Christchurch-based husband and wife duo Terrible Sons
— Matt (The Dukes) and Lauren Barus (L.A. Mitchell, Fly My Pretties) — have clocked up more than 18 million streams since 2018. Their folkish, tender music is imbued with wry humour. I particularly love the songs that deal with the delicate "I know you know I know" balance required to make a relationship work — when you disagree but know you’ll still have to wake up with each other tomorrow, no matter who’s right. Songs about compromises and cool heads, tracks such as the bright and wistful Easy Love and Sunset Swimming are the kind of deeply romantic music you’ll want as the soundtrack for the indie movie of your life.
The band’s name comes from a joke between Matt and his musician brother Jo, co-founder of Dukes. "We were kidding that with us both being musicians, our parents must be sad at how we turned out. My mum turned around and said, ‘that’s rubbish! We’re very happy’. When Lauren ‘joined’ the band (‘You know this would be much better if I joined’) she said, ‘that’s a great name’ and here we are."
Q The playlist given to the band before recording the album included Simon and Garfunkel. What’s your favourite?
A You could have heard a pin drop when Paul Simon played the Sound of Silence at the [Forsyth Barr] stadium in 2013, but my favourite is a throw away track, Cecilia. I love that they used buckets and stones and whatever was lying around the studio to make the sound effects, love the sense of humour."
Q Every relationship has its in-jokes and Terrible Sons’ compassion for the emotional stuff of life is beautiful ...
A When I was younger, I was worried about being too earnest. In New Zealand you feel like you need to be cool more than honest. I used to come down and see the Dunedin Sound bands when I was at uni in Christchurch and think, "I’m never going to be this cool" Now I don’t give a rat’s arse.
Q When will we see you perform the new album live?
A We did a mini tour in December and played at Dog with 2 Tails. We’d like to tour more but with two little kids and both having our own work commitments, we squeeze in Terrible Sons on weekends and then we’re stuffed. We’re stuffed all the time anyway. Also, our drummer is in so many bands it’s a feat of logistics to get everyone to together.
Q Did you hear about the car that drove into Dog with 2 Tails?
A Wow that’s crazy! That’s so sad, we loved that place. When we were there, we said, "this place has so much potential!".
Q Your songs are getting millions of streams ...
A Well, they were. Spotify has changed so much in the past few years. Streaming has totally dropped away for artists like us. One song had millions of streams, which came as a total surprise, then a folk label in Singapore got in touch and we finally ended up on a Canadian label.
The US and Asia is our main audience. It’s weird how New Zealand music exports are so much bigger overseas than here, like the Beths, who have grown hugely overseas. It’s almost like you can’t be popular in New Zealand to make it. Someone will eventually notice you and say, "Hey, these guys are killing it overseas" and Kiwis will be like, "really? Oh, they must be OK."
It’s hard to get people to gigs — you almost have to twist their arms. If you’re thinking about going, you should go. If you don’t, someone always tells you how good it was and you go, "damn!".
Connecting with the audience is so fun. Gigging is tougher when you’ve got little kids, though. You can’t just suddenly up and do stuff, plus we’re exhausted by 9pm, watching something terrible on Netflix.
Q Hopefully, you can have a rest from parenting small people and tour Dunedin at some point ...
A That sounds wonderful. Hopefully some venue that hasn’t been driven into.
The music
- Terrible Sons’ new song and video Easy Love is on YouTube.
- Album The Raft is not the Shore is out on Friday. Pre-order at terriblesons.com.
