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When bands sit around a phone all day fielding interview calls from various publications, it's a fair bet that they don't want to answer the same boring questions all day - "how did the band form?", "what made you choose the bass?", and the old chestnut, "so, how did you guys choose your name?" Generally the answers to these are as mundane as the questions, the last in particular often eliciting a response something along the lines of "it's not something we put a lot of thought into - we needed a name and that's what we came up with."

Chasing Gravity, however, have put a significant amount of thought into their name, and chose it precisely because of how they feel it represents their music to the world.Beginning as Elephant Mojo in 2003, after releasing three EPs they felt their music had changed significantly enough over time that they wanted to distance themselves from that name. Incorporating soaring vocals and swooping guitar lines into their punchy melodic rock, Chasing Gravity seem to fit their name better than most bands, but when rebranding themselves, they were searching for more than just a metaphor for their music.

"I just think, and we all just think, that Elephant Mojo was like our apprenticeship; it was our time to learn how to be in a rock band and what it's all about and learn how to write songs a little better and stuff like that," drummer Dominic Hooghuis explains. "We got to a stage where we were in Brisbane, and we were stuck between trying to juggle full time jobs and make ends meet, and also trying to keep our band and our music alive, and we just said, 'ok, it's all or nothing'. So we said 'it's all, let's move to Melbourne'. We lived off two minute noodles and scraped enough money together to be able to pay rent and set up a studio in our house, and spent a year writing the album."

Unsurprisingly, the significant lifestyle change also had an effect on how the members approached their lives and, ultimately, their craft. "The music had changed so dramatically after that it just didn't fit the same mold and the same name - it was kind of comical and quirky, and there was no seriousness to it, and our music was becoming a bit more serious... we decided it was time to change, and just put it out there. We were driving across the Nullarbor desert, and it was like four days of driving and camping on the side of the road... we had 400 words that we really liked, and combinations of words, and we went through every single word and put it with another word. It took so long, but it kind of took up a lot of this boring time."

Such painstaking dedication to the job at hand is typical of the band, who have produced an extremely polished sounding record in 'Autumn In The Platinum Desert', and one in which each lyric, riff and beat comes across as the product of careful consideration.

There's no doubt that their music has taken on a lot more mature quality with their first release as Chasing Gravity. Far more than simply a band name, Hooguis sees those two words as something of a mantra for the four members. "It's about chasing something more, looking for something more than just what we see with our own eyes - what we see around us and how humans interact - there's got to be something beyond that...So it's like chasing importance, chasing seriousness, and that's kind of what it's about."

Ironically, there's a strong theme evident on the record, one that is based very strongly upon what the band members can see with their eyes. "It's very based upon human interaction and human behaviour, whether it just be relationships or just the way humans interact with each other," Hooghuis acknowledges, but then again, it wouldn't be any fun if the band achieved all of their goals on their first LP.

Alexis Buxton-Collins

'Autumn In The Platinum Desert' is out now through MGM

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