San Cisco: “It’s hard to form songs on the road.”

“Cute as a button” – that may be the major comment for anyone who’s seen San Cisco for the first time. Composed of young – and we mean young, one of them just finished high school before they started jet setting to international shores for their tours – and talented teenagers from Fremantle, Western Australia, Jordi Davieson (vocals/ guitar), Josh Biondillo (guitar/ keyboards), Nick Gardner (bass), and Scarlett Stevens (drums/ vocals) used to be typical high school kids. That is, until they had a breakthrough with their song “Awkward” in 2011.

Since then, the band produced two EPs: Golden Revolver and Awkward. A growing local act favorite, they also managed to play at major Aussie festivals – Big Day Out, BIGSOUND, and St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival. If it wasn’t for their hit, which now scored more than five million views in YouTube, the band would have been “in the army or something” – at least that’s how bassist Nick (far left on the photo) puts it.

Inevitably though, the foursome are bound for bigger things, so they released their debut album San Cisco, picking “Fred Astaire” as one of their first singles and possibly giving “Awkward” a run for its money as the band’s cutest single yet. “The Fred Astaire has very little to do with our song,” he continues to tell us. Sure, it’s a song about a guy who thinks he’s not good enough for a girl. As for mentioning one of the well-known names in Hollywood, he added, “Yeah, we’re all a little hung up on old movies.”

Quite honestly, for anyone who’s tried to keep up with San Cisco’s activities since their “Awkward” days, it’s become a bit of a daze. Visiting their Facebook page comes with a mixture of tour photos and updates, from the US to Europe. “We all just slip into touring mode. Basically taking any chance to sleep and not arguing when we haven’t had a chance to. We’ve kind of learnt everything about everyone.”

Luckily, they’ve added Singapore on their places-to-be for Camp Symmetry. Given that they’ve never been to the Lion City before, the gang is surely looking forward to their visit, sharing the stage with the likes of Ra Ra Riot, Best Coast, Explosions in the Sky, and Mew. With the string of festivals and shows they’ve been at though, we wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already rubbed shoulders with some of the acts in the line-up.

“We haven’t had a tour with a band we didn’t love!” Nick claims, “[But] we learnt a lot from The Vaccines and Darwin Deez.”

With a month left before San Cisco bring their indie pop sound over to the region, it makes us wonder if their hectic touring schedule and on-going interaction with other bands ignite some sparks or enough inspiration for new material. “It’s hard to form songs on the road because we don’t get time to properly rehearse,” Nick explains. “But individually, there are lots of little bits and pieces ready to be built into songs.”

That’s good enough – with San Cisco only out in July this year, we could definitely relax and soak up its pop tunes more – of course until we get our San Cisco fix live at Camp Symmetry.

Post originally published on Music Weekly Asia.