Perth Music

After a very successful few years which has included ARIA nominations, national and international tours Holly Throsby has recently released her third album A Loud Call to the waiting public. She is also in the middle of The Loud Call Tour which started in Alice Springs and winds up in Cairns in mid-October, taking in 20 cities and towns along the way. Holly has been joined by her long time band Bree van Reyk and Jens Birchall. The three piece play eleven instruments between them. Holly is fresh from a string of solo shows in the UK & Ireland with the iconic Paul Kelly, as well as two dates in London supporting Australian sweetheart Tim Rogers. Holly spoke to Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (13:55 - 1.6Mb)

A Loud Call was recorded in Nashville with engineer and producer Mark Nevers (Lambchop, Will Oldham). It includes guest performances by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, and members of Lambchop and Silver Jews. It also includes Holly’s latest single ‘A Heart Divided’ and the title track from last years’ One of You for Me EP. I asked Holly if she was happy with the reception that A Loud Call has received so far. “I was really pleased, it’s always nice to get good reviews and things like that. We’ve been on tour and it’s been nice to play new songs to people and have people come buy the record after the show.”

“Most of the recording was done in the U.S. I was writing it when I was finishing up the touring for Under The Town and then in the month following that. By the time I had enough songs we went to the U.S and made the record with this guy called Mark Nevers in Nashville who I was very keen to work with. We made the whole album there and a few extra songs that didn’t make it to the record. After we finished that process I came back to Australia and I thought about it for a little while and when I was in Nashville I really missed Tony Dupe who made my first two albums. The only reason I left Tony was that both Tony and I felt that it was the right thing to do at the time because I had done everything I had ever done with him and I didn’t really know anything else. So I got Tony to do some arrangements when I got back to Australia…and he really completed some of the songs for me” Holly explained.

I asked Holly how she found Nashville and if she had ever been there before. “I had actually been there before for a couple of days when I was living in Texas a few years ago. I did a big drive up to Nashville with some friends and then we went back to New Orleans and this time I went back to Austin as well. It is a fun, kinda weird, scary, southern drive and we actually ran out of petrol on the side of the road. It’s an interesting city and quite pretty and doesn’t feel that big even though it is quite large. It’s circled by those big highways like those American cities are surrounded by on and off exits. It feels relatively small in terms of the scene there because I guess America is quite segregated, and I don’t mean racially I mean more stylistically, like if you are certain kind of person you go to certain places, the same kind of bars and the same cafes. So we kept running into the same type of people there and feeling like we were part of this cool little community which was nice.”

I also asked Holly if she tried a different approach to songwriting on this album compared to he previous two albums. “Nope. I never really approach song writing differently, I certainly approach the recording and arrangements differently but the song writing always seems to come from the same spot for me. Actually in one way I did because the drummer in my band actually wrote a couple of the guitar parts and the introductory guitar riff to A Heart Divided which I ended up making a song out of. So that was kinda co-written, I got a little piece of music and added a chorus and the words and that was actually nice to do that and gave me an idea about the possibility of collaboration. I’ve always been a very solitary songwriter in the alone in the bedroom way, sitting on my own in the light of a candle, listening for people that aren’t there.”

With many of Holly’s songs sounding part beautiful song, part poem I asked her if she sometimes writes poems that don’t become songs. “I doubt if I write any poetry separate to music but I do certainly think a lot about words and I am very interested in words and how they go together and how they sound together. I am a big fan of poetry and I do read quite a lot of it but although I feel that I write quite quickly sometimes, it is something that is quite considered for me. I always write the music first but I do tend to find that with most of the songs I write they come out with words attached to the music for some reason. As soon as I start humming a melody I find that words and sometimes whole phrases come out and the song is always based around those initial words.”

Holly was also just announced as an ARIA nominee for 2008 in the Best Female Artist category. “It was actually a really big surprise this year. I was very pleasantly surprised. This year there were lots of big stars and stuff and I thought I was a little on the small scale. It was very nice to get nominated.”

A Loud Call is out now.

Hailing from Perth, Bravo Inferno are a new rock/pop band making music that they love. Bravo Inferno are energetic one song, cruisey the next, and are absolutely always passionate. Featuring sensational lead guitars and catchy heartfelt lyrics, Bravo Inferno are a band you’ll want to crank up loud and sing along with.  Guitarist Glen Strindberg caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

I asked Glen to give us a little bit of a history of the band and how the members got together to create Bravo Inferno. “The band got together with Lee (McDonald, vocals) and myself jamming in a tiny lounge room for about a year on some ideas. We decided we wanted to create a sound that we liked. We were not looking to break musical boundaries, we wanted to create music that would excite us. Something we would enjoy listening to time and again.”

“After recording our EP ‘This Balloon‘ it became obvious that if we were to push this musicial gamble further we needed to get some other musos in on action. After looking for the right people for the role Wayno (Clayton, Drums), Gardy (Mike Gardiner, Guitar) and Christy (Fok, Bass) joined with thier own stlye and influence, hence Bravo Inferno exploded onto the scene.”

Asked what bands have had the most influence on the band and your music, Glen replied “There have been many bands that have influenced our sound. All of us “Bravo Inernites” have different bands we like. Interpol, Maximo Park, Foo Fighters, Powderfinger, Frans Ferdinand, Kings of Leon and many more. Currently Vulture St by Powderfinger is rotating in the car stereo.”

I asked Glen to list his top 5 Perth bands of all time. “Mmmmm tricky one. All time Top five Perth Bands would have to include Birds of Tokyo, Jebediah, Kill Devil Hills, The Dirty Secrets and John Bultler Trio. For thier musicianship and stage presence.”

Glen says “Live shows for us is about sharing with people what we hear every week at practise. Solid catchy songs with exciting lyrics. When we play live to 5 or 500 people we want them to feel that we are giving our best.”

“Crowd interaction does mean a lot to us. Crowds respond to being acknowledged. We aways make an effort to mingle before and after the gigs to show our appreciation and to hear feedback. Lee always give his 110% to the songs and the crowd when on stage. All you have to do is look and see the sweat dripping off us in the first few songs to realise how hard we work to entertain. We jokingly have said we need roadies to run out and mop our brows after each song.”

Asked whether he had to give up alcohol or playing music for 6 months Glen replied “Haha is that a trick question? Give up Alcohol without a doubt. You get the same high playing music and watching total strangers nodding their heads to your songs than anything Alcohol gives you. Plus theres no hangover in the morning and no beer gut!”

Bravo Inferno are playing the following gigs coming up:
Friday September 19th at the Railway Hotel
Saturday October 11th at the Rocket Room
Friday November 21st at the Hyde Park Hotel back room

For more info visit www.myspace.com/bravoinferno

US rockers Disturbed have done what a lot of people did not expect from a hard rock/heavy metal band. That is have an album that isn’t pop or R’n'B and have it go to number 1 in the USA, New Zealand and Australia. Their fourth album, Indestructible, is out now and creating a stir in the music industry. They have also just finished an Australian tour playing Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne. Before their Perth show lead singer David Draiman caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

I asked David if crowds had benn enjoying the new songs at their shows and if they were playing a lot of new material compared to their older stuff. “Up until this point we have only been able to play a very small portion of the record. At the Mayhem Festival both us and Slipknot had 60 minute slots so when you are trying to squeeze 4 albums worth of material into an hour it’s tough and the diehard, old school fans want the classics…it’s weird that I can say we have classics….but we have had 7 number one singles so they have to be there. The crowd usually sing louder than I can so it’s always tremendously exhillerating to feel that and see people take to what you’ve written.”

David explained the creation of Indestructible with the following “When we decided to sit down and start to think about writing the new album I thought, given my past 2 or 3 years of life experience and where my head is at, I asked the guys to throw the darkest, nastiest, most brutal shit they could. They were only too eager to accomodate so that’s where it started. When I first got some material I was obsessed. It was an exercise to convince the powers that be to allow us to produce it ourselves but the process allowed us to learn a lot and it was very gratifying.”

“The theme of the new record overall is one of power. One of strength. The record is meant to make you feel indestructable. It is meant to be that record that you take with you to the gym. That you listen to on your way home from work. That the soldier listens to before heading out onto the battlefield. That the athlete listens to before he marches out onto the field. That is the sort of record it is meant to be.”

For more info on Disturbed visit www.disturbed1.com

Disturbed - Fri 29th August - Challenge Stadium
 

Panic At The Disco’s latest album, Pretty. Odd was recorded in Las Vegas’ Studio at the Palms, with additional production and mixing completed at the world-renowned Abbey Road Studios in London. Produced by Grammy and Emmy Award-nominated arranger/composer Rob Mathes, the album sees Panic At The Disco embracing a melodic, classic rock-inspired aesthetic while still maintaining the visionary pop modernism that made its debut among the new millennium’s most popular and successful releases. Their debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out sold in excess of 2 millions copies and they have just completed a national tour of Australia along with fellow rockers Cobra Starship and The Acedemy Is. On the afternoon of their Perth show, drummer, Spencer Smith spoke to Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (14:34 - 3.3Mb)

“We finally got some sleep last night which was good. We got up and saw that movie Pineapple Express, it was great, it was funny.”

The band had arrived in Perth just 24 hours prior so I asked Spencer how our fair city had treated them. “This is the best weather we have had since we got into Australia. It is a bit of a change, we were in South East Asia and they were in the middle of their summer when we had gotten there in the beginning of August. It was a nice change to get out of the heat and today was right in the middle and feels like southern California or something. We got to walk around and get some lunch and it seems like a really nice place so I’m glad to be here. It’s been a lot of fun coming back to some places and being able to have more than 11 songs to play and being able to mix both the albums and play to some people that have probably never seen us before.”

Asked to describe the process in which the new album, Pretty Odd was created, Spencer replied “We had come off touring for almost two years from our first record and at first we didn’t really know for sure what we wanted to do. We hadn’t been writing very much over that time and we had all really got into different music and different artists. We had gotten bored a little bit with what was very current and with what we were hearing on the radio so we ended up getting into some stuff that we had grown up on and from our parents. That stuff really interested us, the late 60’s, 70’s, even Billy Joel and Tom Petty which goes into the 80’s. Jon (Walker), our bass player had joined the band about a year prior to the starting of writing. It took us a little while to get used to writing with him and get comfortable with what we were doing and really get a good idea of what we wanted our second record to be.”

Spencer also described how past and current pop music was an influence on the new album. “We started listening to what we considered the best pop/rock bands of all time and I think what’s weird now is that there is a different view of what pop music is. It is very different to what it was in the 60’s and 70’s, especially in the States where R’n'B and Hip Hop are the new pop. It’s the biggest selling music that there is right now. It is a weird time and it has been for a while now for rock bands but luckily with everything in the past 10 years with the internet it has completely changed the music business. For as many people that love hip hop and rap there are so many that love all other types of music. So it allows bands like us to maybe not be what was a possibility for bands in the 70’s and stuff but we are happy what we’re doing.”

“I think (The Beatles) are definitely a band that is one of all of our favourite bands and how can they not be if you like pop music. Me and Brendon and Jon had grown up on it, Ryan didn’t really grow up on them, he grew up more on classical country like Johnny Cash, so some of that stuff was new for him. Listening to things like that is so inspiring and almost refreshing. Specifically with them, they are the perfect example of a perfect career of 6 or 7 records of material that never seems to have a dip and a constant level of great songwriting that goes in different directions. They just didn’t seem to any agenda as far as their career went and just did wherever they wanted.”

I asked Spencer what crowds can expect from a Panic At The Disco live show as they have made quite a repuatation of great live performances. “When we started touring we toured for a while doing 2 or 3 tours in the States before ever doing our own headlining shows. And then by the time we were doing our own headlining tours at the end of the last album cycle we only had one album to play and we actually did a tour that was in arenas and pretty big places to 8000 people sometimes. So we were really interested in doing more than just going up there in jeans and t-shirts and we were into having more of a theatrical aspect and putting on a bigger show than we were used to going and seeing. And we were able to fill a headliner set with only one album’s worth of material. When we did this record and toured the US we were playing big theatres whhich is our favourite type of venue to play. There is still a lot of people and still a really good energy but you’re still in a theatre which is made for any sort of performance rather than basketball or tennis. When we recorded the album we did a lot of songs live because we were aware of what touring is…and soem of the songs definitely interact the crowd a lot more than the first record.

Panic At The Disco - The Green Gentleman

For more info visit www.panicatthedisco.com

Upon its release, The Grates debut album Gravity Won’t Get You High immediately shot to the ARIA top-ten, was nominated for awards, and sold over 50,000 copies. The trio slogged it out for two years straight, with sold-out Australian tours, shows in the UK, US and Canada, and garnered gushing press coverage. With their new album Teeth Lost, Hearts Won, The Grates faced a new challenge in the studios: being their own co-producers for the very first time. While sound engineer/producer Peter Katis (Interpol, Mates of State, The National) joined the ride again, this time, The Grates were also alongside him closely at the producer’s desk at Tarquin Studios, a gutted-out attic in Connecticut, USA. Initially, taking the production helm - occasionally by themselves - scared them. Needless to say, the band’s newfound musical smarts have paid off. This batch of songs is more sophisticated and punch-in-the-guts catchy than anything they’ve done before. Hand-clapping, foot-stomping first single ‘Burn Bridges’ is a good indicator of The Grates’ new musical direction, but also provides a handy manifesto. Guitarist John Patterson spoke to Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (9:00 - 2.1Mb)

“We are super happy. In the US we were in this house in Conneticut which was this huge stately mansion on a main road in a dirty area. We all lived in this house and it was half winter, half spring and we barely left. We worked upstairs and slept downstairs and that’s kind of how I like to work, just put everything into it and have nothing else to focus on. It was great. Peter Katis lives in Conneticut and the studio is in his house so we just went to his house. There was nothing special about the place except he was there.”

I asked John what it was like being away from Australia to record the album. “We’ve done both of our albums away from home and I would have a lot of trouble trying to work on something at home. There are so many distractions when you have to go home to your house and you have your family there or you pick someone up or drop someone off or you have bills to pay and stuff. When you are away you don’t have any distractions, even with the timezones no one can really call you up. It’s a great way to get away from everything.”

Second albums can sometimes cause problems with bands especially trying to live up to expectations and writing new songs. I asked John if this was the case with Teeth Lost, Hearts Won. “It was harder to write songs because when you first start writing songs it’s so easy because you’ve never done anything before. You feel so super original for writing your first 20 songs because you’ve never written songs before. The more you write the harder it is to feel you are doing something original and feel like you are doing something new. So it takes a lot longer to write songs and we had to put a lot of effort into making things feel organic. Even though it took a long time to arrange the songs and stuff a lot of thought was put into making it feel like they grew organically instead of just having that organic feel just because you wrote it really quickly.”

Asked what the songwriting process of the band was, John replied “The only way we have been able to get it to work is Patience and I start writing something at exactly the same time pretty much. I might write something on guitar and she sings something in the next 30 seconds or something. Otherwise we all get quite anxious and feel a lot of stress. If I write a guitar riff and leave it with Patience for a day or something, there’s no way she will be able to write anything for it because she will feel too much pressure. We have to do it both together at exactly the same time. It seems like that is the only way we can do it at the moment. I don’t know what it will be like for the third record but that was the only way we could it.”

“I think this one has much more of a theme than our last record. We tried to treat every song separately on the last one and this one was all written within a year and lyrically there are similar themes and musically I tried to bring in little melodies. We always try anything that is hanging around the studio. I played bass guitar and somebody else played bass guitar and we hadn’t done that before so I think there is bass guitar on six or seven songs this time. I think Patience can credit herself with handclapping as an instrument so she can sound like she can play an instrument. She does a bit of tamborine at the moment as well.”

Tour Dates:
Thur 2nd October - Sands Tavern, Sunshine Coast QLD
Fri 3rd October - The Arena, Brisbane QLD
Sat 4th October - Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast QLD
Sun 5th October - Great Northern, Byron Bay QLD
Wed 8th October - 21 Arms, Ballarat VIC
Thur 9th October - Peninsula Lounge, Moorooduc VIC
Fri 10th October - Hi Fi Bar, Melbourne VIC
Sun 12th October - Govenor Hindmarsh, Adelaide SA
Wed 15th October - Uni Bar, Wollongong NSW
Fri 17th October - Metro, Sydney NSW
Sat 18th October - Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle NSW
Thur 23rd October - Prince Of Wales, Bunbury QLD
Fri 24th October - Settlers Tavern, Margaret River WA
Sat 25th October - Capitol, Perth WA

For more info visit www.thegrates.com

The Grates - Burn Bridges

After playing to over 1 million people with their renowned energetic live gigs and their TV performances, Faker now celebrate their second album Be The Twilight officially achieving Gold sales status. Be The Twilight features Faker’s Top 10 hit single This Heart Attack – which is still in the ARIA chart after staggering 40 weeks! After a #5 peak on iTunes, a #5 peak on the radio airplay chart, a ‘Law & Order’ promo and endless TV performances, This Heart Attack has well and truly been seen and heard across the nation and also came in at a very respectable #5 on the Triple J Hottest 100. Far from resting on their laurels, Faker are soon to head out on the road on the ‘Are You Magnetic Tour’, supported by Sparkadia. Bassist Nic Munnings spoke to Justin Middleton for this interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (9:56 - 2.3Mb)

“It’s pretty surreal. It’s really exciting, we’ve been doing this forever and it’s flattering that people are starting to pay some attention to it. We never really have any idea what is going to happen next. The best we can do is try and write songs that we like and try not to care too much whether other people like them as well.

I asked Nic if the band felt more pressure from outside influences or themselves while writing and recording Be The Twilight. “We probably put more pressure on ourselves after the first record. It seemed to take us forever to get our teeth into the process for the second album. We were basically doing demos for two years from just before the first record came out until when we recorded Be the Twilight. We didn’t really feel a great deal of pressure from anywhere else but there were definitely points where we were going ‘What the fuck are we doing?’. We kind of had 45 songs before we went into pre-production and there was quite a lot of trimming down to come up with 12 songs out of that.”

The album was recorded in LA and I asked Nic if it was good to be away from friends and family for the period of recording. “The main thing about recording in LA was being away from everything. We worked really hard and were there for three months. We had a couple days off when we got there but other than that we were working six day weeks, up to about 14-15 hours a day. We didn’t get much of the sightseeing experience of LA and there is a reputation of LA people being superficial but we didn’t see that. You really need to be able to focus on the task at hand and we really thought we were going to be making the record at home so I don’t think we would have been able to focus all the energy if we were kind of going home at the end of the day.”

Asked what the band are up to at the moment and coming up in the next few months Nic replied “The tour starts next month but we a couple one off shows leading up to that. We are turning on the tap slightly before letting it all out. At the moment we are up the coast doing some demos of new stuff so that’s already underway. That will be the next thing we do after the tour and it’s pretty rare that we actually stop. Nathan will always be coming up with things while on tour but by and large, the touring side of things is not really where the creative process happens. It’s usually pretty important for us to find some space and time to let that stuff happen because on tour every ten hours you have to be somewhere else.”

I asked Nic how much he enjoys making music videos and especially the new Are You Magnetic clip which can be viewed at the bottom of this post. “It was even more colourful on set due to the amount of digital effects and stuff. We had a blue screen and we were wearing green lab coats that I don’t think are ever actually green in the video. The main thing was working with the guys making the video and making it a collaborative effort instead of them telling us to stand here and there. There is a lot of standing around but it’s important to feel like you have some involvement in the visual representation of your music. Our old drummer Paul used to say that every time he had to make a video a little piece of him died inside. But maybe that’s why he isn’t in the band anymore.”

Are You Magnetic Tour Dates:
Thur 4th September – Prince Of Wales, Bunbury, WA
Fri 5th September – Metro City, Perth, WA
Sat 6th September – Settlers Tavern, Margaret River WA
Fri 12th September – Forum Theatre, Melbourne, VIC
Sat 13th September – Wrestpoint Showroom, Hobart, TAS
Sun 14th September – HQ, Adelaide, SA
Thur 18th September – Tivoli Theatre, Brisbane QLD
Fri 19th September – Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast, QLD
Sat 20th September – Enmore Theatre, Sydney, NSW (licensed and all ages)

For more info visit www.faker.com.au

Faker - Are You Magnetic

One of the less orthodox bands spawned by the post-Libertines London music scene, the Mystery Jets started at the end of the last century when Blaine Harrison and his dad, Henry, formed a band together. Soon joined by Blaine’s school friends Kai and Will, the band recruited drummer Kapil and started staging gigs in a crumbling hotel ballroom on Eel Pie Island. Their second album Twenty One has just been released in Australia and frontman Blaine Harrison caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (13:12 - 3.0Mb)

I asked Blaine if he is looking forward to see how the Australian public will accept the bands second album given many have not heard of the band too much before now.  “Yeah I am excited. We’ve been going for a long, long time. I started the band with William, my dad, when I was eight years old so it was a long, long, long time ago. I can’t work out exactly how many years, I’m not very good at math. I’d say things got more serious and focused when we left school and did a couple of tours off our own back. We eventually got the line up that we have today and we started putting on our own parties really as a response to not wanting to go down the traditional pub circuit. That seems to be the route that most bands don’t really have a choice but to go down and that essentially involved charging your friends money to see you at shitty pubs with shitty sound and overpriced alcohol. That seemed like the exact opposite of what we wanted to do at the time. Instead we put on our own parties and eventually they picked up and lots of friends bands that played eventually established themselves and a lot of them got signed. We kind of decided that our work was done and we signed ourselves to 679 Records and got our first album, Making Dens, out in 2006.”

“Twenty One is our second album and we wrote it across the course of about 18 months, maybe a year and put it out early this year in England. With the first album the songs you end up releasing are generally the songs that you have got people’s attention with and it’s really just a case of rounding the album off. But definitely with the second album we had to think a little bit harder and think about what we wanted to say. We toured the hell out of the first album and really went for it on the road so by the end of touring we all felt creatively starved. Henry, my dad, wrote a lot of the lyrics for the first album and William wrote a lot of the music but after touring we all felt like there were things we wanted to say and things we were learning and that kind of resulted in Twenty One.”

With everyone in the band contributing to Twenty One I asked Blaine if it felt different and foreign in creating the album.  “It is kind of a thematic album really. A lot of the songs I think really fit together and they all kind of sit under that umbrella of first love and having your heart broken for the first time. We all bring different things to the table, a lot of the lyrics come from Henry and myself and musically William is still, in a way, the driving force but a lot of the other stuff is equally important: the arrangements, and the kind of clothes you put the songs in. A lot of the songs are pop songs at the bottom of them but they are in some kind of disguise and I think that is something we have learnt to manipulate on the second album.”

The band are still young so I asked Blaine if it was hard creating pop songs or if it felt quite natural and easy.  “I don’t think initially it was really. We didn’t really grow up with pop music, we are 90’s kids and although what was going on in England at the time was Brit-pop and all that kind of stuff, I think we kind of grew up in our own bubble. My dad plays a lot of prog, a lot of Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Genesis and that sort of stuff and we were teased a lot about it at school. But that was what we really wanted to do and growing up pop music was an unnatural ground for us to cover. With the second album we felt like we wanted to do that and we wanted to go out on a limb and try and do something we had never done before. Likewise with the next album, I think we will try and explore something that does feel completely new. That is the only way you can not trap yourself and not bury yourself in a hole.”

Young Love

Twenty One is out now. For more info on Mystery Jets visit www.mysteryjets.com

After spending much of 2006 in the midst of a turbulent tour cycle surrounding their Grammy-nominated album Plans, US Indie rockers Death Cab For Cutie took a well-deserved break during the first part of 2007. Each member of the band did their own thing; frontman Ben Gibbard embarked on his first-ever solo tour, guitarist Chris Walla released a solo album and produced records for acts like Tegan And Sara, drummer Jason McGerr constructed his own recording studio, Two Sticks, and bassist Nick Harmer worked on various projects. Plans was a collection of firsts for the band – Death Cab’s first album for a major label; the first disc to feature songwriting contributions from someone other than Gibbard; the first Death Cab disc recorded with the same drummer as the one before – but now in 2008 their new album, Narrow Stairs, feels more like home. Getting ready to tour Australia, guitarist Chis Walla caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

“It didn’t really feel that different coming into writing and recording the new album as it has other albums. I guess the band now has a grip on the process of making music. Ben (Gibbard) writes the skeleton of the songs and brings them into the studio where each of us pull apart different parts of the song, kind of deconstruct each part and then reconstruct it and the end result is something we are all happy with” Chris explained.

I asked Chris how the band felt coming into writing and recording this album after the great success of their last album, Plans. “After the success of Plans we each took about seven months off and just kind of did solitary things. I don’t think we even saw each other in that seven months so it was a pleasure to get back together for this album. We are a band and great friends but after touring and touring and living in each other’s pockets it was good to take a break from each other. When we got back into the swing of things it seemed we had a yearning to almost explode and I think that created the rockier side of things on this album. When we finished recording there was particular power to the music and something we weren’t conscious of was the rock side we were capable of.”

“A third of the album was recorded at Two Sticks, a third at Alberta Court and a third at Tiny Telephone Studios. We recorded at the different studios on purpose for a few reasons. Two Sticks is not a huge studio, in fact it is more like half a house than a studio, and that does not lead to huge sounds. We concentrated more on rhythms and getting the detail right in that session where as at Tiny Telephone we were able to rock out and that studio allowed us to get everything out of our system. In a way the songs on the album contain themselves individually but the album as a whole also contains itself” Chris said, explaining the recording process of Narrow Stairs.

When asked how the band handled the great reception of the new album and how much of a surprise it was when Narrow Stairs debuted at number 1 on the US Charts, Chris replied “It was definitely a surprise but we don’t really care about that sort of stuff. I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything, it was really nice but it’s not like a cultural marker or anything. It’s not 1986 and we are not Bon Jovi. We create music for music’s sake and not to rise up the charts.”

I asked Chris how well the album has come out sounding in the live show and what we can expect when they tour Australia in August. “It was very easy transferring these songs to the live show. It was great and something we were conscious of while recording. With Plans we spent about two weeks after recording just scratching our heads trying to figure out how we were going to convert the album into the live show. With Narrow Stairs there is a live feel to the recording so it was perfect for playing the songs live as well. We recorded on two inch tapes so there isn’t room for a lot of overdubs or tracks, we forced ourselves to record almost like we were playing a live show. We are really looking forward to coming to Australia, we have loved touring there in the past and it feels almost like a holiday when we are there.”

Tour Dates:
Sun 17th August - The Palace, Melbourne VIC - SOLD OUT
Mon 18th August - The Enmore, Newtown NSW - SOLD OUT
Wed 20th August - Metropolis, Fremantle WA - SOLD OUT
Fri 22nd August - The Tivoli, Fortitude Valley QLD - SOLD OUT

Narrow Stairs is out now. For more info on Death Cab For Cutie visit www.deathcabforcutie.com

UK outfit Hadouken! are a band who sum up the genre-vaulting, scene-splicing, boundary-pushing spirit of music in 2008 and a band who can skip between grime, emo, drum’n’bass and euphoric rave in the space of a single chorus. That may seem confusing to some but music in 2008 is as confusing as it is complicated. Hadouken! causes division between trad-rock bores and the youthful, enthusiastic, attention-hopping minds of a younger generation.  Music For An Accelerated Culture is the debut release from the Leeds band and have been announced on the lineup to this year’s Splendour In The Grass music festival. Guitarist Dan Rice caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (9:44 - 2.2Mb)

Speaking about the release of their debut album, Music For An Accelerated Culture, Dan says “Yeah it has been a long process getting there. At the same time I think we are all glad, in retrospect, that we took the time to get it right and make the album that we wanted to make.”

I asked Dan to explain a bit about the history of the band and how they formed. “It started a couple years ago, I moved up to Leeds to go to university and met James (Smith, vocals) and kind of realized we had similar interests in music. We then worked together at a small record label called Surface Noise Records. James had always been producing stuff, UK garage and grime and then he started working on the track that would eventually create Hadouken! and generally stuff that had that grime influence but also reached a lot broader in it’s influences. We kind of decided that would be our playlist and we could make something out of that. We then got all the others on board, put the band together and the label became the home of Hadouken!’s first few releases.”

“We could only use our label for the very first couple of singles, which was good because it was really nice to be able to do that and not have to commit to anyone else so early on. But after that we kind of got to a size where we wanted to be fully focused on the recording and the live set and leave the label business to someone else. So we found a bigger label we were really happy with and got on with it.”

In November 2007 Hadouken! released a 12 track ‘mixtape’ that was available on USB only. I asked Dan how that came about. “Yeah it was USB only and was a mixtape of about 11 tracks of our stuff, remixes of our stuff and remixes that we had done of other people’s stuff. Part of the reason for it being USB was that we wanted to experiment and try out different things and part of it was simply that is wasn’t our debut album and we wanted people to realize that it was a piece of music that worked differently to that and that it was a mixtape. It was meant to be about us throwing together loads of different ideas and experimenting with different stuff and probably doesn’t have the cohesion the we wanted the debut album to have.”

With a sound that is very hard to define I asked Dan if he is able to say what type of music poeple can expect from Hadouken!. “Hopefully it’s naturally a mixture of the different genres everyone in the band listens to rather than sitting down at the start and going ‘we are going to combine this and this and this and make something new’ because I think that is kind of contrived and doesn’t really work out. I think it is a natural combination of what we all grew up with really.”

“We are really into it, it’s kind of been our first opportunity to play to crowds that are our age in the two years we’ve been going” Dan said about playing the many festivals around the world. “We’ve only done the odd support slot for other bands and spent most of our time doing our own tours so getting out and doing the festivals is great, just to play to people that either don’t know who we are or know a couple of tracks or know the name. It gives us time to try and win them over. None of us have been to Australia before so we are really excited to come over for the first time and see how the tracks go down and see what sort of thing people are into.”

Tour Dates:
Sun 3rd Aug - Splendour In The Grass Festival, Byron Bay
Wed 6th Aug - The Forum, Sydney (All Ages)
Thur 7th Aug - Hi Fi Bar, Melbourne

Music For An Accelerated Culture is out now. For more info on Hadouken! visit www.hadouken.co.uk

It’s been a long adventure for UK indie rockers The Subways since the trio emerged fresh-faced and exuberant with their 2005 debut album Young For Eternity. Now their second album All Or Nothing is scheduled for release on July 5. With their teenage days still relatively recently behind them, the band have already experienced more than most bands endure in an entire career. Four consecutive years at the Reading festival along with appearances at Glastonbury, Leeds and T in the Park cemented their reputation as festival favourites. They hit the international circuit with particularly memorable dates in Japan, America, France and here in Australia, while back home, the venues seemed to get larger with every tour with almost every date sold-out in advance. In amidst such a phenomenal rise vocalist/guitarist Billy Lunn was forced to undergo surgery to cure nodules on his vocals chords, caused by strenuous touring. Luckily he recovered to record All Or Nothing and a totally refreshed Billy Lunn caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (17:32 - 2.0Mb)

With such a lengthy gap between albums I asked Billy how excited he was about the album finally being released and being  able to tour again. “It’s great, we are really anxious for everyone to hear all the new tracks that we have, we are really proud of the record. We just really want to tour again after so long not touring. It’s great to be back on the stage and seeing the audience and seeing them go crazy and just rockin’ out man.”

“We wrote a lot of the songs while we were on tour. We toured for about 2 years after we released Young For Eternity so some of the songs we have tested live back in 2006. A lot of the songs we’ve had under our belt for a good 3 years or so. All Right, which is the third track on the album was written 2 days after we finished the Young For Eternity sessions. We actually demo’d it in the same studio we recorded Young For Eternity in.”

The band had to cancel touring in 2006 due to Billy needing surgery on his throat which doctors diagnosed as nodules. i asked billy to describe what happened in this scary time. “We thought there were nodules at first. Towards the end of 2006, we’d play a show and I’d lose my voice for two days. And it got to the point where I couldn’t speak, let alone sing and we were cancelling shows left, right and center. For us that was the worst thing we could possibly do to our fans - pulling away on our tour bus and seeing the line round the corner at the venue, thinking these kids aren’t going to get their fix, and neither are we. It was just awful. We decided that going to a vocal specialist was the next big thing to do because there was no way we were going to cancel another show. The words I dreaded was nodules and the guy said ‘You have nodules but they can go in a couple of weeks if you exercise the voice and stretch the vocal chords out’. Which is what I was doing and then two weeks turned into two months and the nodules weren’t going and they weren’t getting any smaller at all. I just thought that either I’m not doing the exercises right or the doctor is terrible. So we got a second opinion and the doctor we saw said that they weren’t nodules, they’re polyps and the only way we could rid of polyps is by surgery.”

“Already we had wasted two months so we booked in surgery for January 2007, had the surgery done and then couldn’t speak for three weeks, couldn’t sing for about two months and the doctor said ‘You’ve really got to look after your voice, follow all the instructions, don’t speak, don’t clear your throat, don’t sneeze, don’t cough because if you don’t recover properly you might never speak again’. So that was a really scary time but we stayed positive through it, we went into the local rehearsal studio and played for six or seven hours a day perfecting all these new songs we had. I continued writing even though I couldn’t speak or sing, continued playing guitar and getting better at the guitar and writing in my journals. I think because I wasn’t speaking I became a very thoughtful person. I was listening to what was going on around me and became very analytical and opinionated. And I think that really reflected in the lyrics of the album. If you listen to the first record, we were 18 when we recorded it and now after everything we have seen on tour, all the different cultures and countries and cities and towns and all the people we’ve met and experiences we’ve had all went into the songs. When I could start singing again I had this compulsion to be honest…and you can hear that in the lyrics.”

I also asked Billy to describe how it was working with super producer Butch Vig who produced All Or Nothing. “That was pretty incredible. I can’t believe we even got Butch Vig to make our record, it’s mind blowing. I mean he made the first ever rock record I played to Charlotte (Cooper, bass player) in Nevermind. All Josh (Morgan, drummer) played for three years when he was 15 was Siamese Dream and Gish. It’s really strange because when we were thinking about producers we thought about Butch but we didn’t think he would ever want to work with us. Our manager basically said to listen to our all our favourite records and write down the producers who made those records and he’d set up meetings with those guys. Strangely enough Butch Vig wasn’t on that list because there was no way we thought Butch Vig would ever want to work with The Subways. He’s too legendary and we are three skinny, suburban English kids making indie rock so why would he want to work with us. We met up with all these producers and we just felt that we weren’t getting the connection that was necessary to make this record what we wanted to make. We got to the end of the list and thought ‘All right, let’s call Butch, let’s go for it, what have we got to lose’.”

“So we called Butch up and he had just finished making a record with Against Me and was looking for another project. We had met him a few times before doing the festival rounds and he’s a really, really charming man. He said ‘Yeah send over a CD, I’ll let you know what I think’ and I got an email back saying ‘The songs are fucking great, come over to New York and let’s talk’. We went over there and had a cup of coffee and five minutes into the conversation I just lent over the table, put my hand on his shoulder and went ‘Butch Vig, you have to make this album’.

All Or Nothing is out July 5th. For more info on The Subways visit www.thesubways.net