b o y a n d b e a r — l i ttl e r e d
How was Splendour? I read that you guys joined Mumford and Sons on stage for one of their songs. Yeah mate, that was incredible. We were pretty excited because where we played was the biggest gig we’ve ever played in our short career so far, and we were pretty pumped off that. Then the Mumford boys said: “jump up for a song,” and you walk out and there’s twenty thousand people there just stamping their feet and singing along and it’s kind of a different world again. Had any of you guys been before as punters? For me, this was the first Splendour experience. I think a couple of the guys had been along before, at least to one or two. We got ourselves right in there and we camped amongst the punters. We felt like we were just at the festival, to be honest, because we played on Sunday in the early afternoon. We got up there on Friday night and we just hung around and went along to different shows across the course of the weekend. Then it was sort of Sunday morning and we were like, “hang on we’ve got a show today,” so it was really only then that it started to sink in that we were there for a gig. There seems to be a fairly public chemistry between the bands and artists playing the style of music Boy and Bear plays. Is this the case, or are people reading too much into it? You’re spot on. We really have gotten along well with the other bands. To be fair, I’ve got to expand it. It’s Laura Marling: we toured with her in Australia at the start of the year and then we went to the UK with her. All of us met Marcus (Mumford) over there, then they came here and we played with them here. But it expands into the Australian scene,
friends send you a text saying, “I just heard you guys on the radio.” It does seem like it’s happened relatively quickly but because we’ve been working at different things, it feels like in some sense it’s a pay off for the hard work we’ve done. On the surface though, Boy and Bear has only been going for just over a year.
New Young Emperors Coming off their debut EP, With Emperor Antarctica, folksters Boy and Bear have been juggling writing and recording with a hectic touring schedule supporting some of the biggest acts on the international stage. Jon Hart, multi-instrumentalist in the Sydney five-piece, chats with Nick Bielby about making friends, playing festivals and hearing Boy and Bear songs on the radio. everyone knows everyone. I’d put Angus and Julia Stone in amongst that group as well. It’s kind of one big scene. I don’t know if it’s particularly because of the genre but everyone is actually friends and it’s a good thing. By a lot of standards, the rise of Boy and Bear seems to be happening quite rapidly. How have you guys been dealing with this?
We’d all been playing in bands kind of separately to Boy and Bear for a few years beforehand and we’ve been trying to make things happen for a while, so it’s a nice feeling I guess. I’ve got to say, however it sounds, it’s enjoyable to hear yourself on the radio. It’s been nice to be able to go, “hang on, we’ve put something together here that people are hearing.” It’s nice when your
Big harmonies seem to be a key element to Boy and Bear’s sound. Was this a conscious decision? Yeah, I think it was. We all grew up listening to music that had huge vocal harmonies in it and I know for Tim (Hart, drums/guitar/ vocals) particularly, he was really keen on the harmony side of things. It seemed sort of natural to make use of the fact that everybody in the band can sing. I guess you feel like you’ve got to have a signature somehow as a band. The direction of the song writing might change over time, but I’d like the think that the harmonies are something that will stay consistent over time. Any word on a full-length album? I know we’d like to get started by the end of the year but it’s looking like, with tour schedules and things like that, we might be trying to get into the studio first thing in 2011. We’ve been away once for ten days and we’re going to head off again for another ten day slot soon to try and put some more songs together. Ideally, if the material’s good enough, we want to have an album rolling as soon as we can.. Boy and Bear play The Cambridge Hotel on Thursday, October 28. With Emperor Antartica is out now through Island Records.
Dominic, who arranges our harmonies. He studies their harmonies. We wanted to switch them on and off this time; by that I mean harmonies could come in halfway through the song, and some songs don’t use many at all. We spent a lot of time rehearsing harmonies. Because I don’t sing, half of the time at rehearsal I just sit behind the drum kit and listen to everyone do harmonies. Was the album conceived as a night record? The recurring theme of Midnight Remember is that nothing lasts forever… this sort of melancholic idea, it’s very romantic. It’s a night time record, definitely.
Midnight Remember was one of Triple J’s feature albums during September. How does that make you feel? One of the reasons that we have gotten to where we are is because they’ve (Triple J) played our songs. They played ‘Waiting’, which was the single off our Get Ready EP. We did it independently, but they just picked up that song (through Triple J Unearthed). I’m grateful that Triple J cares about what we do. Midnight Remember was produced by Scott Horscroft (The Presets, Silverchair, Sleepy Jackson). What was it like working with Scott? It was really fun! During our first pre-production meeting, the first thing Scott told us was, “We’re going to have fun making this record” and that’s exactly what it was like. Little Red has four songwriters. How did this inform the creative process for the new album? 20 r e v e r b
m ag a z i n e i s s u e # 0 5 1 — O c to b e r 2 0 1 0
Remember Me Two years after their infectious debut release, Listen to Little Red, Little Red have re-emerged with a more refined and soulful second album, Midnight Remember. On the eve of their upcoming Australian tour, Matt Petherbridge spoke with drummer Taka Honda. It’s almost barebones the way the four songwriters [Adrian Beltrame (guitar, vocals), Dominic Byrne, Quang Dinh (bass, vocals), Tom Hartney (piano, vocals)] make demos. They bring songs to the band, with the melody and the chord progression and then we just get up and play. For me, how I play drums on ‘Get a Life’, it’s got this lazy, French pop vibe going on and I was thinking Phoenix, but Adrian thought it was a bit more psychedelic. Each one of us has different
ideas on the song and sometimes it comes together very well. Your first album, Listen to Little Red, showcased the band’s exuberant love of vocal harmonies, garnering comparisons to The Beach Boys. Did the band approach the use of harmony in a different way this time around? On our first album, there were big harmonies everywhere… we were obsessed with it! The Beach Boys are the biggest influence on
What’s your favourite song on the record? My favourite song is ‘Going Wrong’. There’s something peaceful about the song, I really love the sentiment. Usually the band tells each other, “Why don’t you play it like this or that”. Tom had some chords and just said, “Play whatever you want to play” so we did, and it worked. You guys are touring around Australia until the end of the year. Will you be touring overseas? We are definitely going overseas. We are heading to Asia, that’s something we actually requested. When you see our tour schedule, it is very packed; we’re going to some places you’ve never heard of. So many bands just compact their overseas shows into big cities. Financially, it’s far more viable doing that, but we just wanted to make sure we are going to small towns as well. That’s our main focus at the moment. Little Red are playing with Sparkadia at Newcastle Leagues Club on Saturday, October 9, and Club Coffs on Wednesday, October 13. Midnight Remember is out now through Shock. Follow us on Twitter