YKB Ready Themselves For A Huge Year.

Lead singers are often known for their eccentricity and Michael Tomlinson, front man of Yves Klein Blue, is no exception to the rule, in-fact he’s already rambling about Mr Potato Head.

"It’s good to collapse, just like Mr Potato Head," he says, very seriously. "You come home drop your bag and your nose falls off, you go to pick it up and your hat falls off, and then your arm falls off when you go to pick up your hat, and then your shoe falls off."

Tomlinson has every right to be slightly delirious, he has just returned home from a whirlwind two years. Yves Klein Blue have grown from unknown Brizzy scenesters to playing their gritty brand of indie-pop in venues all over the world.

"Some pretty incredible things have happened, playing in England, playing at the O2 Academy, playing Splendour and Falls, it’s pretty big really," he admits. "You’ve just got to get through the hangover and push on to the next one, it is really a wonderful feeling!"

Enigmatic onstage, articulate and well-spoken off, 23-year-old Tomlinson handles the song-writing duties of the band as well playing guitar and keys. Yves Klein Blue’s Ragged and Ecstatic, may have been one of Brisbane’s strongest debuts, and their live shows have gathered acclaim worldwide.

"I don’t want to sound like an arrogant arsehole, but we just did this massive tour in the UK supporting Reverend and the Makers," he says. "We were playing to these big rooms of 2000 and 3000 people, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I loved it in England, people were absolutely nuts about music and drinking, I’ve had to have a little break from it after my time there!"

Yet to fully crack the ever-elusive foreign market, the band have been taking all the right steps, the quality of their music already showing positive results.

"We’ll keep giving it a go, every time you go overseas you get more fans, we did a sell-out solo gig in Camden and that was amazing," he admits. "When we first got there we couldn’t have sold out a shoe box and we left filling up a 600 seat room."

The band’s focus for the moment is on their upcoming ’About the Future’ tour, which is going nationwide next month after a stint supporting Franz Ferdinand. It’ll be the band’s first chance to really prove themselves to adulating fans and Tomlinson is relishing the opportunity.

"This year is going to be huge for us, we’re really excited about putting on some amazing shows," he says. "It’s so hard at first when you’re struggling, even paying for flights and stuff, now we have fewer financial worries. We’re very hands on with the planning and an indie label like Dew Process gives us a lot of freedom."

Not giving too much away, Tomlinson promises the sets are going to be something to remember.

"Obviously I can’t say too much but it may involve live animals," he jokes "We are going to have a whole bunch of surprises in these sets for our headline shows. Its going to be a big couple of months, we’re also using the time to write some new tunes maybe play some new tunes on the shows."

Yves Klein Blue also have the ’difficult second album’ in the pipeline, which they are due to record this year. Tomlinson admits that a lot has changed since he penned Ragged and Ecstatic, but the Libertines-esque guitar grind and literally forward lyricism will most likely remain.

"Well I guess we are just playing the songs that we like, I wouldn’t say that it is a massive departure, we haven’t turned into a pysch-trance group or anything," he half-jokes. "If you want us to though, please let us know...just put it on our Facebook or something, cause we are just total populist whores! It’s definitely not a huge change, but we are pushing the boundaries, it’s just like a new pair of underpants, you’ve just gotta stretch it out a little bit!"

Tomlinson’s song writing is inspired by the beatnik greats of the past, ‘Ragged and Ecstatic’, is lifted from a Kerouac line in ’On The Road’. Honesty and universal understanding are two of the main themes, on their latest single, ’About the Future’, an acoustic commentary on today’s world.

"It was a moment of honesty that I had at about four in the morning, after most of a bottle of whiskey," he explains. "I’ve had a lot of people come to me after listening to it, and recount a shared experience. It’s good; it shows that I am not a total freakish weirdo. I try to write in the vein of my favourite writers and poets, and talk about the madness of day-to-day life in a literal fashion."

Tomlinson’s lyrics are intelligent and down to earth, although he admits he is perhaps too much of a perfectionist for his own good.

"I just come with the bare bones on my acoustic guitar, the words are just gibberish to begin with as it’s easier to write the music, the words come slower," he explains. "I was finishing lyrics to songs that had been around for two years, literally just before I went to record them, and I’m still fiddling around with them now. For me there aren’t any throw away lines on Ragged and Ecstatic, and everything has a really clear meaning for me."

Moving onto other subjects, a tender nerve is hit when Tomlinson discusses the difficulty in organising the all-ages gig that Yves Klein Blue are playing at the Old Museum in Brisbane.

"For people who are not 18 it is really really difficult to watch music because of the archaic nanny-state liquor licensing laws found in the whole of Australia, especially in Queensland," he fires out.

"Queensland has an exceptionally conservative police state government and they make it very difficult to have underage shows, it’s pretty much fucking impossible. You try and get people who aren’t allowed to drink alcohol into a venue, forget about it, its nuts! We do the underage gigs because we love them and its very rare when we get to play them, every-time we play them it is just the funniest shit ever, there’s just this unbridled enthusiasm.

The tumultuous rise to fame that Yves Klein Blue have endured these last few years has really been a dream run, and although he’s slightly mad from it all, Tomlinson hasn’t let any of it get to his head.

"I always place myself as that young guy going to Ric’s, I still don’t believe I’m the guy on stage or on TV now," he admits. "But I do enjoy the ebbing flow of life and I do enjoy being that guy on stage."

Ragged and Ecstatic is out now through DewProcess/Universal.

Yves Klein Blue play an all ages gig at The Old Museum, Brisbane on 17 April and Neverland Bar, Gold Coast on 18 April.

By Nolan Giles

ENDS