was absolutely punishing in the studio to get it right in the recording, apparently they recorded it about 50 times. I’d also love to know which of the guitar solos in it are Eric Clapton and which ones are him because Eric Clapton played so many of the guitar solos. George Harrison was a lovely guitar player and his slide guitar is so nice!’

They’ve had some nights on the town for the memory bank, as Dyagileva recounts: ‘For me, the funniest moment was when we were having drinks one night – Jimi disappeared and woke up in a chapel!’

(Top photo: Sam and Andy. Group photo from left to right: Daria, Sam, Jimi, Andy and Cameron.)