If you’ve been anywhere near an indie playlist, a festival main stage, or a group of mates belting out “Booster Seat” at 2am, you already know Spacey Jane. The Fremantle-born four-piece have become one of Australia’s most beloved bands, blending jangly guitars, sun-drenched melodies and lyrics that hit you right in the existential feels.
And tomorrow, they’re dropping their third studio album, If That Makes Sense — which is exactly why PEDESTRIAN.TV wrangled them for a chat, while they sat in a bar that just so happened to be one of their earliest gig haunts — Mojo’s Bar.
Caleb Harper (vocals/guitar) and Kieran Lama (drums) started out in Geraldton, busking and uploading tracks to triple j Unearthed before moving to Perth, where they met Ashton Hardman-Le Cornu (guitar) and original bassist Amelia Murray. Peppa Lane joined the crew in 2019, locking in the line-up just as the band’s star started to take off.
If That Makes Sense is their boldest record yet — produced by Mike Crossey (The 1975, Arctic Monkeys, Wolf Alice) and written with collaborators like Day Wave and Sarah Aarons.
It’s a deep dive into love, heartbreak, trauma, and the messy art of putting yourself back together. The band self-funded the project, took a break from relentless touring, and spent real time in the studio to craft something that’s both ambitious and unmistakably Spacey Jane.
With a massive tour about to kick off, and a new album that’s already got fans frothing, we caught up with the band to talk about everything from tour bus rituals to unhinged gig moments, Spotify’s local music initiative and what they’d change about the Aussie music industry if they could.
Hi Spacey Jane! How long have you all been playing together as a band?
Caleb: Nine years for Ash, Kieran and me, this month, actually, on the 16th. Peppa’s been with us since 2019, so that’s six years in the current line-up. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like we ever did it without her.
What’s a typical day together?
Peppa: Probably the most novel-like day experience is when we’re touring in the US and we wake up on a tour bus and we’re in a new place and then we go and do soundcheck, maybe have a little look at the city where we are, play a show.
Caleb: If it’s in Australia, it’s like we see each other at 5:00 pm when we get picked up for soundcheck and then I don’t know what everyone does all day — sit around our hotel rooms and go for walks, catch up with friends.
Ashton: The normal day for the last year or so has been us in Airbnbs. Mainly with Caleb and then without Caleb, sometimes it’s just the three of us and Caleb will be somewhere else. We go record something or do some stuff that isn’t music, but you still have to do.
We all live in separate places now. So we’re not going to the beach in the morning anymore sadly.
Do you ever get sick of each other on the tour bus?
Caleb: It’s been a couple of years since we did the tour bus thing, but we had a good culture. No one was smashing beers. Except maybe Jez.
Kieran: Quietly.
Caleb: But yeah, we would just take it really easy and walk around the neighbourhood which is typically not very walkable because music venues tend to be in parts of town where they can afford to operate.
Then we would just load all our gear in a sound check.
Peppa: We were all waking up at different times, I think. So I would wake up just before loading at 4 pm.
Caleb: Because you’ve been up till 6 talking to people that the thing is when you’re on tour in the US and you’re talking to everybody back home.
What’s your favourite part about what you do?
Kieran: I think touring is the best one for me personally, I have the most fun doing that. Recording can be stressful and at times honestly monotonous or difficult or it’s just a bit harder. Whereas touring is like everything’s so new all the time.
You get the immediate feedback of performances and shows and you’re always with your best friends seeing things, like it’s cool.
Peppa: AWWW.
Caleb: Making music, making art is torture a lot of the time and being on stage and people singing lyrics back is the most euphoric thing in the world. It’s so great.
The experience of making something that you’re proud of is also one of the greatest feelings ever as well.
Ashton: It’s kind of like fulfilling in different ways. The two modes of our existence.
Caleb: I remember here at Mojo’s where we are right now was really the first place that we started having people come whose faces we didn’t recognise. Strangers singing our lyrics, that for me has been the most like addictive experience ever since we started and sort of what keeps me doing it.
What’s been the biggest learning curve?
Kieran: Getting on with three other people and trying to make pretty hugely significant life decisions, not just career or whatever.
When we started the band, we were just having fun and now it’s our jobs and we may as well be married to one another, you know?
It’s a huge deal and I think we’ve all learned to compromise and talk and communicate about things that maybe we weren’t so well equipped to deal with before.
What was your dream for the band when you started out?
Ashton: Honestly, I just wanted to play Mojo’s. That was the big goal. After that, you just keep scaling up — next gig, next city, next festival.
Caleb: I don’t think we’ve ever set massive, years-away goals. It’s always been about the next exciting thing.
Definitely for me at the start it wasn’t it was no like dreams of grandeur or anything. It was really just, ‘this is really fun’. It was just week to week — like let’s book the next show in Perth and then it was like let’s go play in Melbourne and Sydney and then let’s sign a record deal, let’s play this festival.
It’s always just been setting our sights a little higher every time and find the next thing that is exciting and yeah that’s, I think served us well.
Do you have any advice for people who want to work in the music industry?
Kieran: I think don’t doubt yourself too much. I feel especially culturally there’s a tendency to internalise some kind of imposter syndrome or tall poppy or something — which is something I personally struggled with a bit.
Every goal that we’ve achieved has felt like almost in spite of the belief in that.
I feel like everything’s pretty much possible at this point and it took a while to believe that.
Caleb: I also think the small grassroots community stuff — what you give into it, you also get back out of it.
We were part of an amazing scene — that I really don’t know how it exists in Australia right now — but where you bring your friends to watch you, but also watch this other band and that was the time in our lives when we were learning how to be on stage and interact as a band. Being an active part of that community locally is really important and it needs to start there — especially in Australia where there’s not this massive industry arm that comes in and scoops people up and picks people out of obscurity and puts massive amounts of money behind them.
There is this need to start at the bottom.
Speaking of being lifted up in the Australian music scene, how does it feel to be part of Spotify’s Turn Up AUS campaign, which aims to platform local music?
Caleb: It’s amazing, Spotify doing something like this. They’re a massive part of the music industry now and they’re doing this essentially to get behind Australian music.
The support that they’re putting behind us for this record and this album launch is so cool.
Random question, but if you weren’t musicians, what would you be doing?
Ashton: I’d still be listening to music still. I don’t know probably be contributing to the economy in a different way.
Caleb: I wanna be a pilot still.
Kieran: I have nothing for you, I’m sorry. I have a marketing degree.
Peppa: Maybe a primary school teacher.
What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve seen at work (that we can legally publish)?
Peppa: People throwing up and fainting and needing to be carried out.
Caleb: Someone once jumped on stage after a show yelling: “That’s my boyfriend!” and our guitar tech had to tackle them off. Commitment to the bit, honestly.
Who do you admire in your industry?
Ashton: I love King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. The independent approach and self-everything is really cool. They define their own culture. I think it’s really sick.
Caleb: Also bands like Fontaines D.C., Wonder Wars, and Amyl and The Sniffers. They’re not making what people would have considered commercially viable music a couple years ago and they’re building these [careers] and have these incredible careers globally.
It’s just really cool — it gives me hope in the industry.
Kieran: There are a couple promoters and festival runners that I love. I love what Meredith are doing and Golden Plains over in Victoria.
I love our booker Paul Sloan — the community he’s built with Wave Rock [Weekender]. I feel like in a time where live events have been really under the pump and difficult to make viable in the last few years, it’s been super special to see the ones that stuck around able to continue and prosper and put on great shows and people.
Peppa: I admire all the artists that are on the uncomfortable brink of not being able to work a full-time job or make enough money, but then also not being able to make enough income from music.
Just the dedication and the passion that requires [musicians] to persevere in that kind of situation can be pretty challenging. It’s a really big gap to be able to jump.
What’s one thing you wish was different about the music industry?
Kieran: I wish there was more money for everyone because I think it does quash the potential of so many incredible artists and songwriters in music and in other art forms as well. There just isn’t enough for everyone and that limits the possibilities.
Caleb: There’s certain parts of the framework around being a small artist or a younger artist that are quite inaccessible. Whether it’s more funding for small venues in all cities and towns or if it’s government subsidised studio spaces or it’s access to education around marketing yourself.
Being an artist is easier in some sense that you can make music in your bedroom, but there’s still this whole leap that needs to be made where you go public essentially.
I feel a lot of those things are businesses and are expensive and difficult to run and those are the places I think where money needs to go, so that infrastructure and those pathways are there for younger artists.
What are you looking forward to with the new album? What do you hope it says?
Caleb: I’m always really excited to see which song people like the most. We can never quite tell and then something becomes a crowd favourite and sometimes you start to see a song on the rise before the numbers show it, because it’s getting belted out.
Peppa: I’m excited to see how the new tracks connect live — some songs just feel like they’re made for the stage, and finally getting to play them will be unreal.
There you have it: Spacey Jane, as real as it gets. No sugar-coating, no manufactured mystique — just a band who loves what they do, wishes there was a desire for a bit more cash to go around, and is quietly plotting world domination, one gig at a time.
Spacey Jane will also be celebrating the release of their album with an exclusive gig in Sydney with Spotify.
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Lead image: Supplied
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