Don’t tell Robbie this, but Sharni and I are thinking about leaving the band. It’s nothing personal. We just think that Concept Artists has really gone off the rails ever since we made that album about plumbing. I know it was only our second album, but it really feels like we have been making up the numbers since then.
When Robbie told us his idea for an album about conveyancing and pitched it as an epic saga containing dozens of really long songs, we were super into it because nothing like that had ever been done before. There Are Lots of Blocked Drains in Melbourne just felt like the concept stayed the same, but the content was different. We’re called Concept Artists for cripes sake! Our concepts need to be original, and not just because they’re concept albums with a new topic.
Besides, Sharni and I really are the heart of this band. We could make a really good violin and keyboard duo, in my opinion. No offence to Robbie, but he can be a bit of a control freak. It stopped being fun going along with all his ideas a long time ago. I’ll always remember our days of performing Blocked Drains in the Northcote Area Need to Be Annihilated fondly. Nothing will take away from that. But it’s time for a change.
I think rock bottom was when we released that single, This Window Is Dark Now and Robbie immediately wanted to write a whole album based on that one song. We had just decided to scrap an album about windows because it wasn’t working, but he insisted that there is obviously a market for it. We went along with it because he’s the big-shot frontman who gets to make the decisions, only for it to be a massive failure.
I should have paid attention to the red flags. An album about blocked drains is an inherently bad idea. I appreciate plumbers as much as the next guy, but I had a bad feeling about this album from the start. We tried to make it work. Sadly, I think our time is over.
– Darren