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Having navigated the socio-cultural rollercoaster of the previous three years, Melbourne punk upstarts Plovers reached a boiling point of frustration, embitterment & outrage late last year. Concerned not single-mindedly with their inability to perform, their aggravation was instead fuelled by plights of a broader scope; markedly the rising tide of imbalance within wealth distribution throughout global society.
Frontperson Jared Chappell found themselves mulling this over one evening when walking home from work. Serendipitously it was this same evening that sparked the short & pointed riff that would act as a recurring motif throughout ‘Greed’.
With a collection of downtuned guitar lines, distorted & fuzzy bass, drums with unparalleled urgency and vocals that push hard through all the noise, ‘Greed’ would become Plovers’ vehicle to vent and discharge their collective infuriation.
“Greed is about the grotesque nature of wealth inequality – plain and simple. It’s not explicitly anti-wealth or anti-success without context, but rather it’s focused on the gross imbalance of wealth distribution in global society. In the current pandemic climate, the wealth of our <1% has risen by trillions at the expense of everybody else. It’s a song about how easy it is to be placated by language and the way we talk about the issue – how many of us are actually able to physically imagine the immense difference between a million and a billion dollars, after all? When it’s all just words, money is all just zeros”.
Jared Chappell, Plovers
“The word “Greed” and a bouncy riff jumped into my head without warning one day while walking home from work. I demoed the song alongside some draft lyrics and showed it to the rest of the band, but it wasn’t until we went through a few versions of the chorus and worked up the courage to completely jettison an unnecessary bridge that the final song really locked into place. It’s a song that really encapsulates something that we love as a band, which is doing our best to write songs that are catchy and melodic, but built out of spiky, aggressive parts. The guitars are stupidly downtuned and it’s full of fuzzy bass and frantic drums and voice-breaking screams, but at it’s core it’s a pop song with hooks – or at least we think it is”.
Jared Chappell, Plovers
Finding themselves with a moment of pause between Melbourne’s lockdowns, Plovers escaped to rural Victoria with a handful of hard-cases packed with recording gear. Landing in a red brick building, converted from an old dairy, the band cleared the room to squeeze amps, drums, a mixing console and vocal booth into the property.
There they would spend a week recording the instrumentals from a broad selection of demos, constructing the framework for both ‘Greed’ & their debut record. The finishing touches were tirelessly guided by Jared himself, in his home studio back in Northcote, Melbourne.
During a gap between lockdowns in 2020, we took a trip out to rural Victoria and brought a mobile studio’s worth of recording gear with us. Bunkered down in a huge redbrick dairy that’s been converted to an airBNB and seems mainly marketed to families and romantic couples, we pushed furniture out of the way to set up amps and a drum kit, and spent a week recording the basic instrumental tracks for what will become our debut record – live, loud, and in the room. On returning to Melbourne (and several months later), we set up in my home studio to finish the rest of the layers of the song – including an array of backing vocal harmonies and a cowbell – and to mix down the final product.
Jared Chappell, Plovers
Having previously shared stages with Shihad (NZ), Gang Of Four (US), Private Function & Pagan, the three-piece are no strangers to providing a live performance that showcases the venomous vocals, frantic energy and onstage antics they’ve become notorious for – with the band emerging as one of Melbourne’s premiere live punk acts.
To celebrate ‘Greed’, Plovers will be tearing apart ear-holes and stages on Saturday, February 26th at Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar; a venue that may struggle to contain their excitement to perform and opportunity for catharsis.
Given the current uncertainty around live events with Omicron etc we’re being conservative, and just limiting ourselves to a single launch show in our home town, which is on Saturday 26 February at the Last Chance Rock n Roll Bar in North Melbourne with our friends in The World at a Glance and Tumour.
Jared Chappell, Plovers
PLOVERS ‘GREED’ RELEASE SHOW
Tickets available via Oztix.
Sat Feb 26th Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar Melbourne
w/ World at a Glance & Tumour.