Get Yourself Connected: Operator Please

Unless you’ve recently returned to Earth after a trip to Mars, or have been nesting in a desert cave somewhere alongside Osama Bin Laden, you can’t fail to have heard the tones of ‘Just A Song About Ping Pong’ this summer. One of the most addictively catchy songs to have emerged in ages, it has also introduced the British public to the work of Operator Please, five teenagers from Australia who are already one of the bands to name-drop over the coming months.

Yet according to Amandah Wilkinson, the group’s brassy, take no shit vocalist and guitarist, the radio conquering success of 'Ping Pong', both in Europe and Australia, wasn’t exactly part of a master plan for success. Indeed, it nearly wasn’t a single at all. She explains: “When we first recorded Ping Pong, we didn’t think anything of it. It was kinda just a song. It wasn’t like this is, the thing [that would make them]. It was just one of those songs.” That theory is expanded upon by the group’s bubbly violinist, Taylor Henderson who points out that: “Ping Pong, compared to the rest of our stuff isn’t probably the best representation of us. And I think you can tell that on the album [' Yes! Yes! Vindictive!', currently slated for a February release in the UK] . Ping Pong was written really early, and you see how we’ve matured and found a little bit more technical side, a little bit more grungey. We didn’t even pick Ping Pong as a single!”

The single’s success is certainly a long way from the band’s modest beginnings, when they formed simply to enter a battle of the bands contest at their high school in Gold Coast. Since winning the contest, things have moved rapidly for the group with their manic combination of punk, funk and party pop winning admirers all over the globe. Meeting the band, in their cramped Barfly dressing room, there’s still an energy emanating from them, which suggests despite their youthful age, they have very firm ideas about where they want to go. Amandah feels that the success of Operator Please has happened naturally.

“ We formed solely for the battle of the bands. After that, we realised this was something we enjoyed, we thought we’d make the most of it while we could because there wasn’t that many sort of like minded people that liked the same kind of music. It was kinda like, let’s play some more shows because we enjoyed it and we weren’t really thinking about anything. We didn’t know that it gonna come this far, we just were playing shows and that’s about it. Subconsciously we were hoping something would happen but it didn’t actually sink in that we could make something of this until a while ago.”

Although Wilkinson is nominally the group’s leader as vocalist, (she’s also the band’s lyricist) there’s a strong united vibe from the quintet, with everyone continually chipping in throughout the interview. While keyboardist Sarah Gardiner onstage bounces around like a lunatic, she’s more reserved off it, although there’s still a steely determination to a lot of her words; bassist Ashley McConnell gives more laconic observations and drummer Tim Commandeur is the quietest of the five. And the group feel that having such strong personalities in the band is a real benefit. Taylor points out that:

“I actually joined the band later [she replaced original violinist Stephanie Joske in 2006] and I came into it as a 15 year old, very shy, and it was like sitting in the centre of a storm, like the very eye because these guys were just like four corners, completely opposite. We would not be friends if we weren’t in the band, that’s true. We’re one nation under this music! But, I would really consider it a loss to not know these people. I’d never have met them otherwise.”

Amandah supports that, adding “None of us will back down to each other. None of us hung out with each other at school. As cliched as it sounds, it [the band] is the one thing that really unites us.” Such a personality clash did lead to early problems, as Sarah Gardiner explains; "We all like so many different types of music. When we started the band we all thought each other’s tastes were weird. And then we all made mix CD’s for each other. It’s so broad. But we have so much in common too! Music is what pulls us all together.”