press >scene 11 /01/2006

Tonight’s The Night

Most bands will put themselves through years of relentless gigging and a handful of half-baked EP’s before dropping a debut album. Brissie band, The Tonights, have adopted a somewhat inverted approach.
The Tonights have chosen to write and record an entire longplayer before bothering with the whole make a name for themselves thing. Some might call this being overly precocious but as Christian Paul Sargeant (Tonights’ drummer) explains, it’s all part of a grander scheme for these dreamy popsters. “Just based on our lifestyle it was the only way to really go about it,” he ruminates.

 “Unless you’ve got something tangible, something permanent down, it just increases the gamble of what you do. We really wanted to start with something sound just to get us rolling because we knew that nobody would know us for awhile. But if we’ve got some good recorded material then we stand a better chance of finding an audience and hoping that people come to the live shows with some sort of prep.”

The core members of The Tonights are about as close-knit as they come. Vocalist/keyboardist/bassist Eva Fritz is married to drummer/producer Sargeant and Eva’s brother Henry, has the guitar and bass duties. With all this ability at arms reach, the DIY approach seemed an obvious choice.

“We’ve been doing all of this ourselves,” says Sargeant, “and when I say that I mean every single facet of making music and putting it out there from me talking to you now, to getting the posters done, the websites done, touching base with radio, filmmakers, press….

“We don’t have management, we don’t have PR-we don’t have anything at this stage. We’re also married, we have kids and we work full time, so you can imagine it’s been an absolute saturation of energy and often for very little return.”

All that expended energy looks finally set to pay off when the band materialise at The Zoo for their album launch. An expanded line up including a horn section, vocal backups and percussionist will congregate for the night as well as support by funk/reggae collective the Informants. All quite organized and expansive for an infant outfit.
“It feels really good,” cogitates Sargeant. “I’ve been knocking around in bands for so many years, mostly bloke bands, and I can tell you-it takes a woman, mate! It takes a woman to get it all together and keep it moving and I feel very lucky at this stage in my life to have found that.”

Yuri Koskov-Koskov
[SCENE Magazine, Brisbane, Australia 11-01-2006]