Swapmeet Are Just Four Angels Playing in Heaven

Photography by Josh Sabini.

As Swapmeet wrapped up their soundcheck at Melbourne live music institution, The Tote – where they were headlining that night – we stepped outside in the soft spring rain to a nearby park to sit in the dark and do an interview. 

This was the second time in just over a week that I had the opportunity to see the Adelaide four-piece – Venus O’Brion, Maxwell Elphick, Jack Medlyn, and Josh Doherty – play; the first being in Sydney for SXSW Sydney, where they won the awards for Best Performance and Best Emerging Artist. The two awards are well deserved. The former, a no-brainer, playing with such pure energy and excitement, watching them live is a joy, and the latter, an affirmation of my prediction that they’re going to be the next big thing to come out of Australia. 

In 2024, they released their first EP, Oxalis, which was, for many outside of Adelaide, the first taste they got of Swapmeet. Even with just those five songs, they’ve become a name recognisable by indie-scene-nerds around the world – recently, while in London, I was asked if I knew them, to which I replied in some shock, ‘yes!’. In reality, there should’ve been no shock to that answer, as it's clear that their genre-defying sound speaks for itself. 

Now, Swapmeet are gearing up to release their debut album early next year, which takes their sound to a new level. It feels like exactly what a contemporary indie rock album should be: playful and high energy, while also having that emotional honesty present in Oxalis. With tasteful layering of samples, powerful songwriting and the vocal weaving between Venus, Maxwell, and Jack, there is constantly something to keep you hooked, whether it be another lyrical perspective or thinking to yourself, where did that sound come from. 

We talk quite a bit about the unreleased album in this interview. Sorry in advance for the references to the songs that aren’t out yet. However, if you’re in Melbourne or Sydney in December, you’ll be able to hear those songs live when they open for our fellow favourites, Dust, on their Australian tour.  

How did you guys meet? When did this band start?

Maxwell Elphick: Josh and I were in music class together in high school. He was the one guy I knew who played drums. We started hanging out and made a band. Venus took photos of that band.

Venus O’Brion: Yeah, I took photos of their band because I thought they were so cool. Then we realised we lived down the road together, so we started hanging out.

Maxwell: We then started jamming as a joke. Venus would come over, and we would make silly songs about our friends, then send them videos of it. 

Venus: We would make birthday CDs; we’d hang out, write five or six random songs themed for the person and give them the CD. Then Jack and I met at a high school muck-up night, and we ended up walking to our friend's house together.

Jack Medlyn: Yeah, we were just playing guitar together. Then you messaged me after being like, ‘You have to come jam. ’ The next week, we were playing in Maxwell’s basement.

Maxwell: Jack was the first person I knew with a synth.

Jack: Yeah, I had a synth, I thought I was hot shit [laughs].

Is the synth where the emphasis on bringing in samples and different textures came from?

Jack: I don’t know, I think it was just from Ableton, I was such an Ableton nerd, I still am.

Yep, makes sense. 

Venus: We were jamming for fun together while we all were playing in other projects we were doing as eighteen-year-olds, and one of the bands I was in broke up the week before we were supposed to play a gig. I was like to everyone, ‘This might be crazy, as we don’t have any songs, but do you want to play this gig?’ We did it and got asked to play nearly every week after that.

Maxwell: We kind of fell into it.

Who was playing drums at the start?

Josh Doherty: At the first gig, it was all three of us. We started with Jack on Bass, Maxwell on guitar, Venus on guitar and singing, me on drums, then two songs later, Maxwell on drums, Jack on guitar, Venus on guitar, me on bass.

Venus: I played bass on one track and synth on another.

Maxwell: I feel like it happened because it never happened that we discussed who’s playing what because we were just mucking around in the band room.

Venus: We did not have our changeover down pat; it would be a minute of us swapping around.

Josh: It got four or five gigs in, and we realised we couldn’t swap so many times and that I needed to learn bass properly.

Maxwell: There are some really awesome videos from that gig that my mum took, especially our soundcheck, everyone was in the room, and all the lights were on. Venus was barefoot for some reason, and I had a middle part.

Jack: I had really long hair.

It’s cool, you guys never changed the playing every instrument thing. When did you start switching vocals?

Maxwell: You guys always sang, but I didn’t sing for two years.

When did you start singing?

Maxwell: When I wrote a song.

Josh: What was the first song?

Maxwell: I think it was “Collision”. That song also came from a birthday CD we made for a friend.

Josh: The riff was ‘Ethan is a middle school teacher…’. Was that riff even in the song?

Maxwell: Yeah, it’s the last line. It’s the only thing that’s left. That was the first song I sang, then I hijacked it from there.

Now, it’s pretty even with who’s singing, right?

Josh: Yeah, it’s really even, like on the album Maxwell has two, Jack has three, and Venus has four.

The album feels like you’ve worked out exactly what works best for you with who’s on vocals for each song.

Josh: I think with the album as well, it’s really cohesive, and all the songs they each sing have their style, but also Swapmeet style all over it.

Yeah, I was going to say something about that, you all three separately have such different voices, but it’s still so coherent.

Josh: Yeah, I think it got more like that when multiple people would sing on the same song and they’d each be swapping between verses.

Venus: I would always take voice memos and sing along to the songs, then work out if I could fit on a song. Maxwell also got a four-track, which really helped us out. We started playing around with it, and we started being able to lay out random ideas, like ‘Who’s got an idea for that song’, which freed us up a lot.

Maxwell: That also made me sing because there’d be times where I would be by myself and like someone’s got to sing.

How does songwriting work for you guys?

Josh: Either someone comes up with most of a song, or we will be working on a song, be stuck and just combine parts of different songs. 

Venus: What’s interesting is “I know” is the only song in the album that we wrote all together on the spot. Whereas “My Heartbreaks Too” was a combination of three different songs that had been written by different people throughout the year, and we revisited it on one of the last days of recording because we needed a last song.

The lyrics on “I know” are also very personal. Did you write those in the group?

Venus: That was by myself. We created a good dynamic when we were recording. We had Jack’s partner's family beach house, there was an upstairs and downstairs, so we would be able to do our own thing, but together.

Josh: You’d flee to the balcony and be recording voice memos.

Jack: It was so motivating to have everyone working on their own stuff. I’d be ripping the clarinet while everyone’s writing a song upstairs.

Josh: I work full time, so coming into the house after work every night was so funny, Maxwell making tuna and rice in the kitchen…

Maxwell: I was making more than tuna and rice [laughs].

Josh: Okay, fine, Maxwell was in the kitchen making lemongrass chicken, then I’d go out for a smoke, and Venus was writing lyrics, and I’d hear Jack downstairs cooking up.

Venus: There’s a voice memo where I was trying to figure out something from “My Heartbreaks Too”, and you can hear Jack downstairs playing the clarinet.

How does it work on a song like “Mt Zero” where three of you have strong vocal parts? Did you come with your own verses?

Maxwell: That was a funny one to work on. The verses were our own, but the outro came as a group.

Venus: That was quite a collaborative one. I couldn’t for the life of me come up with a melody, and you kind of gave me one to try, and that evolved. The good collaborative part is that if someone doesn’t have an idea, someone else will, because we all understand singing and writing melodies, and we’re able to help each other.

Maxwell: It was really cool because everyone was sitting around the laptop, someone would be trying to figure something out, then someone else would have another idea that didn’t have to do with that part and put it in.

Venus: It’s good, but it can also be bad. Sometimes the computer is another member of our band in a way; we are so much more productive when we are looking at the computer and figuring out what’s happening. It’s a different vibe.

For sure, especially when the computer seemingly doesn’t play the most important role when you listen to the music as you’re all playing your instruments. Can we talk a bit more about the computer and the samples? You already mentioned Ableton earlier and how you realised you wanted it to be a big part of the band.

Jack: I was in another band; we were all studio nerds, so all I knew was to have the computer involved. When it came to our stuff, it was like we were recording it on a computer, so why don’t we have a bit of fun with it? Even though it’s all jams we’ve had, it’s like we’re doing it on the computer, let’s just make it a bit special.

Venus: And acknowledge the fact that we’re writing with the computer. We’re not trying to pretend we’re out in the middle of nowhere just jamming.

Jack: It was cool to lean away from the rockier stuff and see what we could do.

It’s cool because the samples on “I know” are just samples of you guys playing, right?

Josh: Yeah, and we’ve been playing with the samples live for the last three shows.

The new music, sound-wise wise is a lot faster than what you were making before.

Venus: Well, I would say that if the EP were longer, it would be more similar. A lot of the music we were making at that time was fast and fun live. That was a big thing in Adelaide; there aren’t many music snobs there, so the main thing was to have really high energy and a fun set. We had a whole lot of songs that, when we were recording them, we were like this doesn’t meet our standards for what we like, so we leaned more towards the chill ones because we could play around with them sonically. This one, we’re trying to get the combination.

Maxwell: We’re trying to have a party with it, party music is so fun and trying to figure it out with the guitar is the best.

Josh: I think our music influences have changed, too. We love the EP, but a lot of that was us getting it out so we could move forward in the direction we wanted to play.

Yeah, and it’s not like the EP is bad by any means; it does exactly what it wants to do so well. “I Wish I” is such an amazing, powerful song, but at the same time, it’s really cool seeing the music head in the direction that feels like the music that is really like you. Was that a natural progression?

Venus: Aw, thank you. 

Josh: Yeah, totally. Also, we’ve been a band for five years and “Ceiling Fan” was played at our first gig.

Whoa, yeah, so much has changed in that time. Now, you guys have spent more time out of Adelaide, like Venus, you moved to Melbourne, Jack and Maxwell, you spent time in the States, and you’ve all toured around Australia. Do you feel like that added influence from external sources outside of Adelaide has shaped the sound?

Venus: For sure, we’re figuring out our placement of the band, and now, instead of being in this little Adelaide bubble, we’re contextualising our music in a grander scheme, not just with the bands that are playing at the one pub we go to. This is a recontextualization of our band and our music at this time, and I think it gets us closer to what we want to be doing.

Josh: Adelaide bands are great, but obviously, as there aren’t as many people, there aren’t scenes as there are in Melbourne. Branching out, meeting Garage Sale, and all these bands in our scene have been really transformative.

Venus: But also, it felt really cool to be accepted by these bands even though we are a bit quirkier and our music is more nerdy and not super edgy. It’s been cool to relearn how to be ourselves and have these great friends we feel like we can have a lot of fun on stage with.

Does it ever feel weird playing so many different instruments, where you can’t get as good as you want to be at certain instruments?

Maxwell: I don’t think about drums too much.

Jack: This band made us both get randomly good at drums.

Maxwell: Well, I never played drums before this. I mucked around a bit with friends, but not properly. I started with guitar when I was little, it will always be my instrument, but now I don’t even think of guitar in the same way I used to, it’s there to do stuff with than to be a guitarist.

Josh: It seems like you both love both drums and guitar.

Maxwell: I love it so much; it makes it so much more enjoyable because if you get bored with one thing, you can jump to another.

Where did the Ableton influence come from?

Jack: I got Ableton on my school laptop, and I made a beat with it. It was kinda dope, the first beat I made [laughs]. I chopped up myself playing guitar and then added every Ableton effect to it. 

Josh: Maxwell’s on the other side.

Maxwell: I’m a Logic legend.

Josh: Venus and I are Garage Band legends.

Venus: I’m a voice memo legend. 

My final question is, what are each of your favourite things about being in the band together?

Venus: It is forever evolving, and not to be cheesy or whatever, but it’s just about us four. If it were about anything else, we wouldn’t still be here. It’s all about us making music together, and we all find ways to channel our own personal things through it. I find it really cathartic writing lyrics about shit that’s happening, and there’s always space for that. We’re always down to do something new, we’re all listening to new music, and showing it to each other. The songs aren’t precious, but we make them precious in our own ways. I heard someone say recently how there is no quite feeling like that first band you do, I think that’s really true. I feel so lucky that we’ve somehow all become aligned and want to do it still.

Josh: It’s always ever changing, and it’s also always been fun. It’s never gotten to a point where I’ve been like this has been less fun. I haven’t ever been more ‘I want to do this for good’ about anything.

Jack: It’s so special being able to always be locked in with three people who are so individual but also come together so naturally. It’s always been so fun, it’s always been the fun alternative to whatever I’m doing in life, it’s never been a dread, always pure, creative fun.

Maxwell: To continue with that first band point Venus said earlier, it’s only gotten better the whole time. If we’re not doing music stuff together, we’re pretty much always hanging out together. There are so many things to it. If it wasn’t for the band, we probably wouldn’t have gone on trips to Melbourne or Sydney together. It's such an awesome opportunity to have. To always have something to look forward to is really special.

Josh: We’re just four angels playing in heaven.

Okay, wow, that was all so sweet. Venus, what was the last point you wanted to say?

Venus: I want to shout out to Jackson Phillips, who is our unofficial fifth member, who hasn’t just helped us so much with this album, but just in general. Whenever we’ve been stuck on a song, we call him up and he’s always down to help. With the song “Halfway”, we couldn’t figure out an outro. We did an outro every time we played it, but nothing ever felt right. We called him up one practice, and at the end of that, we’d figured it out. When we were recording, we were trying to stitch “My Heartbreaks Two”; he came all the way to jam with us. He's such a good friend, and we couldn’t have done it without him.

Josh: And Portia, our mum and manager. She’s helped us out so much, thank you, Portia.