The Grates

Members:

Patience Hodgson ( vocals )
John Patterson ( guitar )
Alana Skyring ( drums )

Album:

Gravity Won't Get You High

You'll Like'em If You Like:

The Sounds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, be your own PET, The Go! Team, The White Stripes.

The Grates on The Grates in Five Words or Less:

Ivy, floral, bullet, blue-sky, Delilah.

Four Reasons Why We're Grateful For The Grates (besides their music, of course):

1. Patience, John, and Alana became friends while taking a drama class to avoid playing sports in high school. Soon after, the three anti-jocks started a band -- but they weren't The Grates yet. Every couple of weeks, they'd change their name in order to dupe people into seeing them play live again. But once Triple J, a huge Australian radio station, started playing their songs, they were stuck with The Grates. "It was 'The Greats' and then we changed the spelling," Patience explains. "We didn't want to be pigheaded. We didn't think we were great. Instead, we thought we grated nerves." We don't think they're great -- we think they're pretty freakin' awesome!

2. The Grates are totally D.I.Y. Besides the fact that they recorded their EP solo, they also set up for their own shows and design their own merch and cover art. "In the beginning, no one else was gonna do it for us, so we just did it ourselves," Patience says. "We still do those things, and it feels good. We've got a tour manager and a [merch] stand guy, so between the lot of us, we just all work as a team."

3. If you go to see The Grates live, get ready for a full-fledged party! To gussy up their performance space, they hang tinsel and hand out customized balloons to the audience. "We never used to have 'The Grates' on them because we thought, 'Eww, gross!' You don't want to be playing and have your name everywhere [like you're] trying too hard," Patience says. "But then our record label was like, 'We'll give you the balloons for free if you let us print "The Grates" on them.' So we were like, 'OK,' and it was totally fine."