It’s impossible to separate the music of Brisbane five-piece The Red Paintings from their outlandish stage shows. Famed for their use of costumes and art in their live performances, witnessing the orchestral grunge-rockers onstage is more like going to the theatre than a rock gig.

As they make their way down Australia’s east coast to launch new EP Walls, the band are planning their most extravagant event yet. Taking influence from Andy Warhol’s pop-art, their show at The Zoo this Saturday May 21 will incorporate a host of local artists, human canvases and video footage of audience members wanting their “15 minutes of fame”.

“We’ve started doing more elaborate events – rather than just getting up and doing a standard rock set – over the past six months or so,” cellist Wayne Jennings enthuses. “We’ve found it so rewarding. After every show we always go, ‘We could have done more’, so we’re trying to up the ante of each themed event to see how much more elaborate and how much more interesting we can make things.”

Jennings says that approach remains the same for their Australian regional dates, too, but admits the band had to make a few sacrifices on their recent tour of China and Hong Kong.

“We dropped our china doll [costumes] because we were afraid it might be regarded as culturally insensitive or whatnot. We don’t use the geisha and china doll look to say, ‘Wow, this culture is whacky’; it’s more to do with the ideals Trash [McSweeney – vocals/guitar] has of achieving an impossible level of purity and perfection. But we could see how it would be seen as saying, ‘Your culture is weird so we’re going to impersonate it’, so we didn’t do it that way. But the shows went down really well.”

Their sixth release, Walls has been pleasing fans even before it hits stores next Monday. The EP’s title track entered Triple J’s Net 50 at number three and the station has regularly been spinning their cover of Tears For Fears’ ‘Mad World’.

“That song is getting a lot of very positive coverage, which I find personally very pleasing,” Jennings says of the song (also covered by Gary Jules for the film Donnie Darko). “It’s one of my favourite tracks on the EP because it strips the sound down to just the acoustic instruments. I’m very biased about that because I am one of the acoustic instruments, of course.

“The final instrumentation on that track was a live take that came off very, very well and it was introducing more freedom and improvisatory elements into the band, [which is what] attracted me in the first place. I come from a classical background where most of what you do is reinterpreting what’s already been done before, so really being able to cut loose and play with fantastic musicians in an improvisational setup is a whole new world and a whole lot of fun.”

The Red Paintings play the Great Northern, Byron Bay Friday May 20; The Zoo Saturday May 21; La Opera, Maroochydore Friday May 27; Skinny’s Saturday May 28 (all-ages, 1.30pm) and Hard Rock Café, Surfers Paradise later that night. Walls is out Monday May 23 through Modern Music/Sony BMG.

ADAM CURLEY