Gloss chats to Collapsing Cities vocalist/guitarist Steve Mathieson about the evils of telemarketing, their album ‘Elixir Always' and the band’s departure for London…

In ‘Fear of Opening My Mouth’ you sing “If I’m still a telemarketer next year, I think I’ll end my life…” So, who is the telemarketer in the band?
Oh that used to be me. I worked at the NZ Wine Society for three years – it wasn’t as bad as it sounds, but for two or three years I was selling wine over the phone part time so I could do music as well.

I get telemarketers phoning me every day - up to six times a day starting at 8:30am and going through till 9:00 at night…
*Laughing. That’s so awful! Hilarious. I wonder why they target you. Are you too nice, or are you quite brutal when they phone?

I used to be nice, but now I just hang up. Your lyrics made me feel bad!
I didn’t expect our lyrics to give people the guilts about telemarketers. I’m pretty ruthless when telemarketers call me as well. What gets me is that they are so scripted and robotic – if they didn’t sound so defeated and they were more engaging it wouldn’t be so bad talking to them.

Well, at least you sold wine – I’ve had people trying to sell me useless things...
Yeah, I love wine. I’m about to have a wine to celebrate the album release and because we are so busy with that and then going to London soon, I haven’t actually stopped to smell the roses in a while. I’m looking forward to just chilling and relaxing.

What bands made you want to start a band?
Sparklehorse. He was the first artist I really got into. He’s really mellow, I have always been into more mellow music, but the rest of the guys in the band are into more dancey music which is good, cos people like to party. I also used to be really into Bailter Space.

I like your dry lyrics - ‘Seriously’ lyrics are great… ‘You’ve got some weird open relationship with your boyfriend of eight years’ – that cracks me up because we all know someone like that.
Yeah that is a true story about this friend of mine who used to go out with this media guy who was quite a bit older than her (I can’t name names) and I don’t know what the deal was with them, but you always know when it is going to end in tears. I went out with her for a while, and she broke my heart. Anyway… wine is good! *Laughs

Oh dear… Don’t go drowning your sorrows!
Nah, it’s actually the opposite. I’ve just been relaxing a bit – we’ve been working towards this album for a long time, so it is nice just to stop and chill for a while.

So you’re off to London soon?
Yeah we are just going to go there for a while and do the hard-slog. How long we stay there depends how well it goes. It’s an awesome opportunity, ‘cos we’ve hooked up with SuperVision Management, who look after Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs. SuperVision has some great bands and is one of the best management companies in the UK so it’s a great opportunity for us. It’s gonna be hard, but heaps of fun. I can’t wait to play to a room full of strangers that is gonna be the coolest feeling!

How long did it take to put ‘Elixir Always' together?
We finished it at the end of last year – we recorded music in mid last year, down at Tim’s (our drummer) parent’s house in Hamilton. We didn’t want to record it at a sterile studio. You can record good albums from home these days you just need to hire good gear. We finished it at the end of October and have just been sitting on it for the last few months, which is really hard – you want to give it to your friends!

You describe your music as ‘rock you can dance to’…
Yeah, our drummer Tim is really keen on playing party drum beats. We wanna make music that is danceable and fun, but lyrically I write songs that are slightly depressing, so there is kind of an undercurrent of it being an upbeat pop song, but sort of not. We want to make music that people can relate to as well, we just write music that we think is cool and that is accessible.

I hear you have had a request to play at a wedding!
Yeah we did! This couple that met at one of our gigs wanted us to play at their wedding. Our guitarist James talked to them about it, we didn’t play there because we had something else on, but yeah, I guess we could do weddings…

Collapsing Cities debut album ‘Elixir Always' is out now.  

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