Aussie indie rockers The Temper Trap had a big hit with Sweet Disposition. But, frontman Dougy Mandagi tells JIM CARROLL, their new album shows they have lots more going on
IT WAS OCTOBER 2010. Dougy Mandagi sounded dog-tired. The Temper Trap had been touring their debut album, Conditions, for nearly two years. But the frontman could see the finishing line coming up. A few more hours of interviews, a few more weeks of touring and he could kick back, relax and recharge his batteries.
So how was that long overdue, much sought-after holiday, Dougy? Did you go anywhere nice? “After two weeks, man, I was sick of sitting on a beach and wanted to get back on a tour bus,” Mandagi says. “Yeah, I’m serious. Careful what you wish for.
“We took a month off and then we met up again in London. Someone would say ‘hey, man, how are you? Good to see you. How was your holiday?’ and somone would go ‘well, it was good, but I got pretty bored’ and someone else would go ‘I got bored too’, so we were ready to get back to work.”
Eighteen months on from the end of one campaign, Mandagi is back talking to journalists and getting ready for another bout of touring as another campaign begins. The Australian band, who formed back in Melbourne in 2005 and enjoyed a massive worldwide hit with Sweet Disposition, have a new album to brag about. Recorded in the Los Angeles sun with producer Tony Hoffer, the self-titled new record sees The Temper Trap swapping guitars for synths and letting pages from Mandagi’s diary (especially the entries on relationships and the London riots) set the lyrical tone.
“The musical change was brought on by the addition of Moog and Nord keyboards,” says Mandagi. “When we started working with Tony, he took it to the next level because he is obsessed with synthesisers. Coming off the back of working on the M83 record, he probably wanted to put synths on everything. It was a combination of those two things which changed the sound.”
Mandagi’s relationship woes and break-up with his girlfriend form the backdrop for many of the songs on the album. How does he feel about having to talk about this again and again in the coming year in interviews? “Well, I don’t have to speak about anything if I don’t want to [laughs]. But it does come up and I know it will come up a lot. However, I’ll only divulge as much or as little information to the world as I feel comfortable with.
“Everybody can relate to it because heartbreak and love are universal themes and people don’t need to know the nitty-gritty of who the girl was and why we broke up and this and that. As long as people can relate to the emotion behind it, that’s fine.”
The band hope that people can also relate to the fact that they’re more than just the Sweet Disposition band. “We don’t take it for granted because we’re very aware of what that song has done for us,” says Mandagi.
“It’s always brought up in interviews and discussions, but we won’t forget it until the day comes when we write a song which is bigger than that. We’re very grateful for where that song has taken us. We’re bummed that it took on a life of its own and eclipsed the album. On this record we’d like to see that people will fall in love with all the songs and not just one.
“We had moderate success with Fader and Love Lost and what not, but Sweet Disposition is the song which catapulted us on to the international stage and is the reason why people still care about us and are anticipating the next record.” What Mandagi found striking about working on the new album was the attitude in the band. “It was very carefree, which I wasn’t expecting, I suppose.
“Tony Hoffer has an amazing personality. He’s like a four year old stuck in a 50-year-old body and mind. Studios can be stressful, especially when you’re doing a second album, but this was the opposite.
“I think it’s fair to say we were confident, but that confidence comes from learning from your mistakes. You can never go through life error-free, especially when you are in a band. You only become more savvy about what’s going on and how the industry works and who exactly you have around you and how to work a crowd and how to work a stage by doing it again and again. You trust yourself a lot more that you can do it and you have the skills from intense touring to do it.”
But that doesn’t mean Mandagi is obsessive about the business of being in a band. “There are other people in this band who are obsessive about stuff like that. They want to know what’s going on in the background and want to be filled in on a lot of details.
“Or you can be like me. I trust person A and person B to look after the logistical stuff so I can concentrate on what I do best, which is writing and performing.
“But I’m not totally oblivious and it’s all presented to us to give a green light or a red light.”
Mandagi stresses that there’s still plenty of ambition within the band for the future. “We just want to play to more people and sell more records. We want to be as big as we can. That was the ambition and that’s still the ambition and I suppose most bands can relate to that. It’s easier to chase those ambitions because you can gauge it by numbers. The more difficult one to fulfil is to make the perfect record, the record we can find no fault with. That’s still there.”
Aside from an ability to write pop tunes that become international earworms, The Temper Trap’s success can be put down to a decision to move to London. The band landed there in 2009 and never looked back.
“Being in London has been very good for us,” says Mandagi. “It’s not my favourite city – I’m looking to move to New York soon – but there are only a few places you have to be if you want to give your music a really good shot internationally. It’s basically London, New York or LA.
“Those cities are the trendsetters when it comes to what the rest of the world listens to. There’s a really healthy music scene in Australia but most journalists and radio DJs wait to see what everyone else is listening to and latch on to that. It’s frustrating but you have to deal with it and if that means going abroad, that’s what you have to do.”
The Temper Trap is released on Infectious on May 18. They play Dublin’s Phoenix Park with Snow Patrol and Florence The Machine on July 9
