Plastic Palace Alice are promising – and promising, and promising – to be one of this country's truly great bands. The six member baroque pop outfit came together just over two years ago, and had barely taken a breath before they began to record their first album. Now, some months, some media attention and some serious label interest later, they have finally released it. Welcome to The Great Depression.

Led by Sydney-bred singer-songwriter Rob McDowell, Plastic Palace Alice set out to make wilful and original art rock, regardless of prevailing music trends. With a line-up that features a classical composer (Lise Metz) and a jazz student (Huw Murdoch), the band was founded on some very big ideas – ideas that seemed bigger than the back room of the East Brunswick Club.

"I think we recorded too early," Rob says reflectively, "We had only just started the band and, in retrospect, it was probably a bit premature, but we really had this grand vision. Whatever we did in the rehearsal room was not going to compare to what we could do on record because we had all these production ideas which we could never do live."

When Plastic Palace Alice first appeared around Melbourne, they were a two piece. Rob and wife Lise played the songwriter's finished songs, which were inspired by the vivid lyrical traditions of Leonard Cohen and John Lennon. Bass player Gabe engineered at one of their shows and joined the band soon after, bringing Emily in as a backing vocalist. Jeremy saw an ad for a drummer, and Huw came on board as the second guitarist when their recording ambitions finally out-stripped their ability to reproduce the songs live. The music grew organically, according to Rob, and became a genuine product of the whole group's influence.

"I wanted to have my stamp on everything and it was really difficult, initially. But I guess you get to the stage where you trust what other people are going to bring to it, and then when you write a song, it's not even yours anyway. You don't even care about it anymore, 'cause it's out. It's like venting, and once it's been vented it's unimportant; people can do what they want with it."

Trusting and enthused by their fledgling project, the band members threw in a considerable pile of their own cash to start recording their music. They found around $12,000 to invest in the album, to begin realising their densely orchestrated dreams. Production began in March 2006, and for a short while they had a whale of a time, but soon enough the whole project ground to a halt.

"It was horrible," Rob smiles, "It was such a long process because we ran out of money. For a good six months nothing was happening and we were waiting for grant announcements to see if we could get funding to finish the album."

The money did come through, with many thanks to your friendly neighbourhood tax-payer, and by March 2007 the record was finally finished - the Plastic Palace Opus; a very big recording from a band no-one had ever heard of. The band made The Great Depression because they wanted to explore the possibilities of production and not because they had a record deal in place, but without distribution it was difficult for many people to hear this wonderful thing they had done. So they did what many other local bands do; they burnt a few copies of their very first "single" and sent it off to Triple J. Thankfully – and luckily, to be honest – they picked the right song.

The gorgeous storm of Empire Falls became a sleeper hit on our national youth broadcaster, and more than one music writer had favourable things to say about this epic sounding indie band. Following the good press came a few good opportunities.

"We tied the album up ourselves so at least we could own it in some way. And then we started getting a bit of airplay, and we had a number of labels call up and ask about it," explains Rob. "It was just an elimination process from that point. We were unsatisfied with some of them, they were unsatisfied with us at other times. Inertia was the one who were still standing in the end, who we were most happy with."

Unfortunately for the band, the first buzz of their stellar single (released twice last year) had well and truly faded by the time Inertia released their album. Fortunately, the long recording process made them patient.

"It's a very, very conservative label climate. A lot of labels take a long time to make decisions. If you're not riding the zeitgeist they don't really trust you. So we kept having all these meetings, you know. Eventually someone said they'd put it out and six months later, here we are," Rob shrugs. "I'm excited now. I haven't been excited for the last year, which is how long the record has been finished. I guess I'm excited it's finally coming out."

The band now faces another hurdle. Having made a big impression with Empire Falls, they have now released an album that sounds, by Rob's own admission, very different from the single. They have written Dylan-esque pop, post punk rackets and gothic folk songs, all crowding together on the wildly erratic disc of The Great Depression.

"I think that's a good thing, because it shows that we have range, but it's unfortunate that that one song has misrepresented the band a bit in that way. But then, if we'd chosen any other song, it would have been the same story," Rob muses, "The way we produced a lot of the songs on the album – and hopefully it's succeeded, although some might not have succeeded as obviously as others – we tried to do a very specific things with each song.

"So the song Well on the album, a little country ballad, we tried to make that sound really sweet and syrupy and Dusty Springfield-like. And a song like Empire Falls is meant to sound like an anthem, you know, but it was a kind of arbitrary, the decision to put it out. It did seem kind of catchy.

"But it's got our name out there, which is great," he smiles, "We'll see what happens next."