Sometimes not much happens in the world of bands. They play shows, they record songs, then repeat, rinse, and hang out to dry. Not so with BrisVegas troupe the Red Paintings. They’ve just had a shitfight with their (now former) record label, landed themselves a support slot with the Dresden Dolls nationwide in September, and played with mogwai in their home town.

“I’d love to tell you everything,” outlines frontman Trash McSweeney. “But there was so much bullshit that was involved and I said so much on the last tour. We are now fully independent and we have our masters back which is sweet. Put it this way: I learnt that it is more important to a young band like us to have the creativity to do what we want when we please rather than to not have it, and to lose your independence. I may as well have my independence and no money at all than lose my creativity and independence and still have no money at all.”

One of the things in the Red Paintings favour is that they never actually signed a contract; they were offered things and were working with a label, but never decided whether it was right for them. “We were always an independent band,” he confirms, “but certain people put our press releases saying that we’d been signed when we’d never actually signed, and we just went okay, and went with it for right now. But then it came to where it is today.”

From there Trash remains relatively tight-lipped, suffice to say that the Destroy the Robots EP was not necessarily exactly representative of what his vision had of the band creating for their follow-up to the incredibly well-received Walls EP. “Financially it’s been really hard. Every now and again you get little surprises, like we just got the whole of the Dresden Dolls tour around Australia, and they make it all worthwhile.”

But touring around the nation is expensive, with Trash saying that he’s been forced to beg, borrow and scrimp and save every last cent – he’s taken out bank loans, gone to his parents and everything in between, while band members busk on the street, and the string section in the Red Paintings play at weddings to get extra cash. It’s got to the point where his only meal of the day now consists of toast. Not that he’s complaining. “We’re doing this because we love music and we have something we believe in, and it’s not about money. I love what I’m doing right now so I’ll prepare myself physically and emotionally to do it.”

He’s also had to battle through suffering from synaesthesia, meaning that he ‘sees’ music in terms of colours, rather than in sounds or in notes. It makes the writing process a very different beast for the Red Paintings. “I take artwork like that of Mark Ryden and Brett Whiteley and formed songs from looking at their artworks,” he explains. “I try to feel exactly how the artwork comes across to me, and that colours the songs. I see music in colours, and if I feel a certain emotion then I’ll see the colours in the chords and the parts to go with it.”

He explains that his songs change colour when he plays them, and as they develop over time. “Walls” for instance started off being blood red going into green, and now it’s very brown. “If something happens in my life and it really effects me emotionally then it helps me,” he says of the songwriting process. “I don’t always write my songs like this, but over the last few years when the band have attained some success it’s meant playing the numbers game – figures and finances – and I’ve lost a lot of that as a part of me, and I was expected to write certain things and that’s why I put the whole concept of the ‘Robots’ together – it was me shedding off what I felt and it was a metaphor for what was going on around us.”

Walls was paid for by the band, and was the EP that they wanted to release. Destroy the Robots by contrast was paid for by the label to go into the studio and produce. “I was this young kid with stars in my eyes,” he confirms, “and we thought amazing things were going to happen because you’re going to let you do what you want and they’re going to pay for it.”

But, of course, that’s not how it works at all. Instead, he explains, he was told what to play and what songs should be released and what can’t be. “So I just completely tripped out. At the end of it I started getting money together to pay off the recording and we did, but it was too far gone and shit hit the fan. It was a complete nightmare, and I haven’t been so frustrated in my life. I didn’t realise that the music industry was about one single word and it’s called ‘investment’, and that’s the way I see it. I don’t see any colours; I just see numbers and that’s why the last tour was called the ‘Uprising of the Robots’ because it was a numbers game, and I put a setlist together that said pretty clearly that it was about numbers and not colours. Whereas the next tour, where we own absolutely everything we’ve ever done, I’m putting heaps of canvases everywhere and we’re putting as much colour into the shows as we can, because I figure the only way I can conquer the numbers is with colour.”

The Red Paintings’ Destroy the Robots EP is out, with the band touring. Dates:
Friday August 4 – Spanish Club, Melbourne
Saturday August 5 – Fowlers Live, Adelaide
Thursday August 10 – Sodens, Albury
Friday August 11 – ANU Bar, Canberra
Saturday August 12 – Roundhouse, Sydney
Sunday August 13 – Heritage Hotel, Wollongong
Sunday August 25 – Miami Tavern, Brisbane
With Dresden Dolls:
Friday September 15 – The Arena, Brisbane
Saturday September 16 – Gaelic Theatre, Sydney
Sunday September 17 – Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Monday September 18 – Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Wednesday September 20 – Uni Bar, Adelaide
Friday September 22 – Heat Night Club, Perth