The Resignators: ‘You’ve got bands in Perth who sound very different to bands in Adelaide who sound very different to Melbourne bands’

Just in time for Halloween, Victoria’s seven-piece ska-punk outfit The Resignators have released their new single, ‘Spectre Boy’ – a track that finds the band exploring a slightly different sound.

Led by founding singer Francis Harrison for the past 20 years, they’re equal parts vintage horn-driven two-tone and full-throttle punk rock. The band also features Steve Douglas (guitar), Stacy Kilpatrick (keys /sax), Dan Bendrups (trombone), Jeremy Meaden (trumpet), Leigh Boyd (bass) and Chris Kwan (drums). Their band name is a reference to Rx Bandits’ album called The Resignation and was courtesy of their original guitarist: ‘It’s great because it’s a word no one uses, and so there wasn’t another band with a name like that,’ Harrison said.

They describe themselves as being akin to Less Than Jake, albeit ‘louder, dirtier, and unmistakably Australian’. ‘Yeah, you can’t get away from the accent,’ Harrison said laughing: ‘It’s pretty distinctive and apparently mine’s very broad when I sing!’

The Resignators don’t chase the genre’s easier, feel-good clichés. Their songs are drawn from lived experience – love, loss, booze, joy, and the occasional grudge – delivered with the kind of energy that regularly empties balconies onto dance floors. Albums including See You in Hell and the ‘Offbeat Feeling’ EP built the band’s name through Canada’s ska scene and beyond, while other tracks like ‘Sugar High’, ‘Parasol’ and ‘Finale’ carry that same energy into the band’s current era.

‘It’s a little bit different to a lot of stuff that we’ve done recently’

‘Spectre Boy’ marks something of a departure for them, with its punchy organ line before the jubilantly ska trumpet saunters in: ‘It’s a little bit different to a lot of stuff that we’ve done recently,’ Harrison admitted. ‘We’ve been a bit more on the hard edge but this one stems from an actual story. I was at my then girlfriend’s brother’s birthday party at a bar in Melbourne, and everyone was getting drunk, and I really haven’t had a drink for over ten years. It wasn’t anything on them, they were all having a great time and trying to interact with me, but some of them were at the point where the interaction didn’t work because I wasn’t inebriated (laughs). Later that night, I was in bed, and something came on the TV and said,”Spectre Boy”, and I just related that back to that story. It’s in no means me getting on my high horse saying people shouldn’t drink or anything like that, it’s just a story of how I feel at times being the odd one out.’

The organ turns out to have been the starting point for the song and it’s easy to see why: it shimmers throughout much like a spectre drifting through a crowd: ‘I really wanted to give Stacy a chance to shine on the keyboards because most of our stuff is guitar-driven,’ he said. ‘Obviously we’ve got a fantastic horn section, and they come and top it off. My initial thought was more of an Aggrolites kind of sound (an LA reggae band). It’s nothing like them really (laughs) but I wanted their kind of organ sound that really swings way up. It’s hard to describe. I guess it’s swing ska!’

I say that I love the line “I’m a spectre boy in a crowded room, drifting slowly through the cheap perfume” because you can really visualise it and he grins: ‘It’s almost exactly how it felt at that little bar.’ About two minutes in, there’s a glorious baritone sax solo, which is also played by Kilpatrick: ‘The first sax sound in the song is the tenor sax, which is also Stacy playing it, and then that low sax is that solo part – I think it’s the lowest note you can play on a baritone sax!’

‘You just don’t know what you’re going to get out of Brisbane, they take chances’

Harrison has a really interesting insight into how Australia’s music scene has developed, particularly when you consider the distances involved: ‘Before the internet, we were left to our own devices,’ he quipped. ‘You’ve got bands in Perth who sound very different to bands in Adelaide who sound very different to Melbourne bands, which sound different to Sydney bands. Then you’ve got the Brisbane bands, which is another sound again. A lot of stuff comes out of Perth that’s fantastic! It’s the most remote city in the world. Melbourne’s grungier, punkier, more of a dirty, experimental kind of sound. The Sydney stuff seems to be very polished, a lot of R&B, a lot of pop. You just don’t know what you’re going to get out of Brisbane (laughs), they take chances. In Brisbane, there are no rules! Our old trombone player moved to Brisbane and he’s got a band called the Wayne Keys Experience and he comes out in hot shorts and a little Casio keyboard and does a whole show. A lot of that happens in Brisbane (laughs), it’s where punk started. There’s a band up there, female fronted, called the Flangipanis, they’ve actually just broken up but they were around about 20 years. They’re chaos!’

Off stage, Harrison wears several other hats in the Australian ska and punk scene: he runs Care Factor Records and has directed the long-running Ska Nation Music Festival since 2008. That same infrastructure now feeds back into the band, with a busy touring run alongside Mexico City’s Out of Control Army, a spot on the bill for Melbourne Ska Orchestra’s “Monte Loco Rides Again” show at Northcote Theatre, and international touring plans taking shape for 2027.

On their last two albums – Rabbithole (2023) and Party Dates (2017) – Douglas wrote most of the tracks, a departure from their earlier material, which was more collaborative, according to Harrison: ‘That changed predominantly because of COVID but it also gave Steve more of an outlet, and I didn’t have the opportunity or the ability to write too many songs on the last two albums, but with the newer stuff, I’m really throwing myself into doing more writing. Everyone lives all over the place, although we try to get together every couple of weeks. Steve lives 150 kilometres from where I’m at, which is difficult and sometimes frustrating because I’ve had ideas and concepts but haven’t been able to get it over the line, so to speak. Our trombone player lives in Castlemaine, which is about 180 kilometres from me. The trumpet player is in Guildford. He’s about 160 kilometres from me. Stacy’s about the same, as are Dave and Lee in Melbourne.’

‘Politics can be very frustrating, so maybe it’s also about the hope of the rabbit hole?’

‘Rabbithole’ is the standout track on the album for me, an energetic piece of ska punk with a slightly dark, mischievous edge, with bouncy offbeat guitars and big, lively horn arrangements that give it that classic ska energy: ‘Steve wrote that, he pretty much brought to the band. Personally, I think he was listening to a lot of King Crimson when he wrote that, although he claims it’s more like The Who (laughs). It’s got links to our old trumpet player, who politically went a little off the rails, down the rabbit hole, as it were. I think he’s a bit of a sovereign citizen (someone who rejects the authority of government and its laws). It’s about the political rabbit hole you can go down. I’m a bit of a political animal, I follow Australian and U.S. politics closely. Politics can be very frustrating, so maybe it’s also about the hope of what you find down the rabbit hole?’

‘Sugar High’ was the first song the band learned to play together in 2005, a song that features in the film Empire Records, which is sung by Coyote Shivers in the film. (The 1995 film is about a group of misfits who work at a small, independent record shop and who help their manager collect money to buy the enterprise.) ‘ It was the favourite movie of everyone in the original line-up of the band, and we had a female drummer, so she sang the female part. It’s a great song!,’ Harrison said enthusiastically. ‘I’m just so surprised it was never bigger than what it is. The original’s fantastic! I mean, I love our version, and we’ve got two versions. It’s just a really good, fun song from a really good, fun movie!’

Harrison describes himself as ‘growing up on a steady diet of pop and Aussie rock before ska rewired his brain for good’: ‘I had been listening to a lot of ska without knowing it was ska, I just thought it was rock with horn (laughs). That’s Bad Manners, very rock with horns. The Specials are probably more ska madness, everyone loves them, they were such a big influence on everyone. Terry Hall, he was as special as the band name, wasn’t he? I was at Supernova Ska Festival in Virginia just after he had died and Linval got up and did a dedication to him and played ‘Enjoy Yourself’ and I lost it.’ I tell him that I love that song and how Hall cheekily delivers the line in the original: “My name’s Terry and I’m going to enjoy myself first”. ‘That’s one of my favourite parts!,’ Harrison said enthusiastically. ‘When you learn his history and what happened to him in his youth and this guy has gone to hell and back and still come out, done The Specials, did Fun Boy Three, wrote music for Belinda Carlisle. Just amazing. (Hall has spoken publicly about the traumatic abuse he experienced as a child.) The stuff they did with Amy Winehouse was just amazing.’ (She covered several of their songs and they sang together at the V Festival in 2009.)

‘Our guitarist got very drunk, which he doesn’t do very often, and as they started playing, he yelled out – and the crowd’s really silent – “That’s my favourite song!”‘

Other big influences include The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (a ska band from Boston). ‘Fortunately, we got to play a festival with those guys. So I got to meet Joe – the songwriter bass player – and spend a few minutes with him, which was good. Rancid, Operation Ivy, more of that punk ska stuff, I guess, is more where my love is. Suicide Machines from Detroit, who are awesome. The Boy Detective from Michigan, who are a new band. They’re really, really good! We played with them in Montreal. Love the boys from Mustard Plug. I could go on forever!’ I tell him that I’d love to see his band on the same line-up as Melbourne’s brilliantly genre bending band, The Cat Empire: ‘We played with them at a festival called Woodford Folk Festival, which is the biggest festival in Australia, held at New Year’s. We played four of the five nights, and the day off we had, they were playing the main stage. Our guitarist got very drunk, which he doesn’t do very often, and as they started playing ‘Strong Coffee’, he yelled out – and the crowd’s really silent – “That’s my favourite song!”‘

One of Harrison’s favourite experiences was covering ‘Teenage Kicks’ by Northern Irish punk band The Undertones: ‘It’s the only song I’ve ever done in one take,’ he said, sounding as if he still can’t quite believe it. ‘It appeals to me, Fergal Sharkey’s voice and mine must be pretty similar (laughs) – I guess it works! Everyone in the band really dug the song.’

If Harrison could go out with any musician for a night, he is quick to say Johnny Cash: ‘They say it’s not a good idea to meet your heroes (laughs) but I think Johnny Cash would be really interesting. I’d like to ask him about falling in love when he was still married to someone else. (Cash was married to his first wife, Vivian Liberto, when he had an affair with June Carter, who went on to become his second wife in 1968.) I’d like to ask him how it all came about, when you find your soulmate but it’s not the person you’re married to. He’s a very interesting character. At the end of his life, he did that covers album (American IV: The Man Comes Around, 2002), which was very retrospective. He’d just lost his partner (June died just four months before he did), he was hurt and obviously the songs hurt, you can hear that in his voice. You knew he was coming to the end of his life in his voice and I’m sure he knew that he was coming to the end of his life but these songs together were amazing.’ I ask if they ever cover Cash in their sets? ‘Occasionally, when someone breaks a string, we do ‘Ring of Fire’ because the horn section can do the guitar line – only in an emergency, we prefer not to break strings if we can!’