Chips Laffer and Single Twin at The Toff, Melbourne

Having interviewed Single Twin last week, Jess O'Callaghan took in his gig on Sunday and found a familiar-looking support act. Photos by Vinisha Mulani:

The entire evening was bewildering. Brilliant, but bewildering. Let’s begin with the support act, Chips Laffer. It became quite clear from the moment he sat at the keyboard and opened his mouth that this was Jae Laffer, lead singer of The Panics. A quick Google that day had told us Chips Laffer was definitely not a person, and if he was, he had never performed anywhere before.

‘Chips’ whittled out lovely tunes on the guitar and a dodgy keyboard whose keys kept sticking with heat (he held it up as proof. Apparently, real person or not, Chips Laffer has pride) before grinning at the slowly filling band room. “Here’s a song I play with my band. It’s called Cruel Guards.”

The whole act gave the illusion that you’d somehow found a time machine. For one, gigs at The Toff always make you feel like you’ve found a time machine. It’s all red velvet curtains, fancy wine and candlelight. Two, I was relaxed, and not battling a crowd of festival maniacs to see Jae Laffer play. I wasn’t being hoisted on shoulders and pushed through stubborn bodies to get closer to the music. I was sitting in a tiny band room listening to him play haunting solo versions of what are usually pretty overwhelming songs and chuckle at his own misleading moniker.

Halfway through the set he stopped again, and welcomed the newcomers.
Chips: I’m Chips Laffer...
Heckler: Chips?!
Chips: Chips. Shut up. I’m from a band called Chips Laffer and the Panics. This is our most famous song and I play it even when I don’t need to play it. I don’t know why.

He played Don’t Fight It. He played originals. He played Bob Dylan covers. It was fantastic.

Single Twin was no less perplexing, but not because of his name. I’d long since untangled that web of pseudonyms. Single Twin is Marcus Teague. Marcus Teague was once the front man for Deloris. Marcus Teague is the name of Single Twin’s first album. Single Twin is not the name of the album. Got it. Not perplexing.

The intro to every song was deadpan, with Marcus staring unblinkingly at the audience. They began almost convincing, "This song is about catching a centipede bus through the backwaters of Santa Monica..." and escalated into the absurd: "This one’s about ordering pizza in World War II. And bombs are dropping all around you, and you’ve realised that you’re going to die... but you just want your last meal to be pizza." Ok, so they were all absurd.

He played a song that went for all of forty seconds which was about being called in for dinner and running back to the house. When it stopped abruptly he grinned at the audience. “A song can be as long as you want it to be.” Then the band came on stage; four beautiful moustachioed hipster men with an eclectic collection of instruments. I was sold. Marcus is obviously clever as well as a talented musician. He knows what live music is meant to do and what an album is meant to do, and he makes it happen. Marcus Teague the album was very different to a Single Twin show, although most of the songs were the same. The album feels almost as though the music is whispering to you, telling you a secret. The live show was crisp, and the sound was big, quite precise in its execution but never to the point of being polished, or trite.

There was a song dedicated to how sexy banjos are (complete with a banjo being all sexy), back-up whistling and men harmonising. This means I can’t be held accountable for anything written in this review. Men harmonising turn me to jelly.

Regardless of how great the band were (and they were great), Teague’s lyrics stand up all by themselves. Each one tells a story, and, contrary to what his intros suggest, none of them seem to be about energy drink. They remind me of trying to explain a dream you’ve had first thing in the morning. Every time you listen to one of these songs you hear something in there that hasn’t hit you before. Like the familiarity of the "packet mix of corn and cream," in Fish in New Leaves, or the ache of "in my mind you are beside me and singing," in My Silken Tooth.

So, on the whole, it was a bewildering but spectacular evening. I’d like to thank whoever had the thought to arrange the tables close to the stage like a 1920s nightclub so there was no pressure to stand and do the awkward quiet-music-shuffle on a Sunday night. The whole gig was like a giant, satisfying exhale at the end of a very long week. An exhale that involved white wine, secret identities and male harmonising. The best kind.

Review by Jess O'Callaghan. Photos by Vinisha Mulani.

Single Twin interview

Ex-Deloris frontman Marcus Teague, aka Single Twin, talks to Jess O'Callaghan about his album and his show at Melbourne's The Toff on Sunday night: 

Six years is a long time to spend recording an album alone on GarageBand. Was it always going to emerge as an album, or was it something that happened once you had a few of the songs?
I had it in my head that it was always going to be an album. I mean, I knew then that I was always going to keep writing and recording songs whether or not anyone was going to hear them. So you pull a bunch together and see which ones best fit into 30-40 minutes. Either you have to keep revisiting ideas or versions or recording new songs to get it right. At some point it sounds balanced over repeated listenings and that's when you decide it's an album.

You write on Mess+Noise about the ‘happy accidents’ that make their way into the music when you record on GarageBand. What were they? What do you think these add to the album? 
Stuff like field recordings I recorded on a mini-disc for a few years. Wind in the staircase of an apartment block; recordings from the Frankston library; birds in a park in Sydney; an opera singer practicing up the street from my house. Crickets. The other ones are mistakes or moments in the recording that aren't intended—a bum note; a finger-picking mistake; something falling over in the room maybe. None of it is overt but it helps bring some of the musical sentiments to life when weaved amongst the recordings. It also brings a life to it that is separate from yourself maybe, so you get to be an observer of your own music for a moment, perhaps.

Single Twin emerged while you were still the front man of Deloris, and all but one song on your album Marcus Teague was recorded alone. Do you prefer working alone after collaborating with other musicians for so many years? 
Yep. Even in Deloris I wrote most things alone. And actually, that one song (Splinters and Seeds) I made up and recorded alone, leaving my friend Matt Blackman to make up his part alone also. It's just how I work best. I've always done it like that and I don't really know to do it any other way. I used to play drums and can play a bit of keys, so when I think of a part of a song I immediately start thinking about what could be a counterpoint to it, or where the arrangement could go.

The songs on Marcus Teague reference place a lot and listening to them you get a real sense of story. Is there a method to your song-writing that makes this happen? Do you have a place or story in mind when you set out to write a song? 
I don't specifically, but I guess there's always a world or mood of sorts that I have running through my head when writing songs. Like a blurry film-strip or something. And particular sorts of characters. I don't know why but I suppose that's how I know when a song's working or not, when it sustains that world running through my head. If there's a line or character that seems incorrect in that mental landscape, then I know it's a bum line or isn't working the way it's supposed to.

I’ll be reviewing your performance at The Toff Sunday night- what can we expect from a live Single Twin show?
Well, at the moment I'm playing with a band of four other guys, who use a bunch of different instruments to add a lot of the details that are present on the album. So it's them and then me making things up in between songs.

And will it be another six years of recording before we get to hear more from Single Twin? 
God I hope not. I have about four or five songs approaching being ready to record, a couple of which we'll do at The Toff, so I'm thinking of recording those soon. And I have some other music coming out before too long that's different and separate from Single Twin, so I will probably actively return to Single Twin World in the second half of this year. I'll release some more Single Twin stuff this year I'd say, but realistically, probably not another album until late 2012 or early 2013. I do have fantasies of setting mics up in my kitchen, pressing record and playing a whole new album from start to finish, without stopping, and releasing that...but... we'll see. I'm not sure if that's a good idea yet.

Single Twin plays at The Toff in Melbourne on Sunday night. You can listen to his stuff here and get tickets here.

Interview by Jess O'Callaghan.