Meet Your Upstarters Finalists: Kate Moth
Kate Moth are a five-piece indie/post-punk band from Sydney/Eora, pairing shimmering guitars and restless rhythms with understated vocals and a distinctly late-night melancholy. Emerging from Sydney’s underground scene in 2024, they’ve quickly built a reputation for energetic live shows and sharp, hook-driven songs. Their sound sits somewhere between jangly indie pop and melodic post-punk. Slightly scrappy, and full of youthful anxiety without taking itself too seriously, we can’t wait to see Kate Moth in Brissy next week.
Who are you?
Tawny, Matty, Ferg, Finbar and Seth
How would you describe the music you make?
We describe music by playing it! We’ve learnt that words are a somewhat necessary evil in trying to explain ourselves, so the party line is we’re an alternative rock band with one foot in pop and the other in more experimental guitar music.
What have you learnt about each other (your bandmates) through making music together? (make this short, lighthearted and funny)
Matty’s finest work comes out of him when he’s hungry, tired and heart broken,
Finbar loves a point system and doesn’t ever stop playing guitar (even when he sleeps),
Seth can play every instrument and gets car sick on big road trips.
Tawny is the only one with veto powers. What she says goes.
Fergus will always tell you the truth, but, you need to wait for the second thought to know how he really feels about it.
The fastest way to learn about your bandmates is jump in a car with and go down the Hume highway. Everyone needs different music to stay awake, different snacks to entertain themselves. Matty loves Subway, Fergus listens to Jungle music, Tawny can sleep anywhere. The nine hour drive to Melbourne definitely brings out the sludge in your mind and nowhere better to air it than in a tiny car filled with gear.
Are there certain rituals you do when making music?
Before playing live we imagine there’s 100,000 people in the crowd and hold hands in a circle and tell everyone we love each other. We are pretty kumbaya like that. Also, before rehearsing we always spend a good chunk of time just playing through ideas that float through. No bad ideas in the sauna (our rehearsal room gets so hot from all of our ideas)
What is the hardest thing about being a musician in Australia?
Convincing your Eastern European Grandpa that its a job and thinking global
What is the dumbest ‘job’ you’ve had to work to be able to pay for gigs?
We try and remind ourselves that no job is dumb in service of a music career. Seth worked some rogue jobs in the film industry, from sleeping on sets to make sure gear wasn’t being stolen, Matty has played saxophone for a pet store. Dogs understand Jazz. We all have our little ways of getting by.
What song do you wish you had written that someone else wrote?
Naive Melody - Talking heads - Seth
Cattle and Cain - Go Betweens - Finbar
O Grande Amor - Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz - Matty
Anything by Elton John - Fergus
Smart Enough - Laneous - Tawny
How important is lyricism in songwriting?
Big question. It’s important to us. A song won’t feel finished unless there is some kind of perspective in the lyrics, or some kind of feeling captured by the words said. However, some of our favourite songs are in languages we don’t speak and some have none at all or even in complete gibberish (e.g Cocteau Twins) so it depends.
What is a perfect record?
Our perfect record is hard to say, but for the drive up from Sydney to Bigsound we will be blasting the album‘Live!’ By The Police. But yeah, something that feels like it’s being written inside your brain the moment you listen to it.
What would you do with the 20 grand if you won it?
Cry tears of joy and then get straight to work with a publicist to market our next EP (releasing in October) and fund our East Coast EP tour in November, start recording our next EP and get over to the UK for our debut international show.
We can't wait to play. We've never been to Brisbane.
kate moth x
