I shaved my armpits for Nic Munnelly.
24.05.2024 Miica Balint and photography Jill Bontempo
I did. I also ate two boiled eggs and was on my second coffee, black, by the time I met Jill and Nic at ten am.
I would say that I wasn’t surprised to hear that Nic comes from a single child home. In my endeavours to learn various people’s ways of life, in various places in the world, I have come to have a slightly single child-leaning inclination. As in, I have come across a lot of single child f**king weapons. I won’t say this, because it is a personal observation and plus, I am the eldest of six, and I would never, ever trade that. So really all I mean to say is this:
Nic is impressively and intimidatingly skillful. A master of many instruments. A composed and committed musician. The fact that she was an only child and her parents had her pursuing all the possible extra-curricular music-related learning has nothing to do with it.
Nic Munnelly also happens to be an ephemeral beauty and a very cool cat. If you have seen her on stage with Pasiflorez; playing keys, synth, a seventies epiphone, and on vocals– often somehow all at once–you would understand that my saying she is a cool cat is an understatement. Pair that with catching sight of her in the relatively new pixie punk band Royal Ratbags, and well, I can’t find the words. But I did have the privilege of meeting with her this past week, so I will try to join some dots.
She tours with a red suitcase that I would guess is circa 1950’s, which lacks practicality due to its having no wheels, but makes up for in its loaded belly of stage gowns, coats, boots, hats, and rainbow-laced rollerblades. The type of lady that goes solo-sightseeing in the States in a hired van, spending many-a-night in diner car parks after a late night pancake stack. A melody first type songwriter who tends to write her lyrics on what phonetically sounds pleasing to the ear. A saxophonist, guitarist, pianist, bassist, drummer and flutist-- though these are both proclaimed to be in-training-- and a sewer of hats.
We spoke in the naturally lit living space of her home, under a gentle ceiling fan and amongst an organ, drumkit, synth, pedals, a flute on a dark wood shelf, chords and a mic. Jil took to the polished timber floorboards. My tendencies to reposition saw me moving to and fro between rug and armchair. Nic shared the velvet lounge with three guitars, two acoustic and one electric. The electric; a red ET 270 from seventies Japan, popularised a little by Kurt Cobain, used a lot by Nic Munnelly.
Nic’s affiliation with psych rock was born out of its revival when she was seventeen or so. “Everyone was wearing bell bottom jeans and penny lane coats and it was just kind of a moment. I’ve been really into it ever since. It would be the main genre that I listen to, but I think because we play it, sometimes I am just like ‘fuck I want to listen to something else’. So I listen to pleny of really trashy pop, folk, classical, grunge, and jazz.”
The ‘we’ is Pasiflorez, who just last week played a show at the Bangalow Bowlo in the late afternoon of Bangalow’s billycart boogaloo bootscootin’ derby day. This is an entire day of people of all ages (really, all ages) racing down the mountained street of the the thoroughfare from Byron Bay to Lismore. This main road is closed off from top to bottom, and hay bales are the only safety barrier between speeding cart and bitumen. Think takeaway beers, some injuries, and a rock n’ roll band for kids (and adults) named Bunny Racket.
But back to the bowlo, which was a crowded house. Pasi’s frontman Andrew had his head wrapped in a crochet scarf which was tucked into a knee length electric-blue felt coat. A ripper getup really–an older lady that feeds pigeons who ate a psych rock-star. The scarf wasn’t just for warmth, Nic clued Jill and I in.
As it turns out, Andrew had fallen onto a bass guitar in a funny way while talking to someone a few days prior, and he had what was apparently quite a sizey swollen gland on his neck to show for it. Comically swollen. Funnier still (for the band), the scientific name for the injury is a ‘gunter’ or maybe it’s ‘gunder’, ‘goonder’? I couldn’t work it out but alas, it sounds like the word you might choose to describe a massive booger.
We hear from the most composed stage presence herself; “before we went on he came into the greenroom without his scarf on, and I have not laughed that much in so long. I had to redo my eyeliner.”
“We could see it slip out of his scarf, so the whole show was pretty much giggling at Andrew. I really was trying to keep my cool, but I kept having images of this ‘gunder’ come into my mind. Even with the scarf on he would turn to me– it was like this slow reveal– and I would start pissing myself. And obviously he does pretty funny shit on stage already.”
“I hope he’s okay actually.”
At some point that morning, Nic’s housemate entered the front door and for a few moments I felt as though I was involved in some fun oxycodone skit.
“Yo. How is your interview going?”
“I’ve had my wisdom tooth removed, sorry I didn’t clean up…”
“Far out I am pretty delirious. I have to go suit up now– I am playing my friend’s wedding today.” We got more joy when he came back to show us his no-longer-attached-tooth and to enquire on the whereabouts of an iron.
Nic has a solo project she is trying to commit to putting out in July, which she describes as “dreamy psyche, almost sleepy”, and Pasiflorez has an album titled Hibiscus Radio coming out next month. And for the pixie punk band that has Allie (an absolutely eye-catching Amyl and the Sniffers type performer) fronting? “It’s new, we haven’t fucked up majorly yet. People seem to like it.” We do Royal Ratbags, we really do.
Midday met us in Nic’s bedroom and we had to call it a day. Jill and I to ‘working not working’ engagements, and Nic down to Dorrigo. For her drive, I tasked her to think of some recommendations that she would like to share with a person that is new to psych rock. Her response came through the following day;
“So I had a think of some cool psych bands! For the oldies you can’t go past Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and then Brian Jonestown Massacre a little later on. And for current psych rock bands I love King Gizz, early Tame Impala, Holy Wave, Pond and Allah Las. I’m just riffin’ so let me know if you want me to word that better.”
And to close, from Nicole Munnelly, to you.
“People really don’t notice nearly as much as you think they do.”
“Flute is fucking hard.”
“A psych rock song can be something about the sky and feeling the love.”