After falling in love with their EP Teethe earlier this year we were keen to get to know rage girl grunge Naarm/Melbourne band Laura and The Hell Cutz a little better.
It all started out as Laura’s solo project, gradually building over time into a fully fledged band.
“I always wanted to be in a girlband” Laura shared, and finding the right people was something that was incredibly important to her, spending around a year with different band configurations before she settled on the final line up.
Since forming, Laura and The Hell Cutz have been lucky enough to play some phenomenal shows, sharing stages with the likes of Regurgitator and IDLES. I was curious what their favourite gig so far has been:
“I’d have to say when we supported Getdown Services at the Tote. It was such an awesome gig, things went smoothly, we felt really fierce and supported by the crowd.
We’re such big fans of the band and Josh and Ben were so kind and supportive of us, which made us feel 10x better.”
I wondered if the desire to be part of a girl band was due to her musical influences growing up but Laura confessed that much of her childhood musical influences were influenced by her dad’s choice of radio stations in the car, so she grew up on the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Greenday and Powderfinger.
“I sometimes think maybe that’s why I tend to have a lower singing voice as that’s what I learnt to sing first.” She shared.
The idea of forming her own band only came to fruition when she was in her late teens, and more recently she began to actively seek out women lead bands to listen to:
“To me it makes sense, I can relate to lyrics, passion and power from feminine perspectives. The aggression of feminine rage is something I really resonate with and it connects well with the style of our music. It’s something I really wanted to focus on in our sound. Artists that really inspire me to write music as an outlet for what’s going on in the world and my mind include, Mannequin Pussy, Hole, Die Spitz, Lambrini Girls, and Amyl and the Sniffers. They’re all bands that have had a huge impact on me.”
Laura’s journey isn’t unusual. In many ways it’s a testament to the lack of mainstream visibility of female rock artists across the 90’s and 00’s and I think it’s a reflection of the musical path many up and coming female rock or rock adjacent artists have taken. And once they break away from the male dominated narrative not only do they find stories and songs which echo their own experiences, but also a whole long history of female artists that came before them, doing exactly what they want to do.
I was keen to find out a little more about the band’s EP Teethe. Named after the title track, the band also loved the way it represented their debut into the music world – the idea of “teething” or cutting their teeth with the record.
The EP came together more as happenstance than a deliberately created collection:
“I just wrote songs about things I was dealing with or thinking about. When putting them all together on the EP they actually worked quite well, I guess it’s because they were written in the same 6-12 month period.”
The themes of the EP are quite dark at times focusing on grief, loss of identity and depression. They’re not always Laura’s own stories that’s she’s telling, Don’t Forget Me for example was written after she visited a men’s youth prison (and watched a lot of wentworth) however she notes:
“Most of the time, my lyrics are me (Laura) processing whatever is going on in my life and the words reflect conclusions I come to.”
It sounded to me as though the songwriting process is quite cathartic for Laura. She confirms it is, but also that’s she’s often discovering new meanings in her songs in the time that passes between writing, recording and performing them:
“I feel that way with our song ‘I don’t know anymore’. Initially it was written after reflecting on having lost myself entirely after a relationship and seeing the ways I had changed myself to become someone I didn’t even recognise. When I sing it now, I relate to it in a new sense of feeling lost in my life whether it be with work or my music journey. The words still have the same weight, just in a different context.”
Before we ended our chat I wanted to know what her favourite parts of the EP were:
Speaking on her favourite track: “I’d say Seattle. The song is super moody and fun to play live. I feel like I can zen out and play it at the same time. We love finishing the set with it!”
And lyric wise Laura picked out “your eyes have drained all the light inside you” from Denial.
Finally, I asked her for her music recommendations and she shouted out the following: Dolls, Charlotte Bridie, Special Guest & Dead Ed.
I like this list, it almost feels like we’ve come full circle back to her musical influences we discussed at the start. There’s a heavy rock influence and a nod to female singer songwriters. I always get to this point in my write up and realise I didn’t ask enough questions. I wonder if, in the same way she reinterprets her own songs, she has begun to reinterpret the male driven rock bands that have been such a part of her musical upbringing into elements that reflect her own experiences and has she drawn on this in some ways to create Teethe?
I could text her and ask, but sometimes I think I like not knowing, I like that I weave the threads together after the fact and the way the EP might mean something different to me than when I first started this piece.
You can listen to Teethe here.
And follow along with Laura and The Hell Cutz here.