On the day that this interview took place, Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter and Australian cultural icon, was stung by a stingray in his chest, and left Australia his legacy. It’s something that all Australians have responded to one way, or another.

“I’m not even a big fan of Steve Irwin,” says a similarly affected Dave Larkin of Melbourne rock four-piece Dallas Crane, “but when I heard the news I was just gutted and sad for some reason.”

It seems everyone is to a certain degree. There’s also been a revision of his cultural legacy to some degree – all those who enjoyed chopping this tall poppy down have changed their tune. “He did do a fair bit for conservation,” wagers drummer Shannon Vanderwert.

“He didn’t get everything right,” Dave admits, “but what a loss. For more reasons than just his wife and kids that were left behind, but he was just a rare Aussie character that you don’t get much anymore.”

Australians looked at Steve Irwin and there was somewhat of a cultural cringe element – he was almost ‘too’ Australian. It’s something that’s often touted when talking about Dallas Crane – they’re the quintessential Australian rock ‘n roll band.

It’s good, we can take it,” Dave weighs in. “So we fucking should be. There’s so many bands who aren’t Australian, so we’re only too happy to say we are.”

“That’s something I always loved about You Am I,” Shannon comments, “because they were always looked at as being very Australian, I suppose. They didn’t take themselves too seriously, and that was always a feature I really admired.”

Factory Girls marks Dallas Crane’s fourth release – after following on from two independent releases, Lent and Twenty Four Seven, the band signed to a major and made a self-titled third effort. Like that record, Factory Girls was an album that was a long time in the making. “It took a little bit longer than it was supposed to,” Dave comments, “but that’s got to do with having three different label changes in the last year, and a few tours breaking up the schedule, and a few files going missing. It’s our little hearts of darkness.”

While Dallas Crane, like AC/DC, call Albert Productions home, their distribution has flipped around in the last year – from Festival Mushroom Records, to that being swallowed up by international giant Warners, and now on to Sony BMG. Whilst not ostensibly effecting the music, it certainly changed the release date. “It was supposed to come out six months ago, or earlier,” Dave says. “But at the same time we got to write some more songs for the record, which ended up all making it – “Curiosity” being one of those – so it was all for the better in the end.”

The single in question, “Curiosity”, has sparked some level of controversy. With an s ‘n m motif in the clip, it’s ended up working for and against the band – while it has created a talking point, it also required some editing in order to pass censorship. “All the blokes love it, all the girls hate it,” is how Shannon dryly explains it away. “TV is going through a very precious phase at the moment because of all the press about the over-sexualised video clips for young kids in the morning – and it’s fair enough because some of them are pretty bad. Ours, when you put it up against some of the others, is hardly any of the sort. For us to get a G rating on a clip like that was just bad timing, so we did have to go and chop it up just a little bit, as a result.”

Eskimo Joe had to do the same for “Black Fingernails, Red Wine”, but went even further and took the buried bodies of the original cut and displaced it with a pure band performance clip. “I’m of mixed opinions about what you should and shouldn’t cut out,” Dave says. Of “Curiosity”, Shannon is of the belief that the tongue-in-cheek nature of it was completely missed, with the FFC taking it a bit too seriously. “It was more about what it was suggesting rather than what it was actually saying,” Dave furthers. “Everyone’s seen girls in their undies at all hours of the day, and sure they’re leather, sure they’re holding whips, but okay. There’s nothing really that edgy or taboo about it when you see the clip.”

The outside impression looking in is that Factory Girls is the most deliberate Dallas Crane album to date. With über-producer Jonathan Burnside brought on board, he’s a a real producer’s producer, rather than someone who engineers first and acts in a production capacity secondly. “It was very collaborative – it wasn’t us sitting back and taking in all of everything from Jonathan by any means,” Dave explains. “That was probably why it took so long. We knew what we were getting into and so did he.”

“We had Wayne [Connolly] come in and do most of the engineering too,” Shannon adds, “so Jonathan wasn’t so much involved in that part, and then we got him to do the majority of the mixing. We liked the way he’d done things before, so we got him to come in and polish it up a little.”

The extra time period that the band were given also worked in their favour, meaning that they were able to full flesh out unformed ideas. “We went in there a bit premature and had all the songs at three-quarter stage and almost finished,” Dave admits, “and we thought ‘we’ll be right in the studio’. But things take a different shape in the studio when you try and do different versions of things, and we did and undid a lot of that stuff, and had it decided for us that we needed some more songs. But we were pretty happy with that scenario in the end because it was the right move to have five more songs added to the list.”

It’s clear that Dallas Crane wanted to achieve some cohesion with Factory Girls – they didn’t want to make a slap-dash album, but instead have 12 songs that worked well to form a ‘record’. “One thing we definitely had to do was better the last one,” Shannon says. “When we finished the first batch [of songs] it was good, it was up there, but it wasn’t better. So when we added five more songs it really brought it up a notch.”

Dave admits it can be something that’s hard for the band member’s themselves to judge, as they get so close to the project. “You start forgetting about what’s important because you’re so married to the songs, and whether it’s doing its thing or not. It is hard to do that when you’re living with the songs, and having all these thoughts, and dreams, and ambitions for the songs, to actually stand back.”

And that’s where someone like Burnside helps in terms of being a producer. “Definitely, definitely,” he confirms. “We’re lucky that we’ve got good people around the band that help out. Generally you know what’s going to make it, because it speaks for itself.”

Dallas Crane’s Factory Girls is out now, with the band touring the nation (as always). Dates:
23 September – Royal Melbourne Show
28 September – Bar on the Hill, Newcastle
29 September – Century (Metro) Theatre, Sydney
30 September – The Zoo, Brisbane
5 October – Governor Hindmarsh, Adelaide
6 October – Hi Fi Bar, Melbourne
7 October – Peninsula Lounge, Melbourne
19 October – Curly’s Bar, Hobart