Is this the year of THE SAND PEBBLES? Are they the soul surfers of the post-psychedelic wave? ANDREW TANNER and MARTIN JONES ponder this and other heavy stuff.

There we are... me in my office and The Sand Pebbles' Andrew Tanner in his, talking about music as if we own the rights to it. Neither of us are out there touring the world, getting tattoos, getting drunk every night, taking it to the people and living the lifestyle. Armchair critics. Well at least Andrew is in a band - and a very fine one at that. What are my credentials? Good question, but this article isn't about me. It's about The Sand Pebbles. But what The Sand Pebbles and I have in common is a love and respect for music; that and a modicum of good taste. The very fact that The Pebbles aren't out there in the trenches (though if you ever meet Tanner, ask him to tell you about the night he and T-Bone Burnett went to hang out at Jeff Bridges' house and wound up drunkenly writing a song together), that they hold down demanding day jobs (yas, yas, three of the band's five members write Neighbours scripts), that they bring a more mature attitude to their craft, is crucial to the quality of their music. The Pebbles have reached a stage in their lives where experience and knowledge have freed them to be themselves.

"Yeah and I actually think that having guys who have day gigs and in that sense aren't leaning on the music to pay their rent or anything actually aids that process," Tanner confirms. "It's almost like a kind of healthy indulgence. We don't have to please anyone in particular and it's kind of pure in that sense. Not saying that bands who are trying to make a living are hopelessly compromised, but I just think in our situation it really aids what we're trying to do.

"I reckon the big enemy for a lot of bands," he continues, "is this self-referential kind of thing, a feedback loop that happens where all they write about is stuff they listen to and they start out sounding like everything they listen to and then they write about only things that happen to them. It's music talking about music talking about music and you kind of lose a bit of breadth there. There's a lot of great ideas and people and experiences out there you can throw into the mix and it just makes it a more complex, interesting thing to listen to in the long run."

Here that kids? Get out there and live a little. Broaden your horizons. Jam with people who are into different music. Listen to everything you can get your hands on. And just maybe you'll make music as assured and diverse and original and intriguing as The Sand Pebbles have on their epic new creation Ghost Transmissions. But it's not that easy, first you have to work out how to prevent your product from sounding like it was produced by jaded know-it-alls.

"Yeah, well it's interesting; certainly the Pebbles rehearsal room is no place for the faint-hearted," Tanner chuckles. "It's brutal in there; there's blood on the floor, you're talking very sarcastic, cynical people. But the fantastic thing is when we start playing, and we have evidence of this - because every time we record a rehearsal, inevitably at the end of every song, someone like Ben will be going 'that was unreal!' - you know, this child-like wonder at what we've just done and that's literally what happens... We can just enjoy the moment of playing music and that's a pure thing.

"And you talk about the big c word - the big chemistry word - if anything that's what it is in this band, there is that common attitude of leave that cynicism at the first bar and in between songs you can carry on, but the song itself is sort of sacred in that sense. You can just enjoy the energy and have fun playing with it and following it and listening to what other people are doing and responding to that and let's see what happens. And that is a wonderful thing and that's the guts of it."

The guts of it indeed. And it takes guts to get to that guts. It takes a confidence in your own skin and fingers and ears and heart and thoughts and a belief in your fellow man, or Pebble in this case. Just look at the difference in attitude between the Pebbles' first Eastern Terrace and Ghost Transmissions; the strut is surer, the chests puffed out. It also takes guts to play psychedelic music straight.

"It's like repressed memory or something," Tanner laughs. "It happened to some of us in the past and now it's coming back. I think it probably informs the playing a bit too; some of the original psychedelia was fantastic, others of it you listen to ten minutes and go 'that's getting kind of boring now 'cause everyone's kind of too tripped out to apply any quality control at this point. Brian you've had your 16 minute solo, maybe it's time for a different sound'. And a lot of it, Chris [Hollow, bassist] made the point that a lot of it was very blues-based too, that kind of '60s early '70s stuff and that kind of had its limitations in the form. We're interested in throwing together some of those ideas with the post-punky energy, that's Chris's big flower-punk genre statement I suppose, but I really like the idea that you can combine a post-punk sensibility with some of the openness of psychedelia and see what happens."

And suddenly, The Sand Pebbles find themselves the Melbourne godfathers of a genre that seems to be crashing over the world in a new wave - post-psychedelic? Brian Jonestown Massacre, Grandaddy, Flaming Lips, Gram Parsons docos, Brian Wilson tours.. the writing's on the paisley folks! Then there's fellow Melbourne psychedelicists Black Cab, who are supporting The Pebbles' album launch. Yes, with all the attention psych and Ghost Transmissions has been getting, The Pebbles members may have to rethink their commitment to the band. Indeed, they've already discarded their 'no touring' policy to look at touring interstate in the near future. Maybe The Pebbles may end up in the trenches they've so effectively avoided...

"If it actually did blow up," Tanner ponders tentatively, "that would be a very interesting experiment to see what that did to things."

The experiment continues...