Eva Spence is one cool chick. After breaking into the hardcore scene with ‘mathcore driven synth’ tracks, she’s kicked sexist remarks to the curb and proved that chicks can scream. On the verge of releasing her new album ‘Cosmology’, Press Record’s Alicia Bolton had a chat to Eva, the gorgeous UK vocalist of Rolo Tomassi.
So what’s going on in the world of Eva Spence right now?
At the moment I’m relaxing in my bedroom at home. We just finished touring the UK last week so I’ve had a couple of days to recharge my batteries and enjoy a bit of time on my own.
How did Rolo Tomassi come together?
Well we’ve all known each other since we were about five or six years old and we went through school together. When we hit secondary school we all started getting into different kinds of music and started developing a more concentrated musical taste and since we were all friends we were getting into the same music at the same time. We were originally in two separate bands which we all started when we were 11 or 12 and it was kind of pop punk stuff but when we were between the ages of 14 and 16 we decided that this wasn’t what we were listening to anymore and we wanted to start creating music that would reflect what we were all listening to at the time. That’s when we started Rolo Tomassi.
For someone who hasn’t heard your music before, how would you describe it?
Um, well we get asked that question a lot and it’s a little bit hard to pin point exactly what we do, but we found the best way to describe it is progressive hardcore.
I heard your band name was taken from the character from LA Confidential…
Yeah I think it was James the keyboard player who actually came up with the name. He just thought it sounded cool.
I saw you guys at The Brisbane Soundwave Festival this year, it was the first time I’d heard you guys and I thought it was great…
Oh thank you. When we all came back off that tour we all said it was the best thing we’ve ever done as a band. It was just such an incredible experience. Australia is somewhere that seems like light years away and I never thought I’d be able to visit. We were asked to do the Soundwave tour and it was so incredible and overwhelming that we’d actually been asked to go and tour over there. We all had an amazing time over there. We’ve all told our booking agent we want to come back before the end of the year. At the Soundwave festival we were touring with loads of my favourite bands.
Who were some of your favourite bands at soundwave?
Jimmy Eat World, Sunny Day Real Estate, we watched a bit of Glassjaw, Four Year Strong, Set Your Goals, Gallows, Architects, The Weakerthans as well, they were one of my favourite bands for years and we were actually playing the same stage as them so we got to see them a bunch of times. Paramore were amazing, they absolutely blew me away. AFI and Jane’s Addiction who we did our sideshows with aswell, they were amazing. We were just running around everyday trying to catch loads of different bands. The Get up Kids aswell, they were our favourites.
What was the highlight of being in Australia?
It’s really hard to say. On the first day in Brisbane we went to a nature park and held Koala bears which was really cool because that’s another thing I never thought I’d be able to do. We had a look around there and walked around with Kangaroos and things and I guess it’s very stereotypical but it was just so crazy to see.
Also, I guess just being in the band environment. The way it works is they split all the bands in between three huge hotels so we just got to hang out with bands all the time. It was so amazing to speak to bands we’ve absolutely loved and worshipped growing up. You see these bands who we would consider famous backstage and it was kind of, it was just crazy.
Your new album comes out May 24th and it’s called Cosmology. What does the album name refer to?
All of our friends are at university now, none of us have bothered with that yet, we just took years out to do band, but quite a few of our friends are studying the sciences and in some of their exams there’s a module called Cosmology, which is the study of the universe and humanity’s place within the universe. It’s a bit crazy but the band is all we’ve been doing in the last 18 months since the last album was released so it just kind of centered our universe. So that’s why we decided to call it Cosmology because this is what we’ve been putting all our energy in and our lives have been revolving around it.
How did you get into progressive hardcore? It’s not very often you hear girls screaming and I think it’s great to see you’re doing something different.
Well I guess the band that kind of changed it all for us was the Dillinger Escape Plan. We all saw them at Readings (festival) the first year we went. We kind of just walked past the stage and although we’d heard screaming music before, we’d never heard the technicalities that they were performing on stage. Also what they were giving on stage was something that we’d never seen before and that was the turning point that made us want to start the band in the first place.
When we first started out I played keyboard and James played guitar and we were looking for a vocalist. We tried out a couple of people and no one just seemed to fit so I just kind of said, well I’ll give it a go. I didn’t know if I’d be very good but I really wanted to have a go and it turned out that I could just kind of do it. As I practiced my technique improved and my voice is how it is today just from practice and developing a technique that doesn’t affect my throat.
As a female, did you find it hard to break into the hardcore scene?
At first yeah - The first couple of shows we played I just stood with my back to the crowd screaming at the drum kit because I just felt embarrassed and nervous and it was just really weird because they only people that I’d screamed to before that were the other four members of the band, and it was a very strange feeling to be doing this thing, a natural noise, in front of people. We used to get so many sexist remarks because when we first started the only bills that would accommodate us would be hardcore bills and there’d be these tough guys in the crowd who would just shout really sexist things at me through the whole set and it’d just be disgusting and pointless because you come to a show to watch music regardless of the gender of the people in the band. We pretty much had that happen to us for two years but since ‘Hysterics’ was released, it has kind of stopped now. I can’t even remember the last time I had people shouting at me, which is incredible. I think people are really starting to take us seriously now and ignoring the fact that I’m, you know, a girl and actually seeing that we’ve all worked really hard and I’m not that bad at being a vocalist.
I hear you’ve just returned from touring in the UK, how was that?
Yeah we got back on Thursday, it was amazing. We were on tour with an English band called Biffy Clyro who are doing incredibly well for themselves at the minute. We don’t sound anything like them, but they’re amazing. They’re a band that we’ve all loved for years and we never would have thought they’d be fans of what we’re doing, but they actually contacted us and asked if we’d be interested in opening the tour for them and we all said yes. They were very sweet guys. We also toured with the Twilight Sad who we got on with as well so it was all just incredible.
What’s planned next for Rolo Tomassi?
We have a bunch of UK festivals lined up this summer because last year we performed around mainland Europe so we’re going to do loads of UK festivals. I think for the rest of the year we’re hoping to hit up America and hopefully back to Australia. We all want to go to Japan. This is just a pipe dream at the minute but this is what we’ve been pestering our manager to happen. We just want to be on tour because we’ve worked really hard and it seems like forever since the album was recorded. We’re just so keen to get the album out, tour the new record, play to as many people as we possibly can and just keep working hard.
Okay well I’ll let you go, thanks heaps for your time, it’s been great talking to you.
Thank-you bye.
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