Parsnip: An interview with the band, not the vegetable

Photo: Jamie Wdziekonski

As ‘Monument’ bursts to life to the sounds of Paris Rebel Richens’ vocal warm up and rolling bass, dark giggles also emerge.

“It feels like a real ultimatum. Are you in? Because this is what you’re in for,” drummer Carolyn Hawkins says of Behold’s opening track.

Then come the thumping drums of Hawkins, Rebecca Liston’s keys and Stella Rennex’s guitar, as the song immediately holds out its hand and offers you a seat on the album’s journey. 

Those game enough to accept the offer are rewarded with one of the best releases to come out of Naarm/Melbourne in 2024.

“Make like a monument / Drinking from / The timeless moment / Empty the thought,” Richens enthusiastically sings as ‘Monument’ continues.

Joyous chuckles, as well as euphoric screams, enter the fold as the track progresses, before Rennex’s rollercoaster of saxophone layers ensure the final minute of the track is a turbulent climax.

As Rennex describes it, the song is “Sesame Street on acid.”

Understandably, it’s a work of art that the four-piece group is proud of.

 “That song always makes me laugh and I always notice new things in it… There’s so much chaos happening in that song – so many layers of it. I love listening to it,” Hawkins says.

Recorded in February of 2020, ‘Monument’ was an omission from Parsnip’s Adding Up seven-inch, as was ‘Pockets’. That recording session would be the first of several ventures to Billy Gardner’s studio that went into the making of Behold.

The COVID-forced lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 made for a quiet period for the group, who had been playing gigs without a hiatus since their formation in 2016. As Hawkins recalls, the excitement of being able to play shows again in a post-lockdown world overcame them, putting a speed bump in front of any plans to record new music.

“As soon as we came back, it was all ‘Yeah, let's start writing new songs and recording!’ But it was a whole year of just playing shows before we did. 

“Then we just had to be like ‘No more shows! We haven't released anything in so long, we need to prioritise this!’ So it felt like a conscious effort to actually [write new songs] in the end.”

Rennex (also of Melbourne punk rockers Clamm) adds “It’s easy to get totally side-tracked without a deadline, which happened for about five years, because we’re just hanging out.” 

With a recording session booked and an album to write and record, Mission Behold had begun.

“The deadline looms and we’ve got, I don’t know, five songs. And in the next three weeks we write seven songs,” Hawkins says of the song-writing process for the album, which wasn’t dissimilar to that of Parsnip’s debut LP When The Tree Bears Fruit.

“It’s just ‘bang, bang, bang, bang, bang’. Everyone pulls up all their old demos.”

Liston explains that these demos range from very rough ideas to near-complete songs, making it clear that Parsnip’s approach to their craft is a true collaborative process, and the creative trust among the group makes for an easy-going approach.

Liston reveals that ‘Placeholder’ – and perhaps ‘Clear Blue Sky’ – were learnt the day before heading to the studio, with these recorded tracks essentially working as the building blocks for what each song becomes.

“There is a lot of stuff that happens after [recording]. You can continue working on songs – it doesn’t have to be fully finished when you’re recording them,” Hawkins details, kicking off a discussion about being an artist in the AI-dominated world that we now live in.

The spontaneity of Parsnip’s sessions “become more valuable as we go into the AI world. You want to know that a fucking human made it.” 

“Or a freak, maybe,” Rennex jokes.   

This playfulness is spread throughout the album, as the four-pronged Parsnip combine for complex tracks. 

The energy is high across the opening three songs before ‘L.O.N.E.’ brings a more sombre mood, with Rennex’s sliding guitar play highlighting the emotion of the lyrics, which simply read “L.O.N.E.S.O.M.E / L.O.N.E. S.O.N.G.”

‘Placeholder’ follows, and is a heart wrenching, sub-two-minute reflection.

“A good imitation, a copy / A sham / A simple replacement / Here I am, here I am, here I am.”  

‘Pockets’ – a minute-and-a-half instrumental – raises the energy once more, before the album’s B-side is introduced with ‘The Babble’; a song that the band aptly summarise as sounding “like Ray Davies playing Wordle for enlightenment.”

Since Behold’s release on April 26 – almost five years after the release of When The Tree Bears Fruit – an intimate show at The Gem and their six-date Japan tour in May have been the band’s only opportunities to show off their latest tunes, but that’s not a concern heading into Friday’s album launch.

As Liston relays, “we take ourselves seriously because music’s really important to all of us, but also, it’s fun. If we make mistakes on stage, we’ll just laugh it off. Our shows can be quite loose like that.”

Comments like Liston’s outline just how tight-knit a group Parsnip are, and it’s a big reason why they are as driven as ever, now in their eighth year of existence as a band.

Formed in 2016 following a chat between Richens, Hawkins and Rennex at that year’s Jerkfest, Rennex recruited Liston – her former bandmate from Eora/Sydney – to the group in early 2017, shortly after the departure of original organist Sequoia Harris.

Having earlier seen a Parsnip show at Fitzroy’s Catfish, Liston was well-acquainted with what they were signing up for and was quick to pounce on the offer.

“I remember where I was,” the keyboardist recalls. “I had just moved to Melbourne, so I was checking out the Fitzroy Markets and then Stella sent a message saying that the person who was doing keys was moving on… The rest is history!”

Since then, the quartet have shared the stage on countless occasions – and some stages have been bigger than others.

Blossoming the from humble beginnings of playing first-ever gig at a share house in 2016, Parsnip have played alongside some big names. Among them are Ty Segall, Amyl and the Sniffers, The Chills, Wednesday and even The Wiggles (fun fact: Rennex went to school with the red Wiggle’s (Murray Cook) daughter).

The standout? Opening for Bikini Kill at the Forum.

“That’s the funnest show I reckon I’ve ever played,” says Hawkins, fondly looking back on the 2023 gig.

“It was cool because it was with Bikini Kill, but the audience was just so awesome. It was all ages and everyone’s just so excited and there’s mums with their daughters, or fathers with their daughters, there’s teeneagers coming up afterwards who are so inspired ‘cause it’s the first show they’ve been to.”

“Everyone went so crazy when we came out – I almost cried! It was amazing!”

Despite ticking off some of Victoria’s – and Australia’s – most well-known venues, there’s still something special about playing at a local band room.

“Bigger venues aren’t my favourite to play, at all. I would much prefer a DIY, small space.  But maybe that's just because we're not used to it. That's the only time I think I ever get a bit nervous, when the surroundings are vastly different,” Liston explains.

While the venues, the people and the fellow artists of Naarm have given Parsnip so much over the years, the group have been able to avoid being lumped together with some of their local counterparts.

Talking about the origins of the band’s sound, Rennex puts an emphasis on the fact that Parsnip doesn’t fall into the generic bucket of the ‘Melbourne sound’.

“I feel like we’re a little outlier sometimes, compared to other bands. I don’t think we necessarily fit somewhere a lot of the time, which I think is a good thing.

“Not being from Melbourne, I find Melbourne’s got a real sound, and I don’t think we sound like the ‘Melbourne sound’… not that I dislike it, necessarily, but it sets us outside of that.

“A lot of the shows you go to in Melbourne, it’s like ‘oh yeah, that’s kind of what I thought was gonna happen’.”

That’s not to say that the group aren’t big fans of the music coming out of the city. When asked about some artists that have piqued their interest in recent times, a long list is enthusiastically reeled off. 

Among them: Julia McFarlane, Mug, Wet Kiss, Wrong Way Up, label-mates The Judges, Hantu and Sydney’s Carnations.

Some local friends of the band will also be joining them on stage on Friday – something that hasn’t happened since When The Tree Bears Fruit was welcomed into the world five years ago. 

What else can people expect to see at the Brunswick Ballroom for the album launch?

“Pyrotechnics,” Hawkins humorously replies.

Of course, there will be new tunes, new merch, new sounds but, ultimately, it will be a dialled-in Parsnip.

“Coming off the [Japan] tour – I guess when any band tours, you get really good at playing the songs and playing as a band – so hopefully that’s the case,” Liston jokes.

Parsnip’s album launch show is on Friday June 7 at the Brunswick Ballroom. Tickets available here.

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