Q&A: The Belair Lip Bombs Hook Audiences at their Treefort Music Fest Debut
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY JUSTIN LABADIE ☆
Photos By Carly Liggett & Justin Labadie
NINE YEARS OF GRINDING THROUGH THE MELBOURNE DIY SCENE will either break a band or make them bulletproof. For The Belair Lip Bombs, it’s clearly the latter. After nearly a decade of "going through the shit stuff" in dark Victoria basements, the four-piece, Maisie Everett, Mike Bradvica, Jimmy Droughton, and Daniel "Dev" Devlin, finally hit the international stage with their sophomore record, Again. Now, as the first Australian act signed to Third Man Records, they’re trading those dank basements for sun-drenched festival sets and sold-out rooms across the U.S.
Their sound is a masterclass in tension and release; blending laid-back, bittersweet lyricism with explosive, earworm guitar riffs that feel both nostalgic and entirely fresh. Whether they’re playing to a packed room in Seattle or taking in the sun at Treefort Music Fest, the band carries a groundedness that only comes from years of putting in the work to appreciate the view from the top.
We sat down with the band in Boise to talk about the pressure of the sophomore slump, the surrealism of international impact, and the art of "ripping off the band-aid" to find normalcy after life on the road.
LUNA: Thank you so much for being here. For our readers who may not know you, would you mind introducing yourselves and explaining what The Belair Lip Bombs are all about right now?
DEV: Sure. Thanks for having us. We are a band from Melbourne, Australia. We're here in Boise, Idaho, playing Treefort Music Fest for the 1st time. We're an indie rock band. We're a four-piece. We write songs that have some heart to them, I think. That's probably about it. Does anyone want to add anything?
MIKE: We write good music, and you should listen to us.
LUNA: You are a few days into your debut US headline tour. How are you feeling about the tour so far?
MIKE: Still getting used to it. I slept until like 11:30AM today.
MAISIE: We're feeling really good about it. We've done 3 shows so far, and the turnout has exceeded our expectations so far. So we're really chuffed with how it's going. Yeah, we're just really happy to be here.
LUNA: So you released your sophomore album Again in October of last year, just a couple of years after your debut record, Lush Life. Did you approach writing and recording your latest record, Again, differently compared to Lush Life?
MAISIE: A little bit. We had less time to do it. The first record we had all the time in the world. So there's a bit more time pressure. I think we paid a little bit more attention to detail on this one and tried to make it a little bit more polished. That was the kind of main thing. But otherwise, I don't know, we just write songs. Churn them out, pretty much.
LUNA: So I know in past interviews, Maisie, you said that The 1975 was the first band that you listened to, and they evoked an emotional response. Is there an emotional response you were hoping to invoke while writing your new album?
MAISIE: I think it has to evoke an emotional response in the four of us to want to record it and release it. As for other people, I don't know. Any kind of emotional response is welcomed and appreciated by us.
MIKE: Getting someone else to feel anything, I guess, is like a really rewarding feeling. Sometimes after a show, someone would be like, " Oh, you're like a guitar inspiration for me, blah, blah. And it's a pretty surreal feeling having that much impact on someone's life. So, yeah, anything that elicits something is art. So that's what we strive for.
LUNA: What was it like going from self-producing your first record to having Joe White from Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever help produce the recent record?
DEV: Well, it was really helpful for us to have Joe from rowing blackouts just because of that time pressure that we had on the record. It wasn't stressful or anything, but it was just helpful having someone else who had an equal sort of stake and investment in the music we were writing. It was almost like having a 5th member in a way. So it was really great having the help, and then obviously working with Nao Anzai, again, who recorded Lush Life, was great. So, yeah, we just felt really lucky and grateful to have people working on the record we could trust, who were also equally invested in what we were trying to do. So yeah, it was a good experience for us because it was our 1st time working with a producer.
LUNA: You have had a pretty exciting year! Recently signing to Third Man Records as the first Australian artist, and did support tours with acts like Spacey Jane and Hockey Dad last year. How are you feeling in this current era of your career?
MIKE: I feel like the sort of mist or the illusion of the exciting album cycle has sort of passed. And we've really taken a good perspective of what Again has done for us. I always thought from day one, the rollout exceeded our expectations. So we're just so grateful for the position that we're in right now. I mean, I never thought we'd be able to do a headline, USA tour, and were right in the thick of it right now, and we're just having a blast. The goalpost just keeps on moving, and we're excited to play the shows for this record and just keep moving forward. More music, more shows, more places to see.
LUNA: This is your first time at Treefort Music Fest. Is there a different way you kind of approach festivals compared to a regular show on your tour?
MAISIE: I think getting to the festival early and exploring is something we always like to do to settle into the vibe of, especially festivals like this, where it's quite beautiful. Me and Harry, our tour manager, walked to get a coffee this morning in town, and it just kind of seemed like there was a cool vibe amongst everyone. It seems like the whole city kind of comes together for this festival, which is really cool. So, yeah, festivals are good like that, especially when they're during the day. You know, instead of a dark, dank basement. Which is great. We love playing those shows, but that's what most of the shows on this tour are going to be like, a bit of grass is nice.
LUNA: Are there any artists you are looking forward to seeing while you're here?
MAISIE: Well, I think we've missed most of the festival because we only got here today, but I think we're all pretty excited for Father John Misty tonight. I've never seen it. I think Dev, you've seen him live before.
DEV: Yeah, I love Father John Misty. Keen to see him. We can't wait to see Built to Spill as well. Maisie saw them in Melbourne last year. We're also keen to see our friends, Dust, who are playing, who we are on tour with at the moment, but there's loads of good acts. We had to ask around and get a bit of local knowledge on who we should go and see because we're a bit ignorant to the sort of smaller local Boise bands and surrounding American bands. We're keen to just go and explore after our set and see some bands.
JIMMY: I think what is exciting, though, in leaving your city and going to another country is that there's so many artists on the lineup that you've never heard before because they are, as Dev said, those local bands that just haven't quite made it to, let's say, Melbourne, where we started playing. So it's fun to just walk around and see what you discover, because I think finding a band playing live and starting to like them on the set you're just watching is a really great experience. So, yeah, we'll be walking around and checking out heaps of other artists too.
LUNA: You are currently on a month-long U.S. tour with fellow Australians dust, opening for you on the entire run. How long have you known each other/ how did you meet? What's it like having a fellow Aussie band on the road with you?
DEV: So, dust is on the same management as us. Dan Radburns, Rad music. But we all sort of met at SXSW properly. We had like an Airbnb, and we just hung out, did the whole South by experience. Some chill moments, just hanging out at the Airbnb, and then hanging out on 6th Street and just going headfirst into all the excitement that SXSW is. They're from Newcastle, which is like the next state from Victoria, where we're from. So they're still pretty close, but over the years, we played with them so many times, and we're always in contact with them. So yeah, they're really good friends of ours.
I know you guys have been a band for a long time, coming up on almost 10 years, starting out by cutting your teeth in the DIY scene in Victoria, AUS. How do you think being a part of that DIY scene has helped shape how you approach touring and playing live shows?
MIKE: I feel like doing that, we've seen how most of the industry does it, and like we've done ourselves, and there's like no glam in that sort of stuff. And you just get used to like all right, this is happening, which sucks, but we roll with it, and we adapt. I feel like you gotta go through the shit stuff. To appreciate where you are now. It's taken us, yeah, 8-9 years.
MAISIE: Yeah, I think what Mike's trying to say is we don't know what it's like for bands that have kind of had that sort of viral moment and come up really quickly. I think basically starting from scratch in Melbourne. It just makes us really appreciate every little bit along the way, and we were even talking yesterday about how crazy it is that we're in America right now, playing shows. Even these headline shows that we're doing are small shows, but the fact that people are coming to them and we like sold out, you know, 200 tickets in Seattle or something, which is pretty crazy. Coming from a DIY, smaller scene in Melbourne and making it all the way over here is pretty surreal.
LUNA: Do you have any routines you try to follow when reintegrating into “normal” life after a tour?
MAISIE: It can be quite hard. Me and Dev talk about this quite a lot. Especially because all of our friends are back home. I think there's still a lot, a lot of people think that it's this super glamorous experience, which, don't get me wrong, we're very lucky to be able to do this, and a lot of it is kind of glamorous. But it's also exhausting. So going back home and trying to reintegrate into normal life can be a bit of a challenge sometimes, especially because you go back and it feels like life kind of goes on without you when you're back home. The four of us spend a lot of time together at home, outside of the band, which kind of helps with that, like reintegration. Also, just trying to get back into a routine, like going back to work, trying to exercise, which is so lame, but it definitely helps, and just socializing as well. We try to socialize with our friends back home as much as possible.
DEV: I was going to say, I think a big part of reintegrating back into Melbourne home life for us has a lot to do with what we do while we're on tour. I think, because we've toured quite a bit in the last 18 months, we try to build routines while we're on tour to keep us sane. Try to get up early and go for a walk, or go to yoga, or go for a run, or whatever it is. Try to do things before you sit in a van for like 10 hours. It's pretty important to us. And I think a big part of that comes from us living relatively normal lives when we're not touring. So we kind of want to have a bit of that while we're on the road. It's tricky because when we tour, we usually are coming from quite a far distance away. It's hard to find any semblance of a normal routine or reality.
JIMMY: Yeah, I have a habit of, as soon as I get off an international flight and get home. I'll unpack my bag, do all of my washing, get rid of all of the bag tags from my stuff, and just get rid of the evidence that I've been on the road, and just clean my room. When I am at home, it's completely normal. I don't forget all the memories straight away, of course, because the touring lifestyle just has so many highlights. I just like planting roots straight away. Getting a coffee from your regular cafe will just change absolutely everything. It brings you back to an extremely grounding experience. Ripping off the band-aid helps me so much personally.
