Melbourne Indy darlings Skipping Girl Vinegar aren’t your regular type of band.
A quick chat with front man and main songwriter Mark Lang and you realise here is a guy who is quirky and imaginative, a deep thinker with a quick mind. A quick listen to their new album Keep Calm Carry The Monkey and you realise their music reflects Mark perfectly.
Actually a quick listen to Keep Calm Carry The Monkey and you realise you’re only scratching the surface of this band of musicians from the deep south and you are going to need a few more listens to really build up the story that Mark and the gang are telling
Not that they aren’t accessible – far from it – “Here She Comes” gets those toes tapping right from your first listen and stays in your head for a long time.
But chatting to Mark Lang while he was waiting for a plane so he could fly to Sydney to launch a toy monkey into space, you realise he is a man with a lot of stories to tell.
The monkey in question named Baker after the first Monkey in space, was “hard rubbish” found and used to inspire the name of the album and now – thanks to the BOM and Dr Karl – about to go into space or close to it, on a weather balloon. How else do you launch a new album?
The story of the new single “You Can” has to be a favourite and highlight’s love of the “second hand”.
“I have a radio detector for that sort of thing,” he laughed recounting a trip into town during Splendour in The Grass last year.
“I found a harmonium in a store (look it up), the rest of the band wanted to get back to Splendour to see something so they left me a credit card.
“And I ended up sitting on the side of the road with a harmonium for an hour and a half.”
By the time they came back to collect Mark and the antique instrument “You Can” had been created and another brilliant story had been born.
