Boy In A Box
Biography
It takes a certain kind of four-year-old to dedicate every single Sunday, from wake until sleep, to listening to the Beach Boys on repeat. Some would say a wildly precocious or even (but don’t quote us) mildly freakish one. Tobias Priddle, the 23-year-old behind the glistening riot-pop anthems of Boy In A Box, was that kid.
Tobias sensed he’d have plenty of time to explore the nether regions of rock’n’roll history over his oncoming years in Patonga, a fishing village with a population of just over 200. And Tobias would certainly explore. Years later, a move to Melbourne would see him expand on a musical obsession that had gripped him since high school – the clattering hooks of the UK punk era and the everyman stance of Americana, as well as elements of early soul and grainy FM pop – to inform the heart of Boy In A Box. The Clash is in there, as is Springsteen and even hints of a young Midnight Oil. “As well as Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra.”
There were bands and bedroom projects that came before Boy In A Box’s inception, but those became irrelevant when Tobias’s father passed away at the beginning of 2010 and Tobias gave up on making music altogether. “I was kind of like, ‘Oh, f**k, I have to do something, I have to make a change,’” Tobias explains. “He always said to me, ‘Do whatever you want and, if something’s not working, don’t do it.’ And being in bands didn’t feel like it was working.” Instead, Tobias decided to follow in his dad’s footsteps and build recording studios. Grabbing work for the man who would eventually coerce him back to the mic and become his manager.
His guitar, however, wouldn’t leave him alone, and a bit of serendipity stepped in when, on the job, Tobias’s boss told him he was looking for a song to feature in the 2010 Blue September campaign, aimed at raising awareness of cancer in men. “So I’m like, ‘Well, I wrote this song at home last night, do you want to hear that?’” Tobias shrugs. “And a week later I was thrown into the studio and it was like, ‘Oh no, it’s happening again!’”
Jump forward a couple of months and ‘Moon Comes Up’, with its celebratory gospel chorus and Tobias’s brylcreem vocal, would be all over Triple J, cementing the future of Boy In A Box.
Tobias 's musical compadres headed down from the coast and joined him in Melbourne to take what he had in his head and land it onto the stage. Kris Scott (guitar) and Athan Hewett (bass) moved in next door, whilst fellow Melburnian Tom Crimmins (drums) threw his lot in to form a communal hub of creativity and no doubt any neighbour’s worst nightmare.
Not that long hours are spent toiling over and jamming out the songs of Boy In A Box. With a hand in everything from production to mixing, Tobias says that when the songs appear in his head, they come with every instrument, every detail, included.
Ask him to explain his lyrics and Tobias is more likely to change the subject than pore over every thread, however the themes that filter through Boy In A Box’s songs are relevant to why the group has been causing whispers amongst real people who go to real gigs. As heard in the up-all-night chorus chant of ‘Moon Comes Up’, Tobias’s words are rallying cries for change, for freedom, for letting go of old ideas and throwing caution to the dogs.
Those ideas also extend to where Tobias thinks the group fit on the broader band circuit. “It seems at the moment that there are very few bands in Australia who… A lot of guy bands have wussy-sounding front guys, and that’s one of the main reasons why I’ve wanted to make my music like , ‘Argghhh!’ I’d like to hear more of that, just so we have some more bands to tour with,” he grins. “It really is time for a change. I don’t have any big plans. Right now it's pretty simple, just getting up and playing it how I hear it. If someone takes notice they'll know what I'm on about.
