The Scare: Scary Kids Scaring Kids

To be honest, this evening’s meeting with notorious punk rockers Sam Pearton and Kiss Reid from The Scare has me a little unnerved. An interview with their guitarist Liam O’Brien the previous week in a local music magazine portrayed them as an unjustifiably self-assured group who think that moving to the UK and working alongside Silverchair’s Daniel Johns makes them “all that”. In O’Brien’s words, “when you return from London you’re definitely a lot cooler”. I would presume having lived and played music together for the last few years that Pearton and Reid would be on a similar wavelength to their co-musician. The remind golden rule for any journalist - never presume.

The Scare’s frontman Kiss Reid is the antithesis of his extroverted onstage persona. He is somewhat reserved, almost tentative at times, a far cry from the crazed hysteria I have witnessed during their shows. ‘Fucking dangerous’ and ‘deranged’, as some have put it. I question Reid about whether he views these to be fitting portrayals. “Everyone has got their own opinion. I’m just being normal. That’s me.” He is elusive, giving little away. I press further, asking him how he would rather be described. He thinks for some moment. “Quiet passive aggressive”, he decides. Quiet. Passive. Aggressive. Almost an oxymoron in itself. In hindsight, quite aptly put I must say.

He is something of a paradox, an enigma I just can’t seem to work out. He pushes you away whilst drawing you in at the same time. Remaining rather unspoken for the majority of the interview, the raven-haired vocalist only really begins to converse with me after I have concluded the interview and turned the tape recorder off. Perhaps it’s the vicarious audience it seems to represent to him. As he speaks to me, he holds an air of underlying resentment about him. It is this very resentment that is the impetus behind The Scare itself; the need to vent an inner angst which today’s law enforced society have few outlets for. Sam Pearton alluded to this in an interview with ‘Blag’ last year, in telling that the band came about because they were “five bored children who wanted to make noise and get out the anger of living in a small town with close-minded people”.

Dressed in the inevitable skinny black jeans and long trench coat, Pearton is as well-dressed as he is well-articulated. As the more eloquent member of the two, he is more than co-operative in answering most of my questions.

According to The Who’s guitarist Pete Townshend, “England has got all the bad points of Nazi Germany, all the pompous pride of France, all the old-fashioned patriotism of the Old Order of the Empire. It’s got everything that’s got nothing to do with music”. The Scare seem to think to the contrary, having relocated to the UK to try their luck within the thriving music scene. Rather than London as the obvious launching pad for their music though, their location of choice was Birmingham.

“Initially, it was kind of a financial thing”, Pearton explains. “Plus we are just the type of band where our environment really kind of assists our minds. Say if we went to London, it probably would have happened all too fast. It probably would have been us out every night, probably sleeping with the same girls, hanging out with the same idiots. It kind of takes away from the music and doing what a band should be doing and developing a fan base.”

“[Birmingham] is a really organic environment to have a band in. But it’s still a fucking horrible city. It’s not gentrified. You walk down the street there and you’re actually scared of getting killed, sometimes,” he laughs. “Especially the part we lived in.”

Pearton is just as unimpressed with the music scene over in the UK. “There’s some great bands, but it’s just all the same,” he says indifferently. “I think there are very few people in the world who can actually produce stuff that’s actually of substance. That might sound arrogant. I’m not even saying we do, I’m just saying there’s very few people that we kind of respect and really draw things from.” A rather self-assured response, I note to Pearton. “That’s the whole point. No one would have ever believed it for starters if there wasn’t that confidence. It’s all relevant to what we’ve experienced. Without that passion and confidence we wouldn’t be sitting here doing this interview right now.”

I question them about the aforementioned interview with Liam O’Brien. “I haven’t read that interview, but I also know how well interviewers can turn something you say around. If we’ve done one thing, it’s a fucking shitload of press. I’ve done more interviews than I’ve sold records I think,” Pearton laughs.

The boys were met with a fair bit of hype in the UK following the release of their debut album Chivalry, although Pearton seems humbled by all the attention. “The year that we had before the album came out, a lot of people were expecting things, so generally when people are expecting things, they tend to chase them up. And lucky in our case it was pretty much all positive. Whether that means the record is good or not is kind of a matter of conjecture in our minds. Let’s just say it was received well.”

Despite this, they have returned to our fair shores, which the boys have attributed to high living costs and bad management. The boys now call Sydney home, where Kiss informs me they are presently writing new material for their second album. Of course, the inevitable question of Daniel Johns’ involvement arises.

Sam chimes in. “He’s going to produce us in the future at some point. Right now we’re just writing, working with our ideas. It’s the first time we’ve actually formulated our own idea of what we want to do. It’s exciting. And Daniel’s amazing, fucking really lovely guy and it’s nice having him around, he’s getting just as much out of this as we are. It’s a completely different outlet for him.”

“I think he’s got a lot to prove, like we do. In the terms of a musical and successful point of view he has nothing to prove, but he has a lot to prove himself and he’s very driven.”

As a musician turned producer, Johns’ previous experience in the industry will make all the difference guiding the musical direction the boys are heading in with this next album.

“That’s what you’d always hope,” says Kiss. “You don’t know though, but you’d hope so. I have faith in him.”

And so do I. I’m looking forward to what is to come from these boys.

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