The Hunt For Purity, Rawness, Realness & Way-Out-Ness

LA-bred musician Kid Congo Powers has the most impeccable of rock'n'roll pedigrees - having played guitar over the years for The Cramps, The Gun Club and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds - but for the last decade he's been applying his vision to his own project, The Pink Monkey Birds.

This band's inaugural tour of Australia last year earned rave reviews, and now they're returning on the back of fourth album La Arana Es La Vida, a collection of down and dirty rock'n'roll that drags the music of Powers' past into brave new places. "The good thing this time was that we weren't afraid to try old things, because a lot of the time you don't want to repeat yourself," Powers laughs. "That's how I am at least — I know I often cut things off before their time because I'm so restless to go onto the next thing.

"It's more about chasing a feeling - to me it was magical, because you can't imagine what thrills people that much when you're eight."

"It was good to go back and say, 'let's just make a rock album and try different types of rock that we love', like put in an Elvis TCB sorta thing, and put in anything from Krautrock to noisy stuff to Chicano rock. I think visiting [Chicano rock] in a bigger way was the most exciting aspect."

This continues a love Powers developed as a youngster in the '60s when he became enamoured with East LA Chicano rockers Thee Midniters. "I had older sisters who were teenagers when I was eight or nine years old, and they'd listen to it," he tells. "I'd get excited at how excited they were to go out to dances to see them: I didn't even know what Thee Midniters was and I didn't know what went on at these dances, but I wanted whatever was making them so excited about going!

"It's more about chasing a feeling - to me it was magical, because you can't imagine what thrills people that much when you're eight, but you already know that you want whatever's the most thrilling thing. I'm still like an eight-year-old — I still want that exciting thing in music. It became a bit of a holy grail to seek that out.

"It's always the idea, and that's how I learned to do it, from everyone in all of the bands I've been in - the people I've collaborated with have always done what they're doing to the extreme, to their ultimate vision. They're all people who are very sure of what their vision is - I'm not saying they plan everything out, but the general muse is there and it's seeking a sort of purity or rawness or realness or way-out-ness. An other-ness.

"I think with The Pink Monkey Birds we're a dance band, we're a rock'n'roll band, we're about life being funny, sexy, dangerous, smart and stupid all at the same time. They're all of my favourite things, so all of my favourite music is like that and that's what rock'n'roll should be like. And there's definitely a sense of humour, because it's fun to look at the world in a skewed way - you have to laugh at it, because if you didn't laugh at it you'd be crying."