Outside the nutshell

Many influences: Little Red will play songs off its latest album in Geelong this month.Many influences: Little Red will play songs off its latest album in Geelong this month.

Erin Pearson
“NEW THINGS” are always tempting Melbourne band Little Red, according to member Quang Dinh.
“No nutshell fits us,” he said.
“Some bands are stuck in one genre. I feel like it’s a little bit boring and a little self-indulgent to think you’re on a good thing.
With us, we just want to keep trying new things.”
Dinh was speaking to the Independent while preparing to play in Geelong this month after a “whirlwind” tour with British band Kasabian.
Spruiking the band’s latest album, Midnight Remember, the singer and bass player said the Melbourne-based group would bring a combination of gospel, Mowtown, indie and ’70s rock and roll to town.
The influences all rolled off different pens of band members as they wrote Little Red songs, he said.
“If you’re writing different kinds of songs you get a broader absorption of music and you see the possibilities – and they’re infinite.
“Dom’s a classic kind of pop song writer; Tom’s got some ballads but more of a rock and roller attitude with tight pants and fists in the air and, for me, I like Bob Dylan, the feel-good songs.
Formed in 2005, Little Red featured on Triple J Unearthed before winning a 2008 Garage to V competition.
The band has since performed at festivals around Australia.
“It’s pretty amazing because, as a kid, Big Day Out was the mega festival where you would lose your mind in rock music with 100,000 people there, that kind of deal,” Dinh said.
“Being on it was a dream come true but the bigger dream, the more important dream, is to write really good music.
“We don’t want to be a flash band. We want to do stuff until we can’t any more.”
The band’s 2008 debut album, Listen to Little Red, spawned radio singles Coca Cola, Witchdoctor and Misty I.
Little Red will play at Bended Elbow on October 22.
Dinh was looking forward to the gig, describing Geelong as “kind of homely in a rougher way than you get in Melbourne”.