It’s an attempt to turn clichés upside down. We don’t want the songs to be normal,” says Simon Day, the lead guitarist, songwriter and singer with Sydney band, Ratcat. Indeed Day’s songs on the band’s recently released album, This Nightmare are anything but normal.

Day formed Ratcat while at a Mosman High School, on Sydney’;s well-heeled North Shore, in 1985. The school scene was a particularly fertile one, and before consolidating the current line up of drummer Andrew Polin and Bassist Amr Daid (that’s ZAID actually - Epod), Ratcat swapped members with other school bands, Massapeal and the Hellmenn.

An artist, comic and horror novel aficionado, Day has been the group’s mainstay. His junk culture influences are apparent, both on the album artwork and throughout his songs. “It’s almost like a postmodernist attitude,” he offers. “I like the songs all chewed up; using old Sixties guitar riffs and vocal melodies and putting fuzz guitars through it, things like that. Bringing it up to the times, making it contemporary.”

This Nightmare has been receiving rave notices around the country, and there’s much overseas interest in the band, particularly in the UK. The interest is understandable given the band’s sympathies with the thrash-pop of the Wonder Stuff, the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr, that is the current UK flavour.

Revelling in what he calls the quirkiness of a three piece, Day indicates that, from here, the band’s options are open. “It gets a bit frustrating sometimes, working on an independent level, because of the financial constraints. If that can be overcome our ambitions are for the sky I suppose; we want to do the best we can. If we stay on an independent label, I can see us getting noisier. It’s all basically a decision of who you want to market yourself to. But we want to have fun and I think we’ve got a lot to offer. Our songs are throwaways in someways, it’s true. It’s not a conscious effort to be timeless. They’re for now; we’re writing for now. We’re pretty dedicated to putting out vinyl, and in that disposable sense there should always be the next edition, coming out soon.”