Body Type

Pushing fun to the forefront on their energetic surf-pop, this Sydney fourpiece are the latest proof that Australia is the world’s most fertile breeding ground for new music right now.

Words: Will Richards.

As we’ve outlined many times across this year, Australia is neu currently one of the buzziest corners of the planet for new music, and with their self-titled debut EP, Body Type look to be next in line, a wonderfully energetic bunch that it’s impossible not to fall head-over-heels for.

Vaguely crossing paths in their native Perth before properly meeting after they all moved across the country to Sydney, the seeds for Body Type were sown when Georgia [Wilkinson-Derums, bassist] saw Sophie [McComish, guitarist/ vocalist] and Annabel [Blackman, guitar] play at “a kind of open mic in some crapola pub”.

“I went to watch them,” Georgia remembers, “and I just got such a buzz. The whole time before I was just thinking ‘This is funny’ but then I saw them on stage, and they were occupying this space so well, and I was just running up and down the venue really excited, like ‘Jeeesus christ, we’re actually gonna be a band! That’s fuckin’ cooool!’”

This kind of excitement and giddy energy flows wonderfully through the EP and its lead single, the impossibly catchy surf-pop cut ‘Palms’, which recalls Alvvays in its shimmering, irresistible melodies, and The Big Moon in its raucous gang mentality.

“We all had a lot of time to kill - we were all outsiders!” Georgia says of the quartet’s motives for starting the band, but it quickly took on a greater, ironclad meaning to them, as Sophie outlines: “It was about finding three fantastic women that all had the same ambition and creative drive. For us, Body Type is all just about taking up space, and existing in a space…” she continues, before Georgia takes over: “It’s still cool to see women on stages. I think any time I see a woman on stage, I’m still impressed.” Sophie agrees: “There’s something so magical that happens when you’re playing songs with three other women on a stage.”

In terms of plans moving forward, the quartet have a bucketful of songs written and ready to go, have just finished up an Australian tour with Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, and are preparing for their next steps with the energy of kids after too many fizzy sweets, always putting fun at the epicentre of what they do. “We’re gonna do another EP soon I hope,” Sophie outlines of their next steps. “We just wanna record record record, come overseas, play play play. Yep!”