The Alohas

Wearing handmade leis cleverly crafted by their worshipping fans are surf rock group THE ALOHAS. This Sydney-based band is unique with its instrumental surf music harking back to the sounds of the '60s with slightly more bang and cheesy jokes. Their most recent album, Get Leid With... The Alohas, is very fast paced but they manage to get through it all gaining inspiration from The Atlantics and Dead Kennedys. "Once we get excited, we start playing pretty fast," explains Ray Sjaniti, the band's guitarist. "I think we mostly operate on beer energy, a fair amount of it."

The unique sounding tunes are not new as the band has been around for ten years. Over that period of time they have firmly solidified as a band and have developed their own style by sticking to a purely instrumental sound. When asked about the possibility of throwing a vocalist into the mix, Ray was not fond of the idea. "Everybody always brings it up and it will take away the uniqueness," he says. "I'd rather keep it a novelty."

The Get Leid With... album is a blast if you like your surf guitars tough and the creative title is also sure to catch your attention. "The other guitar player's sister out of nowhere just said 'haha, wouldn't it be funny if you called it that!' and we went 'okay... sold.' It was just a silly comment and we took it seriously," Ray laughs.

The album title is not the only thing that came from a cheesy joke. Being an instrumental band, the Alohas can't draw inspiration for song titles from lyrics. "That's one good thing about the instrumental thing - it doesn't really matter what you call the tune but sometimes it can sort of reflect the style of the song," Ray says. "Other times it's mostly just bad puns. The most obvious one could be about arguably the most famous surf guitar player, Dick Dale, and we have a tune called Dale's Dick."

Due to release another album in early 2010, Ray eagerly stated that the new album will come with a tougher sound. "The tunes are going to be quite similar but the recording of the sound will be a little tougher [and have] a bit more impact. So we're different in that way, there's probably a bit more fast and furious moments in there."

The band's unique '60s garage punk style, played on beloved vintage equipment with a hint of surf twang, makes for a hip shaking and hair raising good time. "We had one guy get The Alohas' number plate on his car - that's pretty cool," Ray says. "There's a chick that used to bring handmade leis for us and of course there's the thousands of girls that come along and, you know, worship us."

The Alohas are playing a free gig at the Phoenix on Saturday July 25.