Two Steps on the Water are a Melbourne trio who describe their music as “emotion punk/heavy folk music that is almost always describing feelings of sadness, angst, or anger.” Born in an asbestos laden shed, friends June, Sienna and Jonathan initially came together to play the self described “melodramatic and deeply self-indulgent songs” June had been writing. As a queer trans woman June uses her work to convey the effects of living with a complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Along with other Melbourne acts like Habits, Spike Fuck and Simona Castricum they’re part of a growing scene of queer musicians using their platforms to examine their own experiences and challenge the music industry’s binary institutions. Additionally June’s personal songs highlight the realities of living with mental health issues as a young person.
Today they’re premiering their debut album God Forbid Anyone Look Me in the Eye on i-D. We spoke to June about writing and performing the record.
Listening to your album, it’s cool to see folk music — something that’s long been associated with narrating social change — intersect with the current conversations around queer identity. Do you feel connected to that heritage of commentary within the genre?
We don’t really have any direct message we’re trying to express. I just like words a lot. I think you can be political, reflective and critical with any kind of music though. The folk approach, like the punk approach, or the pop approach, just comes more naturally to me than the grindcore approach, or the techno approach. Besides, I’m lazy and I don’t like doing things I’m not good at.
This album is examining your experiences as a queer trans woman, tell me about processing you life publicly through music.
According to my official “gender timeline” in my head, June Jones doesn’t realise she’s trans until the very end of 2015. But Two Steps on the Water start performing the song Waltzing Machismo in September of 2015, so I must have written it a month or two prior. That song goes: “In a dream I / had no fear I / put on a dress and I went into town / but boys will be boys and / knees will buckle / I bet you’d love to strike me down.” It’s basically the sentiment of every song I’ve written since then. It was the first song we recorded, so I guess with Two Steps I’ve been reflecting on my own transness and trauma pretty much the whole time.
When you’re writing lyrics like that, and maybe saying these things to yourself for the first time, are you thinking, one day a lot of people I don’t know are going to hear this?
I try not to think like that because it really messes with me. Luckily the majority of what I write never makes it out of my bedroom, so there’s no point getting invested in certain lyrics being heard by other people when there’s an 80 percent chance I’ll scrap them without even showing them to Sienna or Jonathan. Usually the lyrics that I’m pretty sure are gonna make it into a song the band plays are the ones that I think are funny. It can all get a bit dark sometimes so I try and drop a joke in here and there.
You mentioned trauma before, is it cathartic to digest these experiences in music?
It’s more cathartic than I’m able to express or comprehend. I didn’t talk about my own experience of trauma and the resulting mental health problems — agoraphobia, constant anxiety — for years. I was just like, great, I’m super fucked up and it’s probably best that nobody knows and maybe I’ll just grow out of it when I turn 18? That’s a reasonable expectation born of a well-informed understanding of mental health, right?
Fast forward another six years and I am talking about it, to say the least. Sometimes I try introduce songs on stage and give a little explanation of what they’re about, but that ends up with me being like, “OK, so this song, like the last three, is also about having PTSD and not being able to leave the house or make eye contact with strangers, enjoy!” It’s so wild that people would wanna hear me yell about being mentally ill and sad and trans and angry. What a world.
Two Steps on the Water are touring through August.
19 August at The Tote, Melbourne 25 August at The Phoenix, Canberra 26 August at Red Rattler, Sydney 27 August at Trainspotters, Brisbane 28 August at Jura Books, Sydney
Credits
Text Wendy Syfret
Photography Ben Thomson