Rand And Holland

Caravans
Spunk, 2007

My favourite creative coupling in Sydney at the moment is the mismatched core of Rand and Holland, Brett Thompson and Stuart Olsen. Brett is the singer and Stu plays drums. The band's albums are good – full of sweet and spaced-out downbeat pop – but the real attraction is watching Brett and Stu play together live. They're like two halves of a whole.

Brett is very polite and clean-cut, with a straight-spined confidence that can charm and sometimes intimidate. When we talk, I feel unkempt and overweight. On stage he wears a nice white shirt and well-fitted slacks, with a neat belt and pointy leather shoes that shimmer amongst the dull tangle of cables around his feet. If you watch him closely enough, you can catch him thinking during songs. Sometimes, when the band break into a raucous number, he attempts a "yeah!" You can tell what's going through his nervous mind: "Things seem to be going well. I wonder if I can get away with a 'yeah'? Let's try."

I feel much more comfortable around Stu. At their gigs he wears second-hand clothes and an old grey jacket, like Brett's shambolic twin from the 1950s. He plays doubled over a guitar behind the kit – he's tall and gangly and the instrument almost disappears in the splay of his limbs – tapping a cymbal in the way one would ash a cigarette, with his eyes closed and slightly out of time with the rest of the band. Strapped to one of his dirty old shoes is a tambourine, which he hauls up slowly and lets fall in time to his own rhythm.

When one of the band's upbeat numbers comes around, Stu drags his arms back to the guitar in his lap and, for percussion, rocks back and forth smacking its head against a cymbal. He looks like he's in his own little world at the back of the stage. You get the feeling that were he to snap into consciousness at any point, he'd look up and ask: "Why is everyone else playing out of time?" The pair have a chemistry that's brilliant to watch.