Swapmeet is the best of what’s next

The day before I was set to interview Swapmeet—the buzzy Australian four-piece turning heads at South by Southwest with their elastic indie rock and spirited live shows—I got an email from their publicist: “They really want to do this at Jersey Mike’s. They love it there. (Apparently, they’ve been asking if they can ‘have it Mike’s way’ at restaurants that are not Jersey Mike’s.) Would that be possible for you?” Then another email came, when I couldn’t respond for a few hours: “We don’t actually have to do it at a North Austin Jersey Mike’s, no matter how funny the band thinks that is!” 

This, really, is how the Adelaide quartet functions: they thrive on banter, momentum, and very little self-consciousness. Fortunately, I also function similarly, and thought the request was hilarious—I have never in my life met anyone who felt strongly about Jersey Mike’s in any direction—so at 11 a.m. the next morning, I found myself in a Jersey Mike’s for possibly the very first time in my entire life, watching Swapmeet order subs like this was a matter of national importance. Bassist and songwriter Joshua Doherty, the resident Mike’s diehard, got the #13—Mike’s way, obviously. Guitarist and singer Venus O’Broin ordered the #14 veggie, Mike’s way. Guitarist, drummer, and singer Maxwell Elphick had the #9 without bacon (still Mike’s way), while the band’s other guitarist, drummer, and singer Jack Medlyn decided on the #16 not Mike’s way, which earned him a chorus of boos from the other three. I just got a sweet tea. 

This was somehow the band’s third trip to a Jersey Mike’s since they arrived in America roughly seven days ago. (For context, this was my first, and I’ve lived in America for twenty-four years.) Josh led the charge. “It was actually like a spiritual connection when Josh came for the first time,” Maxwell laughs. “I’ve never seen him more emotional about anything.” Josh had watched a lot of American YouTube as a kid—specifically the channel Angry Grandpa, who he describes as “this old dude that crashed out a bunch and loved Jersey Mike’s. And I loved that he loved Jersey Mike’s.” 

While Jack and Maxwell had both been to the States before, the SXSW trip was Venus and Josh’s first, and they were determined to take it all in. In Hollywood, a man on the Walk of Fame offered the band a free “tarot reading” using a giant duffel bag stuffed with what appeared to be every card type ever manufactured: Pokémon cards, Uno cards, playing cards, business cards. (A Simpsons card apparently led him to conclude that an ex-flame of Josh’s was trying to contact him through a burner account.) But the biggest culture shock, oddly enough, was how nice Americans were. Venus doesn’t trust it. “My theory is that the religious undertones in this country are so intense that people are paranoid that God’s watching them, essentially,” she says. “I’m like, ‘there’s no way this random person could be so nice to me for no reason.’” Tragically, this American honeymoon couldn’t last forever. By the time Swapmeet got to High Noon for their exuberant show at the annual Paste party later that week, they were officially Jersey Mike’d out, which I suppose is what happens when you hit a sub chain five times in ten days. 

This might sound less like a band touring than a group of friends on vacation, but that’s because it’s a little of column A, a little of column B. Swapmeet—whose debut record Mount Zero releases this July—first began as a friend group in high school: Josh and Maxwell were in music class together, then started a band that Venus took photos of. Venus met Jack at a senior “muck-up night” (the Australian equivalent of senior prank day), and soon enough, all four of them were jamming in Maxwell’s basement under the name Soursob—which they had to ditch after receiving legal threats from an Australian artist named Soursob Bob, who the band assures me is lovely and the best musician around. On an unrelated note, they signed a non-disparagement agreement.

The name “Swapmeet” existed long before Soursob did. It was Maxwell’s creation: he’d bought a guitar at a Murray Bridge swap meet from an “old stoner couple,” and for reasons known only to him, immediately thought “now that I have a guitar from this swap meet, I want a band called Swapmeet.” So when he and Josh joined a band in early high school, he tried to get that name on the marquee. Unfortunately, it lost in a band vote—worst of all, to the name “Bean Feast,” which Venus correctly calls “the worst band name I’ve ever heard.” “What’s even crazier,” Maxwell says, “is that Swapmeet got voted in first. But then they were like, ‘I think we should do a re-vote and get our parents to vote on the name.’” Inexplicably, the parents went for Bean Feast. Maxwell and Josh refused to accept it, which, to be clear, is the morally defensible position. The compromise was The Gullies, which at least has the virtue of sounding mildly like a band name. Fast forward a few years to Venus asking Maxwell about the original name for The Gullies when searching for something to replace Soursob, and Swapmeet is born.

In hindsight, the forced name change was a blessing. “We were able to restart a bit older, which is good,” Venus says. “It was just like, fuck it, nothing actually matters! We’re no longer this band. We can be whatever the fuck we want to be.” Jack agrees: “It definitely felt like a jump up from being a high school band to being, like, a band band.” That meant learning how to operate like one. They needed an organizer, so Maxwell became the person booking flights and badgering the group chat about rehearsal. They also had to figure out who played what, since the music had originally been made to share with friends, not to perform live. So, at that point, everyone played everything. Their first gig was basically a game of musical chairs—except instead of finding an available chair, it was about finding an available instrument. 

They’ve settled into a proper lineup now, though there’s still plenty of movement: Jack and Maxwell trade off on guitar and drums, and Jack, Maxwell, and Venus take turns singing. On Mount Zero, Maxwell sings two tracks, Jack three, and Venus four (although they often pop up in each other’s tracks too). Most of the music still comes from Josh, same as it did in high school; he quips that the band is only “halfway through” the songs he’s already written. “I got two more albums ready,” he boasts. Swapmeet’s process still feels loose and communal. “Whoever is sitting down on the drums when we’re jamming a song ends up being the one to play drums to that song,” Jack says. “Sometimes they’re not even in the band,” Venus adds. “Shoutout Jackson!” Jackson Phillips, the band’s fifth Beatle type, earns what may be the nicest available status in this particular family tree: “He’s like our band uncle,” Josh says.

Oxalis, Swapmeet’s 2024 EP, has a clean origin story: what ended up on the record was basically whatever survived from the band’s live set after they tried to capture it in the studio. “We started to record it and realized it all sucked when we listened back,” Venus says. “The only ones that survived are on the EP.” After that, they decided to write and record at the same time, so they could hear the songs as they were making them. That approach became Mount Zero. Their process was more collaborative this time around. “Jack and Maxwell might start playing a riff, and then Venus will start doing some melodies over it, and then I ask Maxwell or Jack what key it’s in, what the chords are,” Josh says, then grins. “Then I just play it Mike’s way.”

Mount Zero also lives on the computer more than Oxalis did, something Jack—a Venus-proclaimed “Ableton nerd”—takes credit for. “It’s my favorite bit of the art form, just going ham on the computer,” he laughs. “I would live my life in Ableton if I could. I love Ableton. I don’t care what people think.” Venus nods: “If you could hear the songs before and after, you’d understand why.” Swapmeet aren’t interested in pretending they record live; part of the fun is remixing, adding things, then stripping them away. Otherwise, they get bored. As Jack puts it, “We literally have to throw in as many things as possible, and then take out as much as possible.” It’s less a band arrangement than a sculptor’s job: start with a big slab and carve until something starts breathing.

That doesn’t mean it all came easily. They spent three hours trying to add ten seconds to the title track’s outro, Maxwell says. “Eventually, we were like, ‘Oh, that’s it!” And then we realized that was exactly what we had originally. We’d come back around to the start.” Venus blames herself, mostly: “It’s usually me losing my attention span with a song and being, like, ‘Oh, what if we just did this?’ Then, four hours later, I’m like, ‘Actually, guys, that was a stupid idea. I was just bored. Sorry.’” They rarely fight about the music itself, though. (“I try to instigate fights, but it doesn’t work,” Venus complains.) There aren’t many ego struggles, in part because they’ve gotten better at knowing what they actually like, compared to what they want to like. “When you’re working on something creatively, it’s not about the people, it’s about the art,” she says. “So, we really value having ideas questioned, because it only makes them stronger.” 

MOUNT ZERO IS BOTH FREER and more ambitious than Swapmeet’s earlier work, a combination that might stem from, as Venus says, them “learning how to jam again.” Before, someone would bring in a verse, a chorus, or an idea, and they’d build from there. Now they’re trying to create from nothing. “We’re meeting in this new place that we haven’t been able to before,” she adds. Maxwell got a four-track during the making of the record, enabling the band to play around with their parts more. This is how album closer “My Heart Breaks II” came to be: through jamming. Venus clarifies, emphatically, that they are not, under any circumstances, a jam band. Jack jumps in: “We’re a trial and error band,” then takes a big bite of his #16.

When it comes to more conventional band descriptions, Swapmeet are the first to say they’re not entirely sure where they fit in. There’s definitely indie rock in their roots, but not the tidy, pure version of it, nor the riotous, punk-adjacent noise. “I think we’re alternative,” Venus decides. “I don’t know what we’re alternative to, but we’re definitely an alternative to something.” Really, they mostly know what they aren’t: shoegaze, dream pop, and worst of all, jangle pop—labels that have been slapped on them with alarming confidence. “It’s so annoying. It’s like people think all Australian alternative music is just jangle pop,” she groans. “And when they hear a distorted guitar, they go, ‘Ohhh, it’s shoegaze.’ And I’m so fucking sick of shoegaze, too. It’s such a bullshit term now. Like, okay, you’ve got twelve pedals, and you can’t sing. Congratulations.” The rest of the band laughs. Venus points at me and says, “Keep that on the record.”

One thing that’s certain, though, is that the Adelaide quartet are known for their live shows, and for good reason. They won the Best Performance award at SXSW Sydney, as well as the Emerging Artist honor, and were slotted to play twelve separate shows at Austin’s SXSW this year. A few days after our Jersey Mike’s rendezvous, Venus arrived at High Noon in a massive neon blue hoodie, oversized pants, and ski-style glasses, then proceeded to jump around the stage with reckless abandon for the entirety of their set. Maxwell started on drums, but by the time the band got around to playing “I Know!,” the endlessly catchy lead single off Mount Zero, he was bouncing around with an electric guitar in hand. Jack took over behind the kit in his place, periodically rising off the stool mid-fill in excitement. At some point, Venus started trying to kick Josh while he was actively playing bass. He immediately kicked back. Towards the end, she ripped her hoodie off and promptly chucked it at Maxwell, who, of course, chucked it right back.

There’s a legitimate playfulness to both their infectious performances and recorded music that eludes many of their peers; they somehow boast the energy of a group of seven-year-old cousins eager to show the adults the song they’d spent the afternoon writing in the basement, and I do mean that as a compliment. A lot of bands talk a big game about keeping the fun in playing, in music in general—connecting with one’s inner child and whatnot—a rhetoric Swapmeet doesn’t particularly bother with regurgitating, probably because they’re too busy actually doing it.

At one point between songs, Venus sags into the mic stand. “I’m so tired,” she groans, then points an accusatory finger at Josh, who only grins cheekily. “And it’s because he came into my room at 4:30 AM and jumped up and down on my bed!” Another staple of the band interview: “We’re like a family.” Swapmeet said it too—but unlike most outfits who invoke it, they don’t mean it in the sense of unity or intimacy or even love. They mean it in the sense of banal sibling violence. Midway through our Jersey Mike’s chat, Venus declares, apropos of nothing, “Josh woke me up this morning by dragging me out of bed by my ankles.” The other three immediately jump to Josh’s defense: “Which bed, Venus?” and “You wanna hear the real story?” The real story, as reconstructed by committee, goes like this: Venus ran into their room, jumped into their bed, announced she was in their bed, wrapped herself up in the blanket, and then, when Josh said “No, please, get out”—here a weird, high-pitched, squiggly voice is adopted for Venus’s dialogue, which tells you something about the general level of discourse—she “farted everywhere.” (A fart noise is, of course, included in the retelling.) Josh adds, indignant: “She was like, ‘Hehe, I didn’t even need to fart!'” Venus just laughs: “And then Josh grabbed me at my ankles and dragged me, not only off the bed, but down the hallway. He’s a freak with anger issues.”

So when Venus tells me she would “describe our dynamic as a family,” it doesn’t sound like a metaphor so much as the only viable description—especially when, three minutes later, Josh puts Venus in a literal headlock. They even have a family dinner at Maxwell’s every Friday night, and have for the past three years. It started out as Maxwell’s way of coaxing his unruly bandmates into being punctual (“Do you know what the trick is to get people on time? Offer them pasta for dinner”) but quickly became a tradition. Ultimately, as Jack puts it, “We’ve been hanging out too much.” Nearly every day for five years is no joke.

Perhaps because so much of the band is rooted in this dynamic, Swapmeet are anything but precious about their craft. Unlike literally every band I’ve ever spoken to, their dream show involves no one paying attention to them at all. Venus thinks music should be a soundtrack—not metaphorically, but practically: the soundtrack to the night you fall in love, to the dancefloor, to all things. She remembers pre-COVID shows that felt “so electric—like, ‘oh my God, I could fall in love tonight.’ It wasn’t about the band. I loved them, but listening to them wasn’t the point. And that’s what we want to be: we want to be the soundtrack.” Too many gigs now, she says, feel like showcases, with everyone onstage performing solemnly for a room full of people focused on focusing. Josh blames part of that on the death of dancing. “It’s like everyone’s too scared to dance these days,” he says. “They’re all too worried someone will look at them weird.” Swapmeet’s ideal show, then? Like the New Year’s Eve party they hosted in Maxwell’s backyard, where nobody was watching the DJs and everyone up front was “just shaking it.”

I ask what the Platonic ideal of a live show would look like for them. Venus doesn’t miss a beat: “Horny. We need to bring horniness back to music, to live gigs. I genuinely do mean that.” In a perfect world, she elaborates, they’d look out at the audience and see nobody staring back, because everyone’s too busy sucking face. (Rather ironic, considering the band allegedly committed to a year of celibacy during the creation of Mount Zero according to the press release, but I digress.) “It’s easy to say it’s been a problem since COVID, because that’s when I became a legal adult, but it seems like we treat watching bands like watching a YouTube video instead of experiencing it,” she continues. “Like, you’re in a room with a whole bunch of hot bitches. Start acting like it! It’s just annoying—like, stop looking at us, you fucking nerds. It pisses me off.” She’s joking, but not entirely. The band used to tell crowds to look at the stranger next to them and dance with them for a song, and apparently it worked (Jack remembers one time at Adelaide bar The Exeter, where a pair just started hardcore making out in a fully lit room). Maybe it should come back. As one of them announces amid cross-talk: “We should just tell them straight off the bat, ‘Everyone get horny.’ I don’t give a fuck.”

That, of course, isn’t the only philosophy they live by. In fact, they reckon they have about fifty. Venus says, for her, the big one is simple: “The band is about us, the four of us. The music will always change, but it’s the four of us together that makes us the band.” Josh prefers “taking it seriously, but not too seriously as well.” Maxwell goes with “trying hard as fuck.” What they can’t stand is indifference: the slightly nodding crowd, the folded arms, the performatively suave detachment. Venus calls the pressure behind that cultural force “tall poppy syndrome”—an Australian idiom used to describe the instinct to cut someone down when they’re getting too out there, trying too hard, looking too eager. Their poppy is too tall; bring on the shears. But a key part of Swapmeet’s trial-and-error mentality is the act of trying itself. You have to fuck around to find out, after all—and you also, sometimes, have to fuck. Swapmeet wants everyone to care hard, dance harder, and make out hardest. Now that’s Mike’s way.

Mount Zero is out July 17 on Winspear.

Casey Epstein-Gross is Associate Editor at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her on X (@epsteingross) or email her at [email protected].

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