The Gnomes Are Go: Frankston’s Fab Four Hit The Ground Running

Although they emerged from Melbourne bayside outer suburbs onto the local live scene with their fresh and spirited indie-rock update of the garage-beat sounds of The Easybeats, Kinks and early Beatles only a year or so ago, Gnome – as The Gnomes were until very recently known – actually started out as a bedroom solo project for teenaged singer/songwriter/ guitarist Jay Millar a few years back. Jay, playing everything himself, started recording and releasing a steady succession of material, quite a few albums’ worth on his own Goblin Records label via Bandcamp. Realising he needed a band to start playing out, Jay approached some like minded players from Frankston’s rehearsal hub Singing Bird, and with Jay on lead vocals and lead guitar, Ned Capp on guitar, Olly Katsianis on bass, and Ethan Robins on drums, Gnome became a band.

Early in 2025, the last solo Jay recordings released under the Gnome name caused something of an international underground sensation when the Bandcamp only I Like It EP – four songs of cranked up Kinks-style mono riffage – was posted by a Spanish garage-punk YouTube page and quickly clocked up over 50,000 views.

And now, finally, we have The Gnomes’ debut album. Twelve killer tracks that combine the best of the ’60s with the best of today. Twelve killer tracks that show off accomplished song writing, assertive singing and playing and an explosive and authentic swinging group sound. Jay Millar talks to Hi Fi Way about their debut album.

How was the lead up to the release of your debut album?
Yeah, it was pretty exciting. It’s bee not too long coming, but it’s been in the works for about a year now, so are pretty keen to finally get it out and get stuff going around it.

You’ve been called things like Frankston’s Fab Four and part of the Bayside beat. How does that feel?
It’s kind an honour, but it’s also lots of fun. I think we’re just super excited about it all, and we don’t believe the hype, because it’s happening quick. Everyone in Frankston has been very welcoming, and everyone’s been backing us, so it’s been good.

Do you feel pressure to nail the sound on your debut album and define who The Gnomes are?
I wouldn’t say pressure, I don’t think we’ve felt that pressure. We’re already talking about how the next album and the album after that’s going to sound. Like, we’re already writing songs and going, oh, that’s a bit different, that probably won’t fit on the next album, but in a few album times, that’ll be good. So I don’t think we’re too worried about getting the right sound off the bat. I think we just want to kind of capture how we sound now, and how the whole rock and roll scene in Melbourne sounds. We just want to capture that. We’re not too fussed on making a point of this is how we’re always going to sound, this is how we’re always going to be, because bands always change. So yeah, not really feeling the pressure, but just trying to capture how we sound at the moment.

With the couple of tracks on Spotify, how do those fit in with the debut album and the rebranding to The Gnomes?
Well, they were both solo projects. The Gnomes, originally Gnome, was my solo project, and then the main band I was in with Olly Katsianis, who plays bass in The Gnomes, kind of dissolved, and we decided we’ve got all this experience and all these contacts from the last band, let’s just dive into this solo project and make it a real band. So I think all the prior recordings and albums were all myself, all done at home, more lo-fi, indie sound to them. But I think they still have some of the traits and charm of the debut album with the full band.

How did the band members meet?
We all met through mutual friends. None of us went to school together. We all met individually before coming together as a band, and we all came together through playing in bands at a social hub rehearsal space called Singing Bird Studios in Frankston which has a venue and a recording studio, and they do all age gigs there. That’s where we recorded the album and we were all just individually playing in bands there. Over time, met through mutual friends, and met through other bands in the scene, and it just made sense for us to start jamming together, hanging out, and playing our earliest gigs there as well.

Is there any hidden meaning behind the name The Gnomes?
Not a hidden meaning or anything, there’s the idea of it was Gnome when it was my solo project, and now it’s The Gnomes, because there’s four of us. But we honestly only really changed it because there was a much bigger band called Gnome from Belgium, who were going do a big European tour around the same time that we were planning on releasing the album in Europe, and we were like, that’s probably not going work very well. There’s been some confusion before, they’ve messaged us being like, people keep thinking we’re touring in Australia, but it’s just you guys. So I think it was more just to clear that up. But, yeah, no crazy story behind the name change.

What are the shared influences between everyone in the band?
Reasonably similar, but different enough where everybody will think of something that no one else in the band thought of. We all a lot of Melbourne rock and punk bands, all love Split System, The Prize, The Unknowns, Loose Lips, Elvis 2, Stiff Richards and obviously all have the 60s influences of the Kinks, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, all huge fans of those. But I think we also as individuals, all have our own specific genres that we’re super into, which kind of help together bring out influences that other members would have never even thought of.

What were those early jam sessions like once you got together? Did things click naturally?
They very much kind of clicked, it came together pretty easily. I think stage and performance-wise, we always had a similar vibe on stage, and I originally always stood in the middle between Olly and Ned. Early this year, we decided we’d put Olly and Ned on one microphone, and put me on the other side, kind of like Beatles style, how George and Paul would share a mic. That, chemistry-wise, has helped a lot. Just playing and rehearsing every week, and being really good friends in general, and spending lots of time driving in cars, there’s a lot of chemistry that you can’t fake in recordings, on stage and in song writing, we’re very lucky because we genuinely are all best friends, all four of us. That makes the whole process of writing music, rehearsing and playing live a lot more honest between the four of us, and everything is a lot smoother.

How was the recording process? Easier than expected or more challenging?
It was really different, especially for me as someone who has always done the recordings by myself in my bedroom. It was a bit of a challenge to let go and let others take control, but we live-tracked the whole album together in the same room in about two days. Then we spent another two days doing overdubs, so we did it all in a week at Singing Bird Studios in Frankston. It was hard work and it was hot, because it was the middle of summer, very hot and sticky. After the main recording week, over the later months, I got the stems and mixed the album myself, adding overdubs here and there. It just all came together pretty easily. But yeah, it was hard work, and it was different, because none of us had really been through that experience before. It was fun enough that we’re all so keen to start recording more music and getting on the next album, and doing more stuff in the studio, because we had so much fun.

Did you already have a clear idea of how you wanted the album to sound?
Yeah, for sure. I demoed all the songs heaps. Originally, I recorded the whole album by myself in the studio a month or two prior. I was like, cool, I’ll do the next Gnome album, because it was still kind of a solo project then. I recorded all the tracks, mixed them, finished them, and showed them to the band. We were like, yeah, it’s cool. But a few of the tracks I wanted to redo drums on, and Olly was like, well, if you’re going to redo drums and redo a few things in the studio, may as well get Ethan, our drummer, in to do them. At that point, it was like, may as well get the whole band in and just re-record the whole thing. So I kind of already had the blueprints for how I wanted everything to sound. It was just a matter of letting everybody else’s influences come in and allowing all the songs to fully enter their final form and fully grow.

What was it like listening to the album for the first time? Was it hard not to critique yourself?
I think we were all pretty happy. We’re all such control freaks, especially myself, that we had the freedom because I had all the master files on my laptop. If there was something we didn’t like, we could change it at my house. There were vocals, guitar solos, percussion and backing vocals that we redid at my house together. That was a fear, we didn’t want to put the album out and in six months’ time think back and go, oh, I wish I changed that, or I wish I hadn’t done that, or I wish that sounded different. We really thought this could be our first and last album, so we may as well make it sound as good as we can make it sound. We’re super proud of it. I think we’re all very proud of the album, and we’re excited for everybody else to finally get to listen to it, because we’ve been the only four or five people listening to the album for the last year.

Did you learn a lot about yourself and your bandmates during the process?
Yeah, for sure. That time together, and also being in the strict timeframe of only having a few days to do everything, really made us all have to focus. It really showed everybody’s work ethic towards the band. It was a really good way to start the year, for all of us to really commit and be like, let’s start this year as a band, recording an album. Let’s work really hard, and then for the rest of the year, it’s just all fallen into place. Especially in regards to our friendships, it’s really benefited our friendships having this band.

Are you planning to tour around Australia, or just see how things go?
We’ve booked a New Zealand tour for the start of December, so we’re going over to New Zealand for seven days, doing a bunch of shows there. We’ll come back and hopefully do an East Coast tour, and come to Adelaide and do our first proper Australian tour. We just want to play, we just want to play shows, play gigs, get the album out, but also keep writing, playing fresh material and keeping the band fresh. We’d love to go overseas, there’s been talks of going to Japan for a week, early next year, and obviously we’d all love to go to Europe as well. So many Australian bands do so well over in Europe, and they all come back, and they’re always like, oh, you guys would do so well in Europe.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Introducing… The Gnomes is out now. Buy HERE…

THE GNOMES ALBUM LAUNCH
with Loose Lips, The Pearlies, Riviera
FIRDAY NOVEMBER 14 AT THE BRUNSWICK BALLROOM
Tickets now on sale from – Buy THE GNOMES tickets, VIC 2025 | Moshtix