POINTE
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Words: Keeley Thompson
Images: @liamisen, @smh.htmll, @kapogram
The wind circles, fat and thick. Leaves move like indecisive ballerinas, making quick left turns and sluggish pirouettes. Dark clouds crawl along the skyline, promising rain that no one wants, but everyone has come to expect while birds choose between leaving or lingering.
And yet, the promise is never kept. The rain doesn’t come but the clouds don’t quite leave either, the day trapped in a meteorological liminal space.
It is easy, in these hushed hours, to mistake suspension for emptiness - to assume the unknown is a foe that must be conquered. But it’s often in these frayed edges between states that the beauty of possibility appears, like the sun that shines through cracks in the curtains, or getting caught in traffic during a lunar eclipse.
This is Pointe.
Noisy, splintered and breathless but not harsh, their music is more like a tower groaning in the wind - its resilience found in its acceptance that fragility often prevents fracture.
The group, composed of Rose, Jude, Evander, Daniel and Jake, create music that is less concerned about catharsis, and more in the space preceding it. It’s anxious and haunting, but it’s not pretending to be anything else. It’s as if learning to reside in the space between listlessness and liberation is the catharsis.
There’s a power in being able to befriend what you once loathe - to welcome storms with the same hands that greet clear skies. Pointe is anything but weak, in fact, they’re proof that vulnerability and strength have never been opposites.
KEELEY: Tell me about the beginning of Pointe. How did you all meet, and how did you form as a band?
JUDE: I met Rose at high school, and Jake and I went to primary school together. Jake met Evander and Daniel at high school. Because Jake and I went to different schools, we didn’t really talk much, but after that we kind of reunited. I'd made musical friends, he had made musical friends, and we kind of developed the same taste in music.
Jake and I had decided to start recording songs, and from there I asked Rose to come and sing on some of the tracks we’d made.
JAKE: Yeah we kind of realised that to be a rock band, you generally need more than like, two people.
ROSE: They never actually asked me to join the band, it just kind of happened. I just kept coming over to sing on their songs, and after a while I was like “so I’m in the band, right?”
EVANDER: Yeah, it started with Rose, Jude and Jake, and then I came along and then Daniel joined.
JAKE: I convinced Daniel to join Pointe as a second guitarist to play lead lines etc. After our first gig and various jams, Daniel’s contributions became an integral part of Pointe and how we sound. Daniel was fully onboard as a member not long after.
KEELEY: How'd you decide on the name?
JUDE: My mum came up with it, which I'm more than happy to admit because I suck at that. We didn’t really discuss it much after that, mostly because we didn’t have anything else to choose from.
KEELEY: How did your relationship with music start?
EVANDER: For me it was Guitar Hero World Tour. My dad bought the huge box set back when I was in prep. That game really started my love for music, and rock music specifically. I also played trombone in school and taught myself how to play drums and bass and guitar and just played in a bunch of bands.
JUDE: I've always been surrounded by music. Both my parents are musos, and work in the scene, so I just grew up with music. To then start making music almost felt like a no-brainer. I started playing saxophone, then made trap beats, and then looped back around to the rock-n-roll roots of my parents and tried to learn guitar and then changed my mind again and learnt bass.
ROSE: I got into music in a kind of similar way. I was lucky to have parents that took me to a lot of live music growing up and were really supportive of me wanting to try new things. We had lots of instruments around the house growing up. I started with cello, but didn’t really like it, so I started playing piano and now I mostly play accordion.
JAKE: My relationship to music, or I guess the point where I listened to music more seriously started was when I was around 12. I was obsessed with Gorillaz who made a wide range of electronic, hip-hop, pop and indie rock music and I guess that was my proper introduction to rock that wasn’t ACDC or Queen. I didn’t really have a musical background but definitely grew up as a nerdy kid who was into arts, films and videogames etc. The one main thing that I bonded over with people was music and that's how most of my friendships growing up were formed.
DANIEL: My relationship with music began when I was young and my family would always have friends over and play old music videos from the 80s like Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson. They would always insist that I sit down and watch them. But my love for music didn’t fully kick off until my obsession with bands like Radiohead and Nirvana in my early teens. I was especially obsessed with Jonny Greenwood’s guitar playing at first and wanted to learn all his parts and watch all their interviews.
KEELEY: Was there ever any pressure on anyone's part to fall into music because you were so surrounded by it?
EVANDER: Not necessarily. I mean, both my parents are big music lovers, but neither of them were musicians, so there's none of that pressure.
JUDE: No, my parents have always pushed me to do what I wanted to do and that's something I've always been very, very grateful for.
ROSE: Yeah, I never felt pressure, which I’m so grateful for, because it allowed me to do things without losing the love.
KEELEY: How do you think your introduction to music influenced Pointe?
JUDE: I think when we started out making music, we kind of went in reverse. We started with the demoing and whatnot rather than just jamming with people, which could be because I came from such a production focussed background.
But my introduction to music honestly couldn't be further from a lot of the stuff we make, and the way we started isn’t how we do things now.
EVANDER: It’s not so much my introduction, but I’ve also got a background with classical and jazz music studies. I think maybe the thing I offer in this band is a sort of analytical technical perspective on things. Sometimes I can try and synthesize an idea a bit more logically or help to reign things in, or develop things further, however it may be.
JUDE: Yeah, I mean while Jake and I both studied music at school, I honestly have forgotten a lot of it. Most of what I do I figure out through Sheer Will.
Having someone like Evander join has been so helpful. Jake and I often have a bunch of ideas that don't really make sense, so having someone to sift through the good and the bad and be like our second set of ears has been so crucial to us making music that is something we can be proud of.
DANIEL: I think listening and learning so much Radiohead and melody heavy artists has shaped how I play especially for pointe. The way I try to write guitar parts is very adjacent to how Jonny Greenwood’s parts fit in Radiohead’s songs, or at least I intend it to be! The way I write guitar parts my part always has to serve a purpose to the song by avoiding any ostentatiousness. My biggest nightmare is if a part I play or write is trying to show off or just doesn’t fit.
JAKE: I think my introduction to music or more specifically alternative rock music definitely has shaped Pointe’s sound. I guess growing up with alt rock has made me naturally gravitate towards that style when I’m in a band setting. I also think it's one of the genres that is best at balancing thrilling, crowd pleasing, and emotionally resonant moments whilst turning them into good fun tunes.
KEELEY: What's your process of making music look like?
JUDE: It's extremely democratic, I would say almost communist to a certain degree. I would say any one of us can kind of bring in an idea, whether that be a lyric, a chord progression, or something more vague, but for the most part, Rose, Jake and I will be the ones bringing ideas.
From there, we bring it to Evander and Daniel, who are like our proof-readers and filter through the good and the not so good ideas.
EVANDER: Yeah pretty much hit the nail on the head.
ROSE: Yeah, I think it's really collaborative, but I also appreciate that we all feel safe enough to just say it how it is.
KEELEY: Who are your musical influences?
JUDE: Sonic Youth is for sure my number one, will always be my love and joy. I’d also say Electrelane and Life Without Buildings.
EVANDER: The big three for me would be Wallows, The Strokes and Radiohead. So I guess if you were to wrap that all up into one band maybe it's like The Beatles.
JAKE: My musical influences fluctuate massively because I listen to so much music. Currently it's a mix of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Nick Cave, John Lennon, latin guitar music and early 2010’s pop. For the EP it was a lot of Fugazi, Sonic Youth, and various punk and noise rock bands.
DANIEL: I love a lot of singer songwriters presently like Townes van Zandt, Blaze Foley and Bob Dylan but when I was growing up I was heavily inspired by Radiohead, the Smiths, Nirvana and even Jeff Buckley, all that prime male manipulator music.
KEELEY: ‘Birds’ came out recently! How are you all feeling about that?
EVANDER: Psyched. We're really proud of it and I think it's a really fucking good song.
JUDE: Birds is definitely my favourite Pointe song for sure. It was one of the first songs we wrote where it was just me, Jake, and Rose all together in a room, writing something from scratch.
I have a tendency to overthink shit all the time, but this was a track that I’d instantly felt proud of.
JAKE: Yeah it feels great! We put a lot of effort into it and it was one of the first songs we ever wrote so there’s sentimental value to it too.
ROSE: I’m so happy it’s out now, but I do get scared when we release something, just because it’s my voice and my lyrics you know? Like if I’m playing piano and someone doesn’t like it, I can just change what I’m playing, but I can’t change the sound of my voice, or what I write. That being said, I think it’s a good kind of scary because it means you’re putting yourself out there.
KEELEY: Do you have more music coming out?
JUDE: Yes, we do. We have our EP launch in September at The Cave Inn. The EP itself will be out either on that day or the day after.
Get hyped, come see us, or not. Come see the other bands if you hate us.
KEELEY: So what else is coming up for you?
JUDE: We're making new songs now and we're having fun and we're just all hanging out and having fun and making songs.
Something that's that I will say is - I've never really been in a band before, but something I think is interesting about Pointe is that we were kind of two semi-disjointed friend groups and we came together as a band before we necessarily became really good friends. I think the best thing about it has been having that relationship that stems from a shared love of music and a shared drive to make a project happen. From that we’ve become really good friends along the way.
KEELEY: Is that everyone's favourite part about it?
JUDE: Better fucking be.
ROSE: I mean I don't disagree but my favourite part is probably that we go to eat Zambreros every week after practice.
EVANDER: It’s scary to say, but I think you’re right.
ROSE: They need to sponsor us.
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