Interview: Laura Mac Chat Their Debut Single, Splendour Love Story + More!

We caught up with Sunshine Coast newcomers Laura Mac following their recent debut with upbeat indie-rock single ‘Garage Full Of Dreams’.

The Queensland based duo made up of lovebirds Laura Maclachlan and Zac Connely has made an epic entrance to the scene, providing a super sunny track bursting with infectious grooves and catchy melodies. Throughout the single Laura’s Lilly Allen-esque vocals shine cheekily with an Australian tinge, delivering the tongue-in-cheek lyrics. Truly insatiable energy drives this track, demanding to be danced to. Recorded at Lush Studios (The Butterfly Effect, Semantics, Katie Noonan) in Brisbane, ‘Garage Full Of Dreams’ is accompanied by a wildly fun music video that you can watch below.

With so much potential clear from the start we just had to hear more about them- check out our convo with Laura below!

Hey guys! Firstly, we just want to say a big congrats on the release of your debut track ‘Garage Full Of Dreams’. Can you tell us about the story behind this one?

Thank you!!! Well pretty much we have this big red party bus that we converted into a home studio kind of set up and we spend most of our time in there hanging out and partying and writing music. Garage Full of Dreams was born when Zac showed me this catchy as hell guitar line that he’d recorded in the bus on logic pro. I loved it so he turned it into an almost full song. The lyrics were written when I was home alone and drunk one night having a laugh about what kind of cars I’d buy if I could afford to upgrade from the ancient beat-up Toyota Camry I currently get around in. When I tried singing those lyrics over the guitar he’d written it was sick and it kind of just escalated from there. I reckon we make a good team and I’m so proud of our first song! It’s the second song we’ve ever written and the first song we’ve ever actually recorded together so it is super exciting for us.

This track had some pretty big names contribute! What was it like working with Ian Peres, Dane Pulvirenti & Luke Williams?

We certainly feel lucky! Zac’s other band (Rival Fire) has toured with Dead Letter Circus and so has Dane’s old band (Osaka Punch) so that’s how Zac knows them. When we asked Licka (Luke) to drum on the recording he was more than happy to and same goes with Dane when we asked him to be the drummer in the film clip. Absolute lovely people and mad talented. We met Ian because Luke Palmer (producer) didn’t like a particular guitar line that Zac had put in the song, so he took us to Ian’s cool home studio for half a day where he replaced that guitar with some awesome keys (amongst other things). It was so much fun watching Ian and Luke nerd out on all these rad sounds. It was also awesome getting to meet Nancy (Ian’s adopted doggy). AND we found out Ian’s partner Tiff is a vegan baker (BVKED) and some of her cakes look unbelievable! 

So for those reading this that may not have heard your music yet, how would you describe your sound in less than 10 words?

Like No Doubt and Lily Allen had a baby.

Getting a little personal, we’ve heard that you two have a Splendour love story!! Can we be so cheeky as to ask for some more deets?

Well it’s kind of a long story but of course you can haha! It was one fine Saturday evening at Splendour in 2019 and I was at the amphitheatre watching Childish Gambino. I danced my way down the hill into the crowd riding solo and pulled up next to a nice-looking group of young men. Zac was one of those nice-looking young men. We started chatting and ended up agreeing that Childish Gambino’s set just wasn’t doing it for us and proceeded to venture up the hill together to the bar. The next few hours were spent running around the festival dancing and drinking and causing a ruckus. We got back to my campsite and kept drinking and partying with the campers next door and a heap of randoms until the sun came up, it was about -10 degrees and Zac called it and went back to his campsite on the other side of the festival. Being as intoxicated as we were, of course we forgot to exchange phone numbers and not until after he was long gone, did I realise that wowww I’m an idiot he is so beautiful and going back to Melbourne tomorrow and I’ll probably never see him again. I drank through the pain (as you do when you’re at a festival) and partied through the next day and into the evening when by some freak chance Zac showed up at my campsite again. Since we’d parted ways, he’d done the same thing I had and drank through the pain, but he’s smart and had the initiative to go and try and look for me (aawww) haha! He stumbled around the place looking for clues and retracing steps and just before he was about to call it quits and give up (on an almost impossible mission when you’re in a crowd of 30000), he spotted my next-door neighbour camper coming out of a port-a-loo!! He stalked that guy back to the campsite (hahaha whadda creep) and found me and my friends drinking around a table. I was so stoked about it and ran up and gave him a kiss (our first kiss hehe). We partied together that night and when Monday morning rolled around, I offered to give him a lift to the airport on my way home to the Sunshine Coast. We packed up the campsite, said goodbye to everyone and hit the road. It took 3 hours to get out of the campsite because the traffic was gnarly and when we finally got out onto the highway, we lasted less than 2 minutes before a group of teenagers in a massive 4WD swerved and smashed into the passenger side door of my tiny Honda and sent us flying on two wheels across the grass strip and straight into oncoming traffic at 110kmph. As my car was on its side sliding across the grass, Zac and I said nothing but held eye contact the entire time, and it sounds cliché, but that is honestly when I fell in love with him. We thought we were actually about to die. We didn’t haha obviously, but it was a close one!! My car was completely totalled and the little bastards that hit us tried to do a runner. Luckily there was an off-duty police officer behind us as the accident happened who chased them down and pulled them over and got all their details for us. We were so lucky that he was there. We were also lucky that the second car that pulled up was a nurse who kindly checked us over. The third car to stop was legit a hearse with a coffin in the back – luckily, we didn’t need them. We made our way into Byron Bay town where my parents came and picked us up and took us home because by this stage Zac had definitely missed his flight back to Melbourne haha. He stayed the night on the coast at my house and I took him to the airport the next day. He was back the next weekend to see me. And that’s our Splendour love story!!!

There’s so much talent in Aus right now, we’d love to hear who your favourite Aussie artists are at the moment?

Honestly, I don’t like Aussie music. Kidding! The best at the moment is Winston Surfshirt, Belligerent Goat, Genesis Owusu, Osaka Punch and I love that song AAHH! by Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers. Zac’s been getting around a bit of Amyl and the Sniffers and Beddy Rays. There’s so much epic music out there we could be here forever listing it!

I know it’s still early days for you guys but I feel pretty confident saying you’re heading for big things- do you guys have any dreams or goals as a band that you hope to one day accomplish?

Mate just playing a show is the goal at this stage haha! We haven’t had a live gig yet but are going to record our EP in December so watch out!! Big-time goal is definitely to play Splendour in the Grass one day, because you know it’s where we met and honestly these days it’s the best festival in Australia.

And lastly, have you got anything on the horizon that you can let us in on? Future music, gigs etc?

We’ve got an EP ready and set to record over Christmas this year. We’ll be working with Luke Palmer producing, Luke Williams drumming and Ian Peres being a wizard again this time around because, well, they’re all legends and are incredibly talented. We loved what they brought to Garage Full of Dreams and can’t wait to see how the rest of the EP goes. I’m so excited and hope everyone else is too because it’s going to be fantastic.

We can’t wait to hear more from these guys! In the meantime- have a listen to ‘Garage Full Of Dreams’ everywhere now- and be warned, this one is impossible not to groove to.