BINSAD: SYDNEY’S NEW PEARL

From the outside in, Sydney locals ‘binsad’ looks to have achieved so much in just 6 months, but in reality, their story is much bigger than that. The band has quickly grown from a humble DIY project of partners Alex Berger and Sinead Campion to one of the busiest, best known and well loved bands in the scene. All this in such a short span of time is not just impressive, it shows the drive behind the project, and the experience in its members, that's made their flying start possible.  

On their new full length album “pearl” or when performing live with drummer Adam D’Costa and guitarist Edie Pearl, binsad pulls influences from everywhere to create their unique ‘soft-loud’ sound — sparkling indie pop, harsh emo and post hardcore, and, to quote Sinead,  “classic ‘band playing a song’ rock” — all the while forefronted by a definitively femme sound and spirit.

Joining Adam, Alex, Sinead and their dog Percy in their Inner West living room, we chatted on how the band was formed, their process in making the new album, and what excites them about the future. In my experience, it is so interesting when an interview becomes ‘about’ something more than just the band themselves and binsad proved this in the way they spoke about the community growing within Sydney's live music scene, one they help foster in so many ways.

W: I don’t have a script but we have plenty to talk about… You’ve got lots of shows coming up, a national tour for your new album, which is out now, and… wait, let's talk about that first and then I have a secret one.

SINEAD: A secret one!

W: So, “swimmer” was the last single for the album? And the first one was…? 

S: “idrwk”.

W: Oh, wow. So everything I’ve heard you guys play so far is all on there. It must feel good to have it out. 

SINEAD: It's crazy… Alex, you're the producer, you speak. 

ALEX B: Well, a lot of the songs were written about a year ago by Sinead and I. Adam and Edie have helped shape them since then obviously. We've seen them evolve from that early point — especially watching Sinead find their voice through recording, with them playing in so many bands but now being the front person. I feel like when you put the first song of a new project out, you are still finding your footing. When we finally finished recording the last song, it felt to me like, “We’ve done it, we found what we’re trying to say. We're not holding anything back.” We don't really know what the next songs are going to be (like). So it's really cool to have everything that binsad is right now out in the world, and just getting to embrace that. 

W: It must be super exciting to have this first big milestone behind you and a promising future ahead. Which show in your upcoming tour are you most excited for?

S: Melbourne, because we get to play with Izzy (De Leon)… with her solo project Of Lion. She’s like the session bassist of Australia and plays for WAAX, which is one of my favourite bands ever. She's also just the coolest. Even reaching out and her being like, “Oh my god, yes. I love binsad, I want to play.” I was like, ‘Oh, I literally look up to you’. 

ADAM D: Yeah, it seems so out of our realm. 

S: Literally, it's unreal, and it’s at The Tote which is just an iconic venue. So I think that is going to be really special, really fun.

W: What about you, Adam? 

AD: I'm excited for the Wollongong show because we're doing a DIY merch making event. It's an all ages show at VanQ, we're doing lino and screen printing during the day and a set in the early evening. It’s a chance to come together with the other bands Creeping Jenny and Yearn and do some art and craft and celebrate in a venue that's separate from alcohol and gambling, which is often pretty rare. So yeah, excited for what’ll be a pretty different gig for us, and the chance to sit down with some young people at the show and just talk about music, art and community. Alex?

Sinead and Adam modelling their hand-made binsad merch.

AB: I think Brisbane, which is the first stop on the tour because we've never toured before as a band and we're driving up. So I'm excited to see if we get in a huge fight in the car or something haha.. We've been a band for a little bit now, but you know, we've never been all together for 10 hours straight. So I think I'm excited to see what we learn about each other through the touring process and to see what the experience is like with everyone. 

AD: And once that show’s over, we'll have a better idea of what the rest of the tour will look like. 

AB: Yeah, exactly..  And if we need to take two cars. 

W: What else are you guys looking forward to now?

AB: Writing definitely.

S: I brought an idea for a new song about Percy and we're hoping to play it on the tour shows to test drive it. Beyond that, I think we’re gonna write as much as we can and see what happens. We haven't written anything the four of us all together. As we said, the album was basically written before the band came together. It’s like starting from scratch with everyone, which I don't feel stressed about. It feels very exciting actually, very up in the air in a good way. Anything could happen, and that’s so cool to me.

AB: I think we sometimes forget that from an outsider’s perspective, we’ve only been a band for a short time. Not many bands within six months of making their first Instagram post will have a full album out, even though we recorded it ourselves. So in that sense, we have a lot of space to take our time, figure out what it is that we want to write next, figure out the process of writing as a four-piece band. We won't have to feel pressured to get another song out because we just did a whole album. We have time, and that's also very exciting. How do you feel about that, Adam?

AD: Yea. We've all been waiting for a while, I guess for the album to come out, so now to have the chance to really focus on writing all together feels super exciting, and I’m excited to see where it goes.

W: Tell me about your favourite tracks from the new album. 

AB: I think my favourite is a song called “paris” because it's the first song that Sinead and I ever wrote. That song was like us saying “Okay, we're going to be a band now, so let’s write some music. What do we want to write about? What do Sinead and I sound like together? ” and it’s really special because of that. The song's very irreverent and kinda stupid because we weren't really taking ourselves too seriously. It’s about Sinead's lemon of a car being a money sink and her realising ‘why am I putting all this money towards this car when I just want to travel and do other stuff?’ I feel like it's where (Sinead) started getting ideas out there. So, I love that song, it’s so dinky and stupid.

S: Dinky is the best word for it. 

W: Has it stayed the same since you first wrote it?

AB: Literally, exactly the same. 

AD: We tried a different version once that was more serious, way darker and more emo. And we were like, get rid of that. 

AB: Return to dinky. But yeah, it's the same. I think that's a testament to the charm of that first song, where you first sit down and just try to write. It started off the whole album really, and it's fun. 

W: And you, Sinead? 

S: Favourite song? I think it's “pearl”, which is the first song on the album, just because it feels so ‘binsad’. It's got a really sweet atmospheric intro that hints at the other genres that we get into later in the album but the choruses are more rocky, just classic ‘band playing a song’ so you get all our sonic influences in the first song. 

Lyrically, it's one of the most meaningful for me. All the lyrics are based on little poems that I wrote about myself when I was going through a really emotionally turbulent time. I was starting therapy and still not understanding how my brain worked - I wanted to write down what I was thinking, but find a way that wasn't just word vomiting in a journal. So, those poems are now the verses of the song, almost line for line - and I’d draw these little characters around the poems too, which have now become our branding and are on all our merch. It's cool and it’s very special to me. Something that was very uncertain and really tough to go through became this amazing thing that then grew into binsad. It is so connected to me and I feel really proud of it.

W: Adam?

AD: I’d say ‘wreckage’. It's the sister track with ‘idrwk’, and the story and the meanings behind those songs really resonate with me. It's about a tough friendship that you have to get out of and reflecting on it and the pain and that “why did that have to happen?” feeling, and relating that all to a car crash. I just like the metaphor. In our songs,  there’s usually a very clear visual image or a metaphor that the song is about, it's so consistent — in “paris”, “swimmer”, “pearl”, they're all about visual things, but I think “wreckage” does it in a really cool way. The song itself is so driven and at the end it feels like an explosion, it just breaks down.

S: Yeah, like you're driving into a wreck. 

AD: It's just a really fun song to play and a fun song to listen to, it’s a bit of an earworm.

W: Awesome, stellar answers across the board. So, my final secret talking point… Callum (from Airline and Tallulah) mentioned to me today that... 

S: Woahhh ! (Explosion Noise)

AD: Ohh! Cat’s out of the bag.

W: Haha! Well, first of all, as you all obviously know what I'm talking about, can this go in the interview? It's up to you guys. 

AB: I think it's fine to talk about, and I guess I am the organiser, so yes!

S: Yasss!

W: Cool. So there's a compilation album you’re working on. Alex, would you like to tell me about it?

AB: Yeah, so I was thinking about the music community within Sydney and about some recent shows. There's definitely been a lot of collaborative work, but it hasn't been as exemplified for me as when Belvedeer (RIP) and Bennetts Grove wrote a song together from scratch. I love the energy around that song and love the fact that it's not a part of Bennetts Grove’s or Belvedeer’s sets. It was only when all the stars aligned and the two bands were together that you got to experience this song. That was really special to me.

I feel there's no better way to foster a sense of community than to make art with the people around you and see how you can be inspired, what you can learn from other artists, what influences can bleed across. I was talking to Sinead about it and realised “I've got the time. I just want to get some bands together, who all play shows in the same scene and all know each other, and see what it sounds like when they all get into the studio, have some fun and write a song.”  Because I did have so much fun doing that with Bennett's Grove as a part of Belvedeer, and I thought maybe I just needed to give these bands the push to take the risk and give them the opportunity where there's no stakes… I’m going to do everything, just come in, have fun, give it a go. So that's where it all started. 

In trying to find the right bands to be involved, we wanted people that care about community, that are good examples for other bands in the scene in terms of what community means. We thought about how we should help cultivate the scene and celebrate diversity in terms of musical backgrounds, identities, life experiences, and try to find the right balance with all these different bands while also not letting them pair themselves off. You know, see what you can learn from a band that you wouldn't immediately go .. “Oh, we’re so similar or we already really get along so it will be so easy”. Instead, let’s group bands that maybe wouldn't think of pairing themselves at first to challenge them. What inspiration can you draw? What do you learn from that experience and where do you go from there? There will be eight bands involved and four songs on the record, so each song is a collaboration of two bands. 

W: And these are bands that you've reached out to directly, that you wanted on the album?

AB: Exactly. binsad is one of those bands, because I was just too excited, like “Ah, this is going to be too fun” but also to be involved in some way beyond the production and the organising of it all. Sinead has also agreed to jump on as a part of Hostile to do all of the event coordination.

W: How awesome. And Tallulah and binsad are doing the track together?

AB: That's right. That's one that I'll give away, that can be publicised haha. It will be exciting. Tallulah was a band that stuck while Sinead and I were floating ideas back and forth. I feel like their experience and trajectory as a band is really interesting, looking at their most recent recordings they've put out. I’m curious to put them into an environment which is super different from how they've been writing these last two EPs, where they collaborated a lot in the songwriting process with Fletcher (Matthews), their producer. Like, what do you guys have to say outside of that particular environment? We have so many incredibly talented musicians around us, so what will it look like when you guys draw inspiration from them or when they draw it from you? (Tallulah) are all really talented too and they're also really fun to be around.

W: I agree that Sydney really seems to be opening up at the moment and becoming a very inclusive and diverse scene. There are so many people happily living and working as musicians in this city right now. I think that's what it’s about at the end of the day: being in a band is really fun when you’re best friends and it's even better when all the bands you play with are your friends as well.

AB: Yeah. I think it's almost because of that there are different communities popping up as  part of the broader scene of “rock, guitar” music. It feels like a good time to have a body of work like this to set a good example or is a statement towards that. Despite how collaborative the scene can be, I’m sure it can feel cliquey to everyone from time to time — for people that may be on the outside and don't know how to find their way in, or they need help understanding what it means to be part of a community. This type of work can be a conversation starter for other bands, a reason to think  ‘I know these guys are nice. I know that I can feel safe and inclusive around them and that I can just be myself’. That's what this is a celebration of: all the differences and, in the context of music, to just make what you want to make, because that's valuable. You don't have to make music that sounds exactly like this other band who seems successful, don't try to change for anyone except yourself. I want this body of work to kind of represent that..