Named after the iconic neon sign in Richmond, Melbourne band Skipping Girl Vinegar have come out of a two year long recording process to release their debut album, Sift the Noise. Somewhere between old world folk and catchy melodic pop, SGV weren’t afraid to take their time, as Mark Lang, singer and guitarist explains. “We had this seasonal approach where if we were song writing, then all we did was song writing, and then all we did was pre-production and then all we did was recording.” He credits this slower approach as the reason why their record feels a little more thoughtful and measured than a lot of other debuts – it meant they didn’t “getting sidetracked on all the other stuff that you think you’re meant to be doing like organising gigs and all that.”

But as it turned out, it was this commitment to the music over building hype that brought them success – “because we actually just focussed on the music itself, it did a lot of the work for us…the girls gave a disc to Bob Evans after a gig and he really liked it and made us the main support, and then we got the Lemonheads and Something for Kate and all these massive bands we would have wet our pants over!”

 

Their commitment to song writing also carried over to the recording process, a majority of which was recorded in their bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens. For Mark, it was about creating a record with its own character, “a bit more low fi-ness to the sound…[for example] on “One Chance” [their first single] the kick is just me stomping in the kitchen, on the floor. I did that as a demo but then I really loved the sound because you can hear the rattling of the fridge when you listen really carefully!”

 

And while parts of their sound came about just as randomly – Mark found a banjo in Tasmania when they were writing the record and it slowly filtered into the song writing process – a lot of thought has been put into their Hammond heavy, tambourine shakin’ sing-a-longs. From start to finish, Mark reckons the album took four years – “it’s a long time and the only reason it stayed together was because my sister’s in the band and her childhood friend and my childhood friend, so we had a vision from the start and we knew we were on to something.”

PS:

Mark was actually an incredibly nice guy! He was quite interested in my own musical endeavours, and seemed genuinely interested in giving me advice – and offered me his email should I ever want to contact him…