louis and luka have found another hooligan in this awful place

the frontmen of War Room on why music is the most human art, what soft masculinity means to them, and the importance of making a big mess

Thursday night in my cramped, suburban apartment: the kettle has been boiled, the tea has been steeped, my notebook is open, and one of my favourite musicians is ensconced in the sinkhole of my living room couch. This is Louis Campbell, one of the frontmen of one of Adelaide’s most inventive bands, War Room. His other claim to fame is that he, a notorious fan of nicotine, has tried and failed several times to teach me how to roll cigarettes. He is rolling me one now, though I didn’t even ask him to, while we wait for his bandmate and partner in music and crime Luka Kilgariff to arrive. (I could maybe only name a handful of times where I’ve seen Louis without a cigarette filter perched on his bottom lip. Most of those times have been when he’s up on stage shredding guitar to obscenely complicated time signatures.)

Louis tells me how excited he is while we sit on my balcony, kept in company by dying plants and stiff laundry. He thinks this interview will help him figure out how he actually feels, what he actually thinks. So much of music is inherently abstract - he is excited to try to fashion these amorphous concepts into sentences.

We see Luka stride into the courtyard of my unit and both give him a wave over the balcony railing. When he joins us on the balcony, he wordlessly sips at Louis’s cup of black tea and scissors his fingers at his friend, indicating that he wants a drag of his cigarette too. The two have a special shorthand, the kind of shorthand that can only come from devoting so much of your life to the pursuit of creating something together.

Both of them are sitting on my couch now, talking about how they first met, and I am sitting on the floor listening to them. “I remember shaking Louis’s hand and thinking, this guy looks like a stoner,” Luka says. “This guy is ridiculous.” Louis agrees appreciatively.

They met in year 12, both representing their respective schools as music captains at a music conference, circumstances that they both agree was “a bunch of bullshit,” (they also agree that the role of being a music captain was mostly superfluous). They mention a “cringe,” thick-accented American teenager with knee-high socks who was present at the conference. This random American kid is relevant, apparently, because he was emblematic of the whole “vibe” of the place.

“That’s why I came and said hi to you, I think,” Louis says to Luka. “It was like, ah, yes, another hooligan in this awful place. I came up to you and I was like, what do you play? And you were like, ‘Guess.’”

“That sounds like something I would have said.”

“And I said guitar,” Louis says proudly. He guessed right.

It would still be months before the two collaborated together musically. But Luka remembers keeping up to date with the Gullies, the band that Louis was involved in at the time. He was impressed by the band’s drive - Luka was part of a band at the time too, with his school friends, but they seemed incapable of ever getting anything done. The next time Louis and Luka saw each other, it was when Luka attended a Gullies show in December.

It was a defining experience for him, one of the first instances of local live music he’d witnessed since covid had run rampant. “I remember seeing a band play an open chord onstage and being like, ‘Oh, yes.’” Grinning, Luka raises his hands, recalling the euphoria of the experience.

“I wish gigs were still like that for me,” Louis chimes in. “I envy the audience.” Something’s been lost as he’s grown older: the initial wonder, the innocence of knowing nothing yet but knowing you were about to learn so much more. It used to be a rush of sensations, an experience that left them aching with desire to be involved. There is perhaps something bittersweet about things no longer being new. “I love it, but not in the way that I did when I was first going.” Luka agrees that having not played as many gigs and being on the outside looking in was a far more “fantastical experience.”

Another couple of months went by, and the two tentatively started jamming together. The chemistry was instant - the emotional chemistry as well as the musical. A mere couple of months after their first jam session they were getting drunk at Louis’s nineteenth birthday party together. And the more they jammed, the more they found common ground musically. There was - and still is - an ecstasy that came from bouncing ideas off of each other and seeing these half-baked notions transform into something tangible, something real.

Luka remembers being eighteen, guitar in hand, showing Louis the chords he was most fascinated by. “I don’t know if it was subconscious or not. But I remember showing you,” he nods at Louis, “the minor 11th bar shape, and then you wrote the chorus for ‘Trouble’ and you had used those chords,” Luka says, referring to “The Trouble With Me,” one of the two War Room singles available on streaming platforms, released in 2023. “So it was a really nice quick turnaround of showing someone an idea and then that idea manifesting itself into something else.”

For Luka, deciding to pursue music was easy. It has always been the thing that resonates with him the most. “Playing music is just like an escape from everything. Nothing else, no other sense or art form has such a visceral reaction in my body. I just love the act of creating music at the fundamental level. The product is at first part of your body, and then it becomes a disembodied part of you. I don’t feel that way about any other thing I could potentially produce.” Luka talks with his hands, glancing at every corner of the room as he finds his words. “It’s kind of something you can’t know. It’s a feeling. I just have to do it. I just decided to put all my eggs in one basket.” He acknowledges that he is lucky to be in a position where he is able to do so.

But Louis’s decision to commit his life to music didn’t come quite so easily. “The Gullies had ended and I had just decided I wasn’t going to do music. I had decided it was too hard,” he says. Jealousy and ego were inhibiting him and his early bandmates and, hindered by circular songwriting processes that rarely led anywhere productive, the band dissolved.

What brought him back to music?

Louis was spending all of his time focusing on university and work, busy saving up money, and thus rarely attended any gigs. He remembers the Intercontinental Hotel, where he worked at the time, being extremely dead, near deserted, on one particular shift, so he was given an unusually long break of one and a half hours. “During my break I took a tram to the Exeter to watch one of Swapmeet’s first gigs and stayed there for half an hour and went back to work. And I was like, why am I not doing this? This is fun. That’s when I was like, Luka, get over here.” War Room, as we know it today, was thus born - or, perhaps thus began gestating would be a more accurate way to phrase it. The band has never fully come out of the womb, perhaps never will. One of War Room’s defining features is that it is in a constant state of shifting, chaotic metamorphosis.

Because when I ask them when they felt that they figured out what War Room’s sound was going to be, Luka answers, “I feel like we never really decided.” They started off convinced that they were engaging in a post-punk project. “But I think maybe we opened our minds to what it could be and were probably listening to a wider range of stuff as well,” Luka continues, adding that they made a conscious effort to not be limited to merely contemporary influences. He discusses the way that Louis was always listening to standards from the Great American songbook, that the crooning sensibilities of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra are ever-present “in the songwriting and in the melodies” of War Room. “And in the swag as well.” He laughs.

“I didn’t even listen to any other fucking music at the start,” Louis says. “I was only listening to standards by these great performers.”

Luka explains that their songs often reflect whatever music they were listening to at the time. Some are a direct result of preoccupations with Brazilian music, bossa nova, samba. 

Louis declares, his hands raised, “I think we should say very quickly, to all the genres out there, living or in heaven, no one is safe. We will get you into War Room. There is nothing that is off the table.”

So the War Room sound cannot be distilled into one particular thing, Luka continues. “But I think it sounds like us now, like the five of us. I think that comes down to the instruments we’re playing, the tones, what we’re producing with our fingers.”

The name itself was something that they apparently didn’t dedicate much time to thinking about. In the bands they were both respectively in when they were younger, too much time was spent labouring over band names, leading them to a point of apathy when they were first creating War Room. The name just kind of happened, and then they moved on.

“I’ve definitely felt the whole time that we’ve had the name that it sometimes could be sending the wrong message,” Luka says. “In the sense that we’re not aiming for it to be an aggressive musical stance or statement. But I think in my eyes it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek and stupid. Like our music.”

“It’s kind of come full circle,” Louis adds. “There was an era where we really didn’t like it.”

Louis is fond of the name now, but Luka still feels vaguely apathetic about it. “I don’t have any feelings now. I kind of just forget that I play in a band called War Room. I think the music’s more important than the name. Obviously. But the name is often the cover of the book.”

I am fascinated by War Room’s sound, fascinated by the variegated musical energies that they impart onstage, but what I want to get at the heart of here is this iron musical partnership, or what I have heard them both refer to as a musical “sibling-ship.” I remember bringing up the strength and multiplicity of their dynamic to Louis once, late on a particularly draining Wednesday night in town, and he said something that I luckily had the foresight to immediately jot down in my notebook: “Sometimes I think about other bands and I wonder to myself, do they have a Luka? And they might not. So I think to myself, well, thank God I do.”

Surely the fact that the two are so constantly involved would lead to tension every now and then. I pose this thought to the two of them, but Luka doesn’t quite agree.

“I think we’re so on the same page,” he says. “I mean Louis can speak for himself. But I think if we ever have a musical disagreement it’s always approached in a gentle way and there’s not much ego involved…But we kind of had to talk about it, I remember: no compromise, like if you don’t like something and think we can do it a different way, just say it. I think we had sort of come to this understanding that there’s no need to beat around the bush. Honesty is the best, especially if what we’re trying to do is create a compromise that results in the best possible product.”

“It makes me realise how weird our relationship is,” Louis chimes in. “No matter what is going on in our lives, we're going to make music together. And even if we’re not making music together or not feeling inspired, we are still best friends. There’s a double connection. We’re not gonna be hurt by criticism from each other because we trust each other. I remember right at the very fucking start, the first time we caught up, Luka said to me, oh if i’m not doing what you want, just tell me, I don’t give a fuck.”

Their approach to music is always “in service of the song,” as is, in some ways, their approach to their own personal relationship to each other. Friends who can communicate to each other through chord progressions alone are lucky. “If I’m writing something, I already know what part you’re going to want to play,” Louis says to Luka.

They allow each other to take risks through their music and teach each other about life’s complexities and about nuanced, abstract ideas through their music - or, they do their best to. 

“On the record, Luka is the best guitarist I know,” Louis says, and I watch Luka try to school his features into neutrality, refusing to allow his cheeks to colour. “So many times I learn something because Luka shows it to me and I don’t really understand it. But then I take it and put it in a song straight away because I’m excited about it. Luka wrote a bossa nova song, and one month later I would write a bossa nova song. And I had never played bossa nova before. And I’m not doing a good job, I’m just getting excited about something.”

And Louis’s approach to music benefits Luka too. They complement each other. “I was really impressed with Louis’s songwriting, because he would bring things that I had not previously seen. I can fall into a rigid grid of thinking about a song in a certain way. I think Louis has a really unique ear for melody. I often get too attached to one little idea and don’t think about the big picture.” Louis, especially lyrically, is “tuned in to a kind of poetry.”

“The music you first played me in the early days, like, the changes sounded disgusting,” Louis adds. “And now they sound beautiful to me. It’s such a unique understanding and aesthetic when it comes to harmonies.”

“Harmony is that thing of like, something unfamiliar is uncomfortable and therefore makes you not want to listen to it. It’s the repeating practice of becoming familiar with it that makes it a comfortable thing. And that’s where you start to see the beauty in ugliness or abrasive music.” Luka wants to explore every possible option for a chord progression or melody. “Your ear will lead you to the places that are familiar. Your ear will lead you to a certain shaped melody or chord. Being aware of that and trying to push it somewhere else is a really good thing to do.”

Louis has started to absentmindedly roll another cigarette (he has realised many things during the course of the interview, not least of which being that he is in fact addicted to nicotine). I tell him we can migrate to the balcony if he wants to have a smoke.

They both apologise for rambling on, for going into so much technical musical detail. Luka in particular is grappling with the sudden realisation that this will actually be posted online. I promise him I’ll edit it down, make them sound good.

It’s cold out for December, but that’s probably because it’s close to midnight now. The pitch black chill is conducive to contemplation. 

Luka takes a drag of Louis’s cigarette. “I still feel like we were children when we started the band. It was so erratic and crazy. I don’t feel ashamed about it. I think we were still finding our feet. And I think there's a newfound sensitivity and professionalism. I think it’s definitely more tender now because we are a bit more aware of where everyone stands. There’s a lot of different communication styles and love languages in the band. Especially early on there was a bit of ego involved with trying to impress everyone.” 

Louis once again darts back inside to grab his pouch of tobacco and roll himself another cigarette, slamming the balcony door in the process.

Luka expands, delving into how both he and Louis in War Room’s early days were so preoccupied with impressing Thea Martin, their violinist. “Thea was like this obelisk of talent and prowess and we had so much respect for everything they do. I guess we got a little dopamine whenever they indicated they liked something.”

Louis is back, cigarette rolled, nicotine hitting. “I think a big thing about it is being a non-guitar musician. It’s very difficult for me to even fathom Thea’s ability to play the violin. It’s like, what is this thing, it sounds beautiful. And of course a couple of guys who don’t want to play open chords and don’t want to make rock music as it’s understood in the context of the scene we’re in are gonna fall in love with a rock violinist. That’s the ultimate thing we can never be. It’s not guitar. We’re trying to sound not like a guitar.”

“I love the instrument because it’s what I know but also it’s so limiting,” Luka adds about his relationship to guitar. “When I pick it up it’s what I’m comfortable with. But it’s only capable of so many things and it’s gonna sound like what it is. There’s only so far you can really push it. Which is why I think it’s great as a songwriting tool…It’s kind of like an apparatus or a tool to build a picture of a landscape. Things are going to come out in a certain fashion just because of the way it’s built.”

They are both prone to extreme over-analysis, particularly when it comes to songwriting. I ask them if songwriting, more than performing, brings them emotional catharsis. Given the way that they grace the stage with such veritable pretty boy swag (Louis will do high kicks while playing the guitar; Luka will do a grapevine in response) I would assume that they’re having an obscene amount of fun.

Luka’s answer is immediate. “Performing is often an act, a big exhibition and a big fuss. Having the song come together in the band room after a couple of practices is the most cathartic it ever feels. I often feel like a bit of a sideshow act when we’re playing sometimes. Like I have to sell it a little. And maybe we just haven’t got to the stuff that’s the most cathartic to play.” Live performance can lead to anxiety, self-criticism. “We’re just very self-critical people.” 

“I love to hear criticism, I love it so much more than the praise.” Louis says he will show his music to his brother or his partner, and they will “just fucking rip it up” - a quality that he loves and sees as necessary, especially because he views songwriting as such a significant tool in processing pain and anxiety. “Often I’ll write something and then half a year later I’ll realise, oh, I was writing about that. I didn’t know that that was even what my problem was, what the issue was, what I was upset about…So much of the time what I’m writing is embracing the idea of exaggeration. I’m enthusiastic about chaos. I’m enthusiastic about a big mess.”

Music has also been an outlet for both of them to explore their own relationships to gender and identity. 

“The guitar is this typically masculine instrument, and it’s loud and heavy which is considered typically masculine, and it’s all bullshit because that’s just the way it has been. Doesn’t mean it’s the way it actually is. I think loud music or heavy music as a tool to express gender is extremely powerful, just as much as soft music,” Luka says.

Louis is clutching his knees, staring intently at the rusted balcony railings. “Playing music and writing music and performing as well for whatever reason makes me feel like I have escaped masculinity. That’s how I feel. And there was a point where we thought we had to show everyone, hey, we have a non-manly side too, it’s not just loud guitars and stuff. But the loud guitars are the non-manly side. The loud guitars are how I feel the most androgynous and how I express those feelings of androgyny.”

“We do have responsibility,” Luka acknowledges. “The hard truth is no matter how we feel on the inside it’s a band composed of four men and one non-man.”

“And the ways that male privilege has played into where we are now are I can only imagine huge,” Louis says, his voice slightly fragile. “Just imagining it fills my brain with all these complicated, difficult scenarios, and I don’t know, I just hope it’s gonna change.”

Music is the thing that could help them change it. Music is the thing, after all, that has led them both to all of these profound realisations about themselves and each other and the people who surround them.

“I never thought I was going to be a musician…” Louis trails off, lost in thought. “All the amazing people that are around me now I’ve met through music: you,” he gestures to me, “you,” he gestures to Luka, “my partner. It’s just too good to stop now. I just kind of decided, this is it. This is the thing to go all in on.”

It’s a thing, additionally, that everyone should have access to, Luka believes. “We learned how to read very early on. We learned how to resonate with words very early on. But music is not prescribed in the same way that reading is. It’s always this auxiliary thing you learn as another discipline. It’s not this thing you’re taught in the same way as a life lesson.” It’s not imparted with enough significance. It’s not given enough weight.

“There is a huge gap in how seriously people are actually taking this,” Louis agrees. “I wonder how differently everyone would see music if they were all taught what a borrowed major second is.”

I don’t even know what a major second is, I say. Louis looks at me with profound sympathy.

Music is, perhaps, after all, Luka says, “the most human art” - thus everyone should be given the tools to fully involve themselves in it.

Louis nods enthusiastically. “The fact that you have to sing it and do it. It’s coming out of you.” And he’s excited about what it’s bringing to his life. “I don’t know, but I get this feeling that we don’t realise that we’re in a golden age. I think that ten years in the future when things aren’t the same as they are now I’m gonna lie in my bed and think about this time and cry. Take advantage of it while it’s here. Do a project and go watch some people and don’t be afraid to love something.”

At this point, it is late enough in the night that we are wide-eyed and delirious, wrapped in blankets, licking ice-cream bars that I’d forgotten were tucked away in my freezer, hands sticky, smelling of smoke and vanilla. The two boys are becoming glazed and giddy, thinking of everything that is on the horizon.

One of the things that they are most excited about is the fact that they (along with musician Jack Buenfeld) recorded a soundtrack for Max Hammerstein’s upcoming film Crossways, which will be released in January 2024. “We had never done anything like that before,” Louis says. “And it was an incredibly beautiful process. We improved this shit until we had these motifs and ideas.”

The War Room album will also be released this year. People can expect to see singles start to roll out in the first few months of 2024.

“Other things people should be aware of,” Luka jumps in, counting off on his fingers, “is the Twine album, Touch Hands Pack Sting by Wake In Fright, the Swapmeet EP, Cagefly’s first release…”

“The Jackulson album,” Louis cuts in.

“The Munch album, which is coming out in the next couple of months,” Luka adds.

“The Gallery One EP,” Louis says, on a roll now. “Isaac’s [DeGregorio] literary showcase.”

“Quebec Echo EP, don’t let me forget,” Luka says.

“The Empty Threats album.”

“Shit, I hope we haven’t forgotten anyone,” Luka mumbles, stealing a puff of Louis’s cigarette. 

Louis points to me, frantically scrawling everything down in my notebook. “I’m so happy that this is happening. There’s so much behind the scenes stuff that is going on and everyone’s putting in so much effort and it’s really fucking sick. I’m so interested to see what you’re going to draw from this.”

I smile, shoving my slick popsicle stick into the ashtray. I think that just about concludes the interview.

“Did you learn lots?” Louis asks me, as I switch off the recording.

Definitely. But the biggest takeaway, I think, is the sheer weight that Louis and Luka’s music adds to each other’s lives - that was something that I think I already knew.

Photo credits to Venus