JAKEB SMITH sends torrid streams of fan mail to Melbourne celebrity gossip magazine darlings – slash indie rock trio – ACTOR/MODEL.

Your debut EP, Gossip About Guys, has received an amazingly warm welcome from critics and fans. Has this created any pressure – internally or externally, positive or negative – to perform and record as a more professional outfit? Or are you indie slackers in the Pavement tradition?

Much as we love Pavement we only slack off to the extent that time allows. All our free time is pretty much dedicated to at least ‘thinking’ about our music, if not performing it. Sometimes I worry that we might have set the bar too high with our first release (laughs). I mean, some of those were the very first songs we wrote, and yeah I worry about whether the stuff we record next will be as well received. But it’s not through lack of ‘thinking’ about it.

What are your plans for releasing further material? Some would surely use the impetus from a successful EP to get started on an album, rather than stay with the shorter format.

Oh yes. We’re working that one out now. Trying to decide where to go to record the first album. We certainly have plenty of material.

The themes of your songs seem to deal with a certain superficiality often witnessed in modern culture. What is important to get across to people these days?

Again, most of those songs on Gossip About Guys are the first songs we wrote, and to a certain extent we were writing with a concept in mind. I guess we like to try to point out the absurdities the media focuses on these days. Our new songs no longer follow that theme, a few are inspired by books, or imaginary situations. I guess our instrumentation is the thing that really gets across to people first and foremost.

Being a trio, are you conscious of each instrument's functional musical role at any one time? Surely filling the spectrum of sound requires a more cleverly concerted effort than that of a larger band?

Yeah but you wouldn’t guess we have a problem when you see us live. We’re constantly getting told how ‘huge’ and full our sound is, which is exactly what I want to hear. We’ve actually started striping things down a bit in the new songs because it seemed to our ears there was too much going on. The tones are so important. We rely heavily on our gear, it’s unique to us. Karen’s keyboard for example has all these sounds programmed into it by whoever the previous owner was and they’re completely nuts. If we lost that keyboard we’d be screwed and have to start all over again.

You're playing a night called Coq A Hoop, which means “to drink without restraint; to celebrate drunkenly....” Is this a regular occurrence for you – inspiring untold revelry, or perhaps just partaking in it?

We’ve certainly played our fair share of shows to unrestrained revelry; we go down pretty well as a party band, haha. We love getting involved with the crowd, getting claps or chants going. We generally make a mess of the stage and whatever song we play last often depends on which pieces of equipment are still working. Just joking Ric’s Bar, don’t look so worried, we’re not really like that. Or are we?

ACTOR/MODEL play Ric's, June 26. GOSSIP ABOUT GUYS is out now through Mistletone.

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