Melbourne band Tiny Little Houses coming back to Brisbane

MELBOURNE’S Tiny Little Houses, fronted by Caleb Karvountzis, are moving out of the lo-fi bedroom and into the wider world

(From left) Clancy Bond (drums), Al Yamin (bass), Sean Mullins (guitar) and Caleb Karvountzis (vocals/guitar). Picture: Jess Gleeson

Only a few years ago, Caleb Karvountzis, singer/guitarist with Melbourne four-piece Tiny Little Houses, was still writing lo-fi, folk-tinged indie-pop by himself in his bedroom and posting the results to his Soundcloud account. Now he is fronting one of Australia’s most promising young bands. Tiny Little Houses first came to national ­attention after Karvountzis uploaded the band’s first ­single, Every Man Knows His Plague ; and You Are Mine, to Triple J’s Unearthed site in mid-2014. Their two EPs have spawned radio hits including You Tore Out My Heart, Easy and Medicate Me, and the band look set to build on that success with their first album, Idiot Proverbs, which ­debuted in the ARIA Top 40 on its release last week.

“I’m super happy with how it’s turned out,” Karvountzis, 26, says. “With this album we wanted to write 10 songs that basically people don’t feel the need to skip through, and are strong and confident and sound big, and I think we ­really achieved as much as we can achieve at this point.”

Tiny Little Houses released the first single from Idiot Proverbs, the Pavement-esque slacker anthem Garbage Bin, in July last year. It’s a song that holds special significance for Karvountzis – he co-wrote it with Melbourne singer-songwriter Fergus Miller, who tragically took his life in late 2016 after struggling with depression. “The song remains much the same as it was written with Fergus,” Karvountzis says. “The only thing I changed was I redid the vocal take – the original was quite scratchy – and I changed one line. Ironically enough, the line was ‘there’s nothing cool any more about suicide’, which I changed to ‘I keep losing my friends to suicide’. Because that song meant so much to us, Ferg’s brother gave the original ­recordings back to us after he passed away.”

(From left) Al Yamin (bass), Caleb Karvountzis (vocals/guitar), Sean Mullins (guitar), Clancy Bond (drums). Picture: Jess Gleeson

Latest single Entitled Generation – which opens with the lyric “I’m 25 and still not living out of home / Got two degrees and I’m stuck working on the phone / So, damn our entitled generation” – serves as both a sardonic retort to criticism levelled at millennials for not having their lives together and an honest self-examination. “I wasn’t planning to take on anyone in particular; everyone has a good point of view,” Karvountzis says diplomatically. ­“Obviously the housing market is hard to get into but I also think millennials need to toughen up in some aspects, but it’s probably just part of the way we were raised.

“In some aspects we have to pull up our socks and get on with it; if we think it’s hard now, imagine how hard it was 150 years ago. People like our parents and the baby ­boomers had a particularly good run in history.”

Karvountzis says most of what he writes is based on lived experiences, and although the band tackle some weighty issues, there are some equally cheerful moments on Idiot Proverbs – such as Short Hair, a song he came up with following a conversation with his girlfriend’s uncles at a barbecue. “They were just talking about this guy they used to tease who had a boring haircut and was really ­conservative, saying he likes to let his short hair down and I just thought it was really funny. It’s probably one of our least-serious songs, but it turned out really well and was one of those songs that came together almost automat­ically, without trying.”

Karvountzis played an instore solo show at Stones ­Corner record shop Sonic Sherpa, in Brisbane’s inner east, in the week of the album’s release but he’s looking ­forward to bringing the band back with him next month. “Brisbane shows are always legitimately the best shows that we play,” he says. “The music scene’s really great and people are just always there to have a good time.”

Tiny Little Houses play The Brightside, Fortitude Valley, March 10, tickets from $24; oztix.com.au

Originally published as Melbourne band Tiny Little Houses coming back to Brisbane