Melbourne band Invertigo is tipped to be Australia's latest star-bound rock export.
The four piece band recently signed with famed American label Atlantic - even before recording a debut album.
The international signing makes Invertigo stablemate to leading acts like Matchbox Twenty and Jewel.

Invertigo has also scored well by recruiting top producer Charles Fisher to work on it's first CD.
Fisher was responsible for taking Queensland duo Savage Garden to the top of the charts around the world.
Invertigo lead singer Christian Argenti said he was thrilled with the band's good fortune,
but was under no illusion about the hard work ahead.

"It's a hell of a challenge for us and we realise how lucky we are that things have fallen into place so well," Argenti said.
"It's great to have the Americans so commited and to realise they want us for our songs,
not for our image, which suits us just fine."

Joining Argenti in Invertigo are the three Leigh brothers, James, Jerry and Vince.
James and Vince were members of Melbourne 80's band Pseudo Echo.

Vital to the band's signing was the manager, Raplh Carr,
who has engineered overseas success for acts such as Tina Arena, Rick Price and Sister2Sister.
"I met Vince and Jame Leigh back in 1990 when I was managing Pseudo Echo
and noticed the incredible talents that these two boys had as writers and potential producers," Carr said.
"After the band broke up, the boys had a few years lay off and then began working on Invertigo.

"Two years ago the boys produced a demo that I was knocked over with and it really began then.
"About a year ago while in the US, I played the initial demo to A&R, Craig Kallman, and Jim Welch, of Atlantic Records.
They were extremely enthusiastic and we recently signed a worldwide deal. The single, Desensitized,
is sheduled for release in January in the States and everyone is excited.

"Meanwhile in Australia, I am thrilled that the single is nationally No. 32 and growing strong.
The early radio support and faith in the song has been tremendous."
Singer Argenti said Invertigo, his first major group, was putting finishing touches to it's debut album
and would begin live work with a concert in Brisbane on Saturday.

Another Australian act with a big overseas future is actor-singer Michelle Smith,
who made a name for herself in the Australian production of Rent.
American producers were so impressed by her performance in Rent that she was signed up
to join the United States cast for a six month tour.
While in American, Smith attracted record company interest and soon will base herself in Los Angeles.
After working with several leading dance producers and DJ's, Smith hopes to release her debut solo album later this year.

Invertigo have just returned from New York where they played a show and shot a new video.
Their single "Desensitized", which broke them in Australia,
is out there in late August, and Invertigo are heading back
later in the year to play more shows.

"We played at a club called the Mercury Lounge,
right in the heart of the city," says drummer and songwriter Vincent Leigh.
"It was open to the public, but it was basically for executives
in our American record company (Atlantic) who hadn't seen us live before."
Their new album Forum took almost three years to make
because the band are such perfectionists.
"Chances Are" and "Typical" were written at a low point.
"We realised that our first singer wasn't fitting in,
musically or personally," Vince remembers.
"We auditioned 100 new singers, and then finally found Christian (Argenti).
Then we lost our record deal.
We hoped to find hope through a bad situation by writing
that song." Did they think of splitting up?
"It's hard to break up with your brothers!" (laughs)

Forum is an unpredictable record that shows off many facets of the band.
There are the soft-pop anthems like "Chances Are" and "Say You Do",
the harder live numbers like "Man Enough"
and "It's Getting Personal" and the freakout stuff.
One of these is "Slave", which goes down a storm live.

"That one almost didn't make it on to the album," says the drummer.
"We were looking at it as a B-side but live we got such a great response from it.
It's the oldest song we have.
I've forgotten what feel we were going for!
It's a fairly dark song; we were aiming for some menacing sounds.
My brothers and I grew up listening to hard rock bands
like Led Zeppelin and Van Halen.

So when you're in the rehearsal room, that stuff just comes out of you."
Another unpredictable track is "Damage Control"
which Vincent says, "Was inspired by watching TV and seeing
how that celebrity factor is taken
to such extremes. Things in society are more desperate
and life changing, yet people are consumed by celebrity.
We're trying to comment on the negative side of that."
Vincent laughs and says he can't really talk:
when Kiss arrived
in Australia on their farewell tour,
he tried to gatecrash their party!
Mind you, Vincent and James had a touch of pop
celeb some years ago when they played in Pseudo Echo.
"But we didn't see any of the negative side
of fan obsession. We had great fans.
We still see some from those days,
whom we adore and treasure." Ironically, their singer
Christian seems to have bought "Funky Town"
when he was living in Queensland singing
in bands. Then he returned to Melbourne
and hooked up with Invertigo.
They had auditioned 100 singers with little luck.

"We needed someone who was flexible because of our different styles.
The Leigh brothers come from a pop and rock background,
yet Christian is into soul and R&B. He adores Stevie Wonder.
It made a good mix for us. We needed someone who'd fit in with three brothers,
and would be easy going. Our dad was a jazz drummer
and he taught us rules about being musicians -
respect the music, never blowout shows and play for anyone and everyone."

When I first heard Dancing In The Moonlight earlier this year,
I thought it would be a huge song and it has proved to be.
The Toploader album shows they have a lot more than this one
song up their sleeve, but in all truth the album seems
more a tribute to their obvious influences from the early
'70s and something around The Black Crowes
rather than anything that is going to set this band
and album apart from the thousands that have gone down this retro path
in the last ten years. Nonetheless, with this album Toploader
cleverly enough mix some groovy, funky and anthemic moments
(Achilles Heal and Breath) to come up with something definitely
worth a listen and fairly instantly likable even if it doesn't break any new ground.

- Christian Argenti

Invertigo's debut LP, Forum, is out Monday 16th July.

Two blokes from INVERTIGO used to be in Pseudo Echo.
"I don't mind a few of the yells from the crowd or a couple of the bottles being thrown,"
newish singer CHRISTIAN tells HARRY STONE.

It's been a good year for you guys, hasn't it?
"We're feeling a bit of a build now, but we're still at the point where
we know it's nothing to get carried away about.
There's still heaps of hard gigs where there might three or four people or the bar staff so.
In some ways I kind of think of an act like Savage Garden or whatever. . .
but they kinda released something and they were stars the next day.
I think any pop or pop rock musician
would be lying if they didn't say there's always that,
that would be nice if it happened,
but we always knew there was going to be a lot of ...
and that's part of the fun of this whole adventure.
If we went number one overnight and were millionaires the next day,
I'd sort of say well, I've sort of missed out on a bit of the ride
which I'm getting right now so I don't mind a few of the yells
from the crowd or a couple of the bottles being thrown,
as long as by the time we're 30 we're past that."

You still play a lot of pub gigs?
"I think a band like ours, we actually play
and do a lot of the pubs and that sort of thing.
I think it's been important to model our thing on the good old
fashioned working band, as opposed to an act that get heaps of radio play and
everyonce in a while does a OAT show. The record company has even said to us,
'which kinda thing do you want to?' We're all musicians and we have done a lot of sweaty,
hot tough little places, three or four nights a week,
remote parts of Australia, becuase I think a band like ours we need to send out
that important message we're here for the long haul.
It's always great to see great charts in the first week when things come out or huge radio airplay,
but to me the real success is the punters there in front of you,
seeing the numbers increase, that to me is something I'm the most proud of."

Was it hard joining an existing group, especially made up of brothers?
"I think so. There was a mixture of some very positive stuff
and some stuff that took a little bit of getting used to.
I'm not the kind of vocalist who likes being pushed around too much,
but at the same time I knew I was working with some pretty good people
who knew their stuff and knew their songs.
It was like having to conform a little bit to their sound whereas
my vocals tend to go off in their own direction and tend to be a little bit more I 'spose freeform,
whereas the boys are more committed to crafting these really perfect pop songs."

Two of the guys were in Pseudo Echo, weren't they?
"James and Vince were in Pseudo Echo. They've seen the highs and the lows.
I think it was James' first band. He was at high school, he was 15
. He saw a thing in a newspaper ad, and he was a fan of the band at the time,
so it was kind of a case of auditioning after school, he shat himself over the weekend
wondering if they were gonna call him back,
and they did on the Monday and said you're on such and such a week.
Unlike most parents his were happy for him. I think Vince joined soon after,
I think he was 18 at the time, and then a few months later with Funky Town
they had a hit and they went to number one or two in America.
But I mean the late '80s in America, to have a number one hit,
an Australian band and all the boys are cute and all of this sort of stuff,
they just said the stuff they saw was just quite unbelievable.
There's a song on the album which is a little bit representative of the bullshit
they saw which is called Damage Control,
which is a bit of a commentary on things being out of control in those days.
Being able to bring that kind of wisdom from those years into the band has been wonderful."

Invertigo's debut lp, Forum, is out now.

On the road with Invertigo, one of Australia's hottest new bands.

Invertigo were designed for the big arena,
put them in front of 200,000 people at Adelaide's Skyshow last year or
before 8,000 at an open-air festival in Townsville, Queensland, and they're in their element.
While the new album Forum is radio-friendly -
"not so much radio friendly as radio essential"
drooled the Australian Financial Review -
hard hitting songs like "Man Enough",
"If I" and "It's Getting Personal" positively come alive
on stage, and its members clearly thrive on working a crowd.

Vince Leigh twirls his sticks above his head
before crashing them down on his drums.
Singer Christian Argenti packs in the excitement,
alongside guitarist Gerome and keyboard player/guitarist James Leigh.
They have been musicians since they were young
and say there's nothing else they'd rather do.

Mick Jagger summed it up 30 years ago,
in the hit "Street Fighting Man":
"What can a poor boy do 'cept sing in a rock and roll band?"
In a lot of ways, Invertigo are a throw back to that era
when a rock band was about living outside society's norms,
tweaking noses, acting like super brats
and gleefully getting away with it.
During the recent dates through Central Queensland,
when there were long drives in the Tarago van,
they'd get bored and start pulling pranks on each other.
Gerry once got left behind at a truck stop with no money,
leaving him to sweat and fume until they came back and got him an hour later.

Carloads of female fans from Melbourne and Brisbane
followed them to every gig and soundcheck during that whole tour.
"Their planning is unbelievable, they get to the venue before we do!"
Argenti gasped.

"We don't allow anyone outside the four of us to define our personality."

In Gladstone, Invertigo played at a club that had a strip club upstairs.
Four of the ladies insisted on coming backstage
to give the band and crew a personal strip
(all this while they were being interviewed
by the local radio station's breakfast crew!)
and partied on until dawn with them.
"You can't play rock, then go back to your room
and have milk and cookies after," chuckled Argenti.
"Don't take it seriously, enjoy the ride."
The singer was, in true rock and roll tradition,
eating breakfast at a time when normal people were having lunch.
He was a little bleary because he had to wake up at 7 am
to do a radio interview, and then went back to bed.
After this interview, there'd be a round of others
and instore appearances, before the band took to the stage that night.

Argenti has a couple of onstage superstitions.
He will only put on his stage clothes 30 seconds before he goes on.
He will not repeat phrases from song lines.
He goes on with a chewed up guitar pick (signed by Eddie Van Halen,
which his sister got for him in Los Angeles years back) taped to his watch.

Queensland was a homecoming for the singer.
He lived there for ten years, and toured the small towns through the state during his teenage days,
fronting a series of bands that got nowhere.
This time around, he returns as a hit band
with three chart singles, a hit album and the chance to break America.
Invertigo are changing slowly as a band.
For three years, they worked in a studio crafting pop songs like
"Desensitized" and "Say You Do" that radio has made hits out of.
Even from their demo tapes, they got signed to America
with Atlantic Records, home of heroes such as Led Zeppelin, Foreigner, Van Halen and AC/DC.

Invertigo got lumped with the tag of "the new Savage Garden",
because they shared the same producer in Charles Fisher.
But there's little comparison between the bands.
The Leigh brothers come from a hard rock background.

Argenti is more inspired by legends like Stevie Wonder,
Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Otis Redding.
That's given a texture different to most bands in Oz.

Forum is an unpredictable record that shows off many facets of the band.
There are the soft-pop anthems like "Chances Are" and "Say You Do",
the harder live numbers and freak-out stuff like "Slave",
which goes down a storm live.

In the last eight months, Invertigo has been touring hard.
As a result, their four personalities have meshed,
and the real sound of Invertigo is coming through.
More so as they start writing songs for their next album.

Said James: "The music changed after we toured, it's got a lot heavier.
Christian's contributing a lot more."
Just before the album was released, James re-did the drum sounds to make them harder,
like their live sound.
The band is planning to drop its long time stage cover,
Cheap Trick's pop gem "Dream Police" and is trying out something from
'70s hard rock band Thin Lizzy. In fact, after the Brisbane shows,
they wanted to try some new ideas onstage,
so James flew back to his studio in Melbourne to work on some edits
before rejoining the band in Sydney.
Argenti senses an exciting feeling as the
"real" personality of Invertigo starts to unveil itself.
"It's almost like an us-against-them situation,
because it's the four of us who are the band and create its personality,"
he explained. "We don't allow anyone outside of us to define that for us.
In any confrontation, it's the four of us,
and we watch each other's backs.
You can't go onstage and wear something or
act in a way because it's good for the image,
or write songs that are not about us.
We can't be slaves to anything else - and that's what the song "Slave" is about.

"When we go onstage, there are no tricks of the trade to get the audience up.
At our shows we can see we're striking a chord with audiences.
What we're saying, what we're doing is not rocket science,
it's about getting together,
letting our hair down and experiencing some very good rock music together.

"I have no hesitation in saying that I have become the fourth of the Leigh brothers.
I am in awe of them.
You don't want to cross swords with any of them
but they are dynamic people. I used to be a fan when James
and Vince were In Pseudo Echo. I think James is an absolute genius,
and I am reminded of that when I work closely
with him on the music. With these three guys,
I can go onstage and know we'll play a magical show.
The four of us have had our ups and downs.
At the end of the day, we only have each other,
and Invertigo is who and what we are.

"That will become quite obvious in the next cycle of the band.
In the end, I want to leave some legendary live shows
as Invertigo's legacy. A lot of people think "Slave"
is the best track on the record because it's different.
Originally it was just going to be on the B-side of a single.
But it goes down such a storm live
and people really respond to it, so we had to put it on the album."

"You can't play rock, then go back to your room and have milk and cookies after!"

Can he define Invertigo's personality yet?
"Without sounding corny, it's about doing what we want to do and play what we want to play.
So many Australian bands do the same boring thing - you know what they're going to do on TV,
and what they're going to say on radio
even before they say it.
The talent isn't boring but the way it's presented,
the lack of risks. I got into a band to play rock and roll,
meet girls, do our thing and stir a few things up."
When the Leighs got together after Pseudo Echo split up,
there was little idea of how their new band should sound.
Everything revolved around the songs, mostly penned by Vince.

Said James, "The main aim was to write good songs
and see where it took us. We didn't want to specifically
do one style or ape some band."
It was a long drawn process. Some people told them not to bother.
Songs like "Chances Are" and "Blame It On The Stars" are about fate taking
a hand and believing in yourself. In the end, they lost their singer
and a deal with BMG.

"When you lose your singer and your record company,
that's about as low as you can get," remembered James.
"We could have walked away from the band I suppose,
but we didn't want to be beaten.
I look back at those days, and they happened for a reason.
We're in a far superior position now.

"I guess when you're brothers you stick together.
Our father is a musician, and he almost hammered home to us how important music was.
In our house you practised music before your homework
and if you didn't have time to do homework,
that was okay! I was playing piano at five,
in wedding bands at 12 and I was in Pseudo Echo
when I was 16. I remember going to see a show with INXS,
Mi-Sex and Mondo Rock and knowing then,
at 12 or 13, that was what I wanted to do.
Pseudo Echo was a fantastic experience but we learned one thing:
don't change to go with fashion.
Be honest with yourself and your music."
Argenti, also the son of a musician,
had become frustrated with trying to play original music in Queensland, and moved back to Melbourne.
As soon as he heard Invertigo's songs, he wanted in.
James: "We listened to about 100 singers and auditioned three or four.
Chris was the one we kept coming back to.
He's one of the best singers I've worked with. He's like a fourth brother."
Invertigo now turn their sights to the US,
where "Desensitized" is to be released there as their first single.
Their US record company is eager for them to spend the rest of the year touring.

America has already been introduced to Invertigo with the song "Chances Are"
appearing on the soundtrack to the Julia Roberts movie America's Sweetheart.

In May, the band went to New York and played at a club called
the Mercury Lounge. "It was one of the most nerve wracking gigs I've ever done,
but it was a buzz," said James. "We'd been playing for six
to eight months in Australian pubs and gone
from playing with no foldback in a grotty pub.
I'd played in New York once before, with the Pseudos,
and that was a disaster. It was a live to air for MTV
and the camera men kept plugging out our keyboards!"
Is he confident about America?
"It's a big place. If it happens, it's a bonus.
If it doesn't, it's not meant to be. But we're confident."