Credit: David Milan Kelly

Swapmeet have never operated like a band built around a single voice. Since meeting in high school in Adelaide, the quartet have approached songwriting as an ongoing conversation, with members swapping instruments, trading vocal duties, and allowing songs to evolve naturally depending on who happened to be holding what. That collaborative spirit sits at the heart of Mount Zero, their debut album and one of the most anticipated releases of the year, arriving today as a document of four friends navigating adulthood together.

Across songs that reflect on first heartbreaks and the uncertainty of life, the record captures years of shared experiences filtered through multiple perspectives. Recorded over two weeks in a beach house in Port Noarlunga, Mount Zero finds Swapmeet embracing experimentation and spontaneity. We caught up with Josh Doherty, Jack Medlyn, Venus O’Broin, and Maxwell Elphick from the band to discuss the making of the album, their ever-evolving songwriting process, and why they'll always treat Swapmeet as an experiment first and foremost.

REVERIE: For people discovering Swapmeet for the first time, how would you describe the band and its origin? What inspired the name?

JOSH: Our origin is really completely just based on us having fun. We sort of all met towards the end of high school through our mutual love of music and it was just an outlet for us all to have fun playing whatever we wanted to. We used to be called Sour Sob, which is like a local name for the small yellow flowers that grow in winter, for like 3 years until we had some legal issues over the name. Swapmeet is a name that Maxwell had picked for his high school band, that got voted out. Apparently the name ‘Bean Feast’ won over Swapmeet somehow. Some people think that the name Swapmeet is to do with how Maxwell and I swap playing guitar and drums, but that’s just something that we’ve done since the start, because it’s fun for us to do both.

REVERIE: Since all four of you contribute songwriting, vocals, and different instruments, the album feels like it’s moving through multiple perspectives instead of one singular narrator. How do you make those different voices feel cohesive within the world of Mount Zero? How do you decide whose ideas lead a song, or what role each person takes on?

JOSH: I think the cohesion just comes from us being around each other so much. All of our ideas are sort of filtered through each other; and it’s in a way where we are just trying to bring the best out of whatever each other is doing. We try to let our roles in each song be found as naturally as possible. It honestly always just depends on who is playing what instrument when the idea is brought to the group, like if I happen to be sitting on drums and Maxwell has a guitar idea then we’ll keep working on that song in that way through to the end.

REVERIE: You’ve all known each other since high school in Adelaide. What made the chemistry click so quickly when you first started playing together?

JACK: I think we just sort of filled in gaps for each other at that point in time. Josh was the most hysterical person I had ever met. Maxwell was like a musical body double. Venus inspired me to write songs too. We just had too much fun together to stop.

REVERIE: A lot of Mount Zero circles around “firsts” — first heartbreaks, first disasters, first moments of adulthood not looking the way you expected. Because you’ve all grown up together as a band, did it feel like you were experiencing a lot of those milestones in real time alongside each other? . Does the band almost function as a way of processing those transitions together?

JOSH: Yeah, we absolutely have been through a lot together. It’s fun to look back on these years post-highschool and think about everything that’s changed but then we’ve had this constant meetup between the four of us to make music every week. It’s like a free therapy session. I guess that’s what you’re hearing on the album… is us processing all of that change together.

REVERIE: My favourite track is “Halfway” - specifically the guitar on the track, I like that Swapmeet can get noisier, but also leave space for moments that feel special in the song. Can you share a little bit about “Halfway” and what it was inspired by?

JOSH: It’s hard to pinpoint what it was inspired by because it has been such an ever changing song. We have probably been playing halfway for over 2 years now through about 6 different versions. I think finding the right outro for it and Venus’s final lyrics which came about in the last 2 days of recording brought it together to make it my personal favourite on the album.

REVERIE: You recorded Mount Zero together in a beach house in Port Noarlunga. What was daily life like during those two weeks, and how did that environment shape the album?

JOSH: We were down at the beach house for a couple weeks and it was chaos but it worked really well. I remember coming home from work and I would find Venus on the balcony writing lyrics, Maxwell in the kitchen cooking up something and Jack down stairs laying down his 20th clarinet attempt on the album. We also played 500+ games of table tennis which definitely shaped the sound of the album.

REVERIE: What were you listening to or inspired by that maybe influenced this album?

VENUS: Wico’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was playing in the house as a morning ritual for me. I really like the writings of Jeff Tweedy and found his work stimulating and a great way to zone in on writing. Influence wise, we are all over the place.

REVERIE: You’ve had a huge couple of years — BIGSOUND, SXSW Sydney, touring with The Murder Capital, and your first U.S. shows. Has your perspective on the band changed at all as more people are discovering the music and how has the experience been? Influence your songwriting or future songs?

VENUS: I think there’s an aspect of growing as a musician where the bigger you get, the bigger the ambition becomes. In that way, I just feel like we’ve entered a bigger pond. It’s cool, and somewhat validating to have attention given to our music, but we don’t really let that enter our world. Touring is always chaos, the band room always smells and we still practice every Monday night at Maxwell’s parents house.

Credit: Ravyna Jassani

REVERIE: “I Know!” feels like a really immediate and catchy introduction to the album. Did that song feel like a turning point creatively for the band?

JOSH: It was definitely the one that came together the quickest on the album. Venus was living in Melbourne at the time and we hadn’t been working on new stuff for a little bit, so it was good to have a quick jam whilst we were running late for a gig. It came together really easy though and I think everyone was just happy to be writing together again.

REVERIE: You’ve mentioned writing songs constantly in the early days and debuting new material almost every show. Has your songwriting process changed now that you’re making full-length albums and your trajectory is continuing to rise?

BAND: I think that the process changes on basically every song anyways, and the future holds infinite ways of us making songs. I think that irrespective of our trajectory we will just keep making music in the ways that we want to.

REVERIE: What do you hope people understand or take away after hearing Mount Zero all the way through?

BAND: We hope that people understand that our music is just an experiment between us. It’s literally just us making whatever we feel, influenced by each other and the people around us.

Swapmeet’s Mount Zero is out everywhere now. Follow the band & listen to the album here.

Swapmeet GROw Up Together on Debut Album ‘Mount Zero’