Australian duo The Dockers are definitely the two-piece you need on your radar. In this interview, we chat about the best advice they’d give to their younger selves, musical influences and what lies ahead for the rest of the year.

Introduce yourself (yourselves) and your hidden talents

Myself (Murray) and Louis are a duo from Sydney, Australia. We met whilst working as lifeguards together and doing the bare minimum. We realised there was an element of dance missing to our peers lives and decided to change that. Over the course of two years we have taught ourselves several instruments each and like to show this off when we switch around instruments at shows. We love playing live and live for it! I’m now a paramedic and Louis works in healthcare also, and have enrobing but more energy for our music pursuit than ever.

What’s your writing process like? Do you write the music or lyrics first?

That’s a hard one, I’ll have to say both. I’ve got a little lyrics handbook I try to jot things down in and sometimes I write the entire music to a song and then refuse to touch it for 12 months because I can’t find a lyrical theme. I get very picky when it come to lyrics, probably more than I should be, but ah what the hell, I like poetry and metaphors and Shakespeare so I suppose by default I am picky. Sometimes there’s a feeling I’ll write with though and this could reference several stories that carried that same feeling. For example “Moonshine di Roma” does weigh heavily on one particular night in Rome, but it does reference several aspects of the city I’ve observed and I thought it would be cool to add in some ancient Roman references like Nero and Caesar because I think The Roman Empire is awesome.

Who are your main musical influences and why?

I started this hustle listening to a lot of indie rock so our influences would be The Wombats, The Jungle Giants and Sticky Fingers. This is in regards to the energy we try to give in the live shows. A massive influence that I’ve grown up and haven’t stopped loving though is The Beatles. If I can make 10% of the feeling and wide range of discography that they have accomplished then it’s “job done” to me.

What’s the best advice you’d give to your younger self?

Best advice that I’d give is just keep at it. And I reference this to as the moment that inspired most of the latest song “I knew him (well?) Horatio” particularly the last line that repeated at the end “Feel the keys, Glimpse a little more tone. It’s all tenperamental think Yorrick’s Skull”. This is in part when I moved over to Spain on a whim a few years ago and felt terrible. And I remember hearing this song by Antonie Tonin thatpopped us as suggested and it was a cracker of a song. I remember thinking “Christ, I’m glad I didn’t die before hearing this song”. And my kind of mind set has been since then that it’s all temperamental.Bad feelings, shitty times and our own existence, so I try and love it to the fullest and musics a fun way of expressing that or at least trying to give that energy off to the listeners and myself.

What’s in store for you for the rest of the year?

We have a little EP we are going to release later in the year.We’ve released two songs so far in 2022 and 7 in 2020. We have a bunch of shows lined up and have been talking with Keli Holiday (the side project of one of the guys from Peking Duk) to play a show together so hopefully that works out!

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