Great Job!: Meet Sydney’s Primo Emo Band
In September, Great Job! released their debut album, 'Love and Feel Love'. Now, these emo heroes talk to Emma Cranby about their journey so far and what's next.
Interviewer Emma Cranby catches up with Nick (drums) and Charlie (vocals, rhythm guitar) from Great Job! to discuss success, lies, and the only right way to listen to Great Job!’s new album Love and Feel Love.
Emma: Alright, hi! You’re on tour now, aren’t you? Have you had a favourite show or favourite experience from the tour?
Nick: I think being in Tamworth and seeing people singing along to our songs was wild.
Emma: Do you often get people singing along to your songs? Or did that feel almost like, ‘we’ve made it’?
Charlie: I don’t know if we’ve made it, I mean, we’ve got a long way to go first. But it’s been happening a lot more recently.
Nick: Every couple shows we see someone turn up who isn't one of our friends, who sings along to everything. And I’m then like, oh, you’re just a random person out there who found us somehow!
Charlie: That's the thing that I think wigs me out. Whenever I see someone singing along, I’m like, oh, it’s our friend Lily, or something. I see someone singing along and I’m like, oh, I must know you somehow.
Emma: Yeah. Now, obviously you’ve got an album, you’ve done a tour, you’re getting the hang of it – what are the next steps, do you reckon?
Charlie: I personally think that smaller venues, more intimate shows that have a good crowd are way better. We're kind of trying to do one big headliner a year, and then do a basement show headliner, and then wherever else in between. The basement shows have been my favourite. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea; everyone gets very sweaty. We had a basement show at the start of the year when we released our first single – to celebrate that. And that was allegedly a 60 cap room. I think we got maybe 35 in and everybody else was hanging outside, but they had a live stream of it in the lobby. Which was pretty good.
Nick: That was a very, very sweaty venue.
Emma: I bet the people who were there were probably just like, ‘yes, this is an experience’, though. That sounds like a killer atmosphere.
Charlie: That’s what I want to make! I feel like the shows that I love, and the artists that have always stuck with me – y’know, it’s never at Acer arena [sic]. It’s always been at the little place. And I mean, our live shows are about catharsis. I wanna write the music for 15-year-old Charlie feeling depressed on the bus home from school, y'know. There’s always positivity and humour to it. We're not a sad emo band. when we're on stage we’re fucking laughing and messing around with each other and making fun of each other all the time. I think that’s also really important to our live show because it makes people feel like they’re part of it.
Nick: We sing about sad times, but we're also about going past it and getting to the better stuff.
Charlie: It’s about contemplation rather than dwelling.
Nick: Life goes on.
Emma: That’s awesome. And the album is Love and Feel Love, isn’t it? That probably has that kind of ethos. How did you decide on that as the album name?
Charlie: I wrote the first song when I was alone with my partner in lockdown. They were there half the time, since we had our bubble, and they were the only person I saw, and I kind of doubted my own feelings towards them. I was just constantly full of self-doubt. It was like, is this what love is, is this how to process emotion? Or am I just faking this so I feel good? That first song I think I wrote at 4AM or something one night; I wrote the lyrics down. It went through some changes before the album, because I wrote that song like four years before we wrote the rest of the album. That song was the basis of the idea for the rest of the album.
Emma: Does songwriting normally work like that with you? Someone coming up with an idea at 4AM, say, and then it’s just put together?
Nick: Previous to this album, a lot of the process with the band was Charlie would write a song, come to us with a demo that was already mostly complete, and we’d maybe polish it a little bit, add in a few things here and there, and then you’re good to go.
Charlie: The longer that went on, the less and less complete they got, though.
Nick: We definitely expressed more interest in being a more active part of the songwriting process. Then, when we decided that we were going to write an album, we met up weekly pretty consistently in 2024 and worked on writing songs together. With the exception of ‘Love and Feel Love’ and ‘Comically Squeaky Door’, which Charlie wrote during lockdown, we wrote all of the rest of the songs together, and that was so much fun to do.
Emma: So, how long has the band been going on? How did you all get together?
Charlie: We started in high school. It was James – our lead guitarist, who was originally playing drums – me, a friend of James’s who was playing bass, and a friend of mine who was playing lead guitar. That was going to be a post hardcore band, post-rock kind of thing. But my friend never showed up to rehearsal, so we gave up on that after we just didn’t have a lead guitarist. I brought in these other songs that I’d been writing on my own, and we started playing. From that came our first EP. We met Natt, who's our current bassist, when they came to one of our shows, I think maybe our first ever show.
Nick: And Charlie and I had met on a uni show that we did together. Right after we met was when the first EP was released. I listened to it and I was like, this is fucking sick, and then Charlie was like, ‘hey, wanna join the band?’ And I’m like, ‘yeah!’
Charlie: So after James quit the drums, I think there was maybe 5 minutes in which we were drummerless. And then I found Nick and was just like, you wanna play drums for us? I think the first show we played together was either late 2020 or early 2021.
Emma: So, you said that in high school you were sort of a post-rock band – do you feel the sound has changed since the lineup’s changed, and since others have become more involved in the songwriting? How has that changed the music you make?
Charlie: The post-rock thing never actually happened. But we started, as, you know, your Poison City punk of the 2013 era. It was pretty basic. It was me and a guitar, and then drums playing rock beats and the bass playing the roots. We didn’t do anything complicated. But when James started playing guitar, that made a huge difference. He’s actually the greatest guitarist I know, and he adds a lot to us sonically in terms of what we can sound like. And we just get better, as well. We get better at songwriting because we're collaborating more. And we’re finding our niche in the scene. We're pushing ourselves as an emo band, a Syd-west emo band if you will, and that’s what people have been cottoning on to. Kids crave emo, man.
Nick: I love that the songs have lots of emotional range. We have lots of happy-go-lucky songs, some songs are really upbeat and then we go more into the hard core stuff.
Charlie: I started screaming, baby.
Nick: We’ve always had one off screams in songs before, but –
Charlie: – I always pulled back on it because I was afraid people were going to be like, ‘can you stop screaming at me’. When we were in high school everyone hated my music taste.
Emma: Has the reception been good now, to the heavier stuff?
Charlie: Fuck yeah! I always get people coming up after our show and being like, ‘woah, your voice’. My voice specifically is always something that I've been wanting to champion, because I think that's what makes a band unique. It’s their literal voice.
Emma: Are you professionally trained?
Charlie: I am, yeah. Don’t let anyone know! [They laugh] Nah, it’s funny. I was a theatre kid. I did musical theatre for a long time; I have a very good singing voice. I can belt out a fucking Les Mis; get me on that Valjean shit.
Nick: The show that we met on was kind of a musical theatre show, which I’ve also done a whole lot of.
Emma: If I could ask another question about the album, how do you want people to listen to it? What are the perfect conditions for a person to listen to Love and Feel Love in? If they're going to get the best experience possible, do they need to lie down, have snacks? What are you thinking?
Charlie: There's actually a completely correct answer to this – on the balcony at night, headphones in, having a cigarette or whatever, and just not doing anything else. Especially if you can see the sky. I'm a big fan of stars. When I’m in the city, I love to sit outside and look at the stars. That’s what ‘In Waves’ is about. It's about being with a friend and just being there next to them, not saying anything. I mean, it goes without saying I want people to listen to the songs without talking over them, duh; but just quiet at night, outside, with a nice glass of wine.
Emma: I know you've expressed a lot of discontent with Spotify and the music industry. What do you want the music industry to be? What do you think is the ideal world for up and coming artists?
Charlie: Owned by the artist. Made for the artists. Everything we’re currently doing is capable of being done successfully with everybody, but the people who own everything hoard it. There’s so much money going into Spotify. We could all be profiting off it, there is that much money going into it, but we’re not, despite us providing the content and being the reason the platform exists. I find it so strange that people can make money off a business and put it into other things, and not put it straight back in the business or the people who create and work for the business. In my opinion, we work for Spotify, we give them content. It’s supposed to be a mutually beneficial relationship.
Nick: And if anyone wants to know what we can do to support bands under capitalism – go support your local scene. Go to a show, brother. Go to shows, talk to people. Go to see a local band and get involved with a local scene.
Charlie: Buy a CD, bro! If you wanna listen to our music and support us, go buy the music! You'll actually get to own it! Most bands have physical media, and if they don’t, they should do it. It costs $4 to print a decent CD you can sell for $10, which is a bigger margin than you’re making on t-shirts. Spend money on things. Start pirating the evil stuff, and support your local. Like, I would rather people pirate my music than go on Spotify. It’s a stronger engagement, too. I just want people to hear my music! I want to do this. I want to do live shows. That's the fun shit.
Emma: Too right. Okay, now, if people are going to understand who Great Job! are, what is the one song they need to listen to? What song do you think defines you, or what’s one you’re proudest of?
Charlie: Maybe ‘Take Your Meds’?
Nick: Yeah, the combo of ‘Take Your Meds’ into ‘In Waves’?
Charlie: Maybe just ‘Wasting My 20s’. I think ‘Wasting My 20s’ is the right answer, but it’s not the answer I want to give, because it’s not off our album.
Nick: I would say, as much as we talk down the song, it might be ‘I Haven't Seen Harry Potter’. We should never write another song like that, but I think that it's tongue in cheek, but also earnest. It’s high energy, but also has a sombre energy at points. I feel like that encompasses a lot of our ethos, and a lot of our sound.
Emma: What do you want to focus on, going forward?
Charlie: I see Great Job! as Australia's primo emo band. There’s really not many. Like I personally don't see anybody as that band. And that’s where I see our gap in the market, so to speak. We want to be the Midwest emo band of Australia. I think probably we gotta get some more twinkly guitars, and gotta learn how to play a bit better, but we’ve got the tunings for it.
Nick: We've had conversations here and there about what's coming next year and when the next album is coming and all that sort of stuff, but I mean, we’re still finishing up doing everything here. After we've done all the shows we need to have a proper band meeting and just go like, okay, what's our plan? What are we doing?
Emma: For sure. This is probably the most basic question you'll ever be asked, but: why did you decide on ‘Great Job!’?
Nick: Well, that’s a question for Charlie. I live with the name of Great Job! I have to hear ‘great job, mate’ after every single show.
Charlie: It comes from a TV show, one of my favourite TV shows: Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. I mean, that’s the real answer. But at the same time I’m in love with the idea of artists who just lie. I think that’s really funny.
Emma: So do you have a lie? If you were going to lie about one thing, what would it be? What’s the made-up mythology that’s going to be passed down through generations of Great Job! fans?
Nick: Would it be, like, what a certain song is about? Do we have a particularly cryptic song? Most of the songs are very heart-on-the-sleeve, so it’s hard to say.
Charlie: I think that's what makes it so funny to me. All the songs are 100% true, all the stories from my life and shit.
Emma: Now the question is, are they lying about that? Maybe we’ll never know. But I believe I have an album to listen to – with a glass of wine and a cigarette on the balcony, of course – so this seems like a good place to end it. Thanks so much for your time today, and all the best with everything in the future.
