A NEW DOOR
NEON DREAM POP
Frustration seems to be the secret to Wolves At The Door member Ash Hendriks’ impossibly quick creation of her very first Leure album. Callum Twigger talks to the songstress about anger and beatmaking.
One gets the feeling that while we may not be overly familiar with St Lucia, it’s not going to take long before we are. Troy Mutton chats to brains of the operation, Jean-Phillip Grobler, ahead of his Australian debut at Parklife.
D
reamy, summery, shimmering synth-pop… A more perfect sound you could not have at the spring festival that gets the ball rolling, Parklife, and New York’s St Lucia have this in spades. The brainchild of Jean-Phillip Grobler, St Lucia have only come to prominence in the last year or so, kick-started with debut EP Neon Gold. Just about to finish up his debut album, Grobler – who incidentally grew up a choirboy in South Africa – reveals he’s been at it for far longer than 12 months. “Because some of the tracks from the EP are going to be on the album, I’d say I’ve been working on this album for about four years. But we’re talking 11 or 12 tracks out of probably 80 or so songs and countless other ideas from that time. The album is really close, actually, probably about one month away. It’s at a similar point to when you’re tidying up your apartment and in the end you’re left with all these annoying things like a pen and staples and a ball of yarn and some sticker your sister gave you and you have to figure out what to do with them.” As for his writing process, he says, “It’s pretty random actually. I rarely ‘try’ to write something. Normally, an idea will just come into my head, and either I’ll record it on my phone to work on it later… Then over a period of weeks or months I’ll add this or that and gradually it will develop alongside a bunch of other songs which, like I said earlier, will become an album. It’s mainly fun and rewarding, but not without its fair share of torture here and there.” Most importantly, for Grobler, is that St Lucia tackle pop exactly how he wants to, and the producer reveals his love for the genre in all its colourful forms and no matter their production values. “I absolutely love pop music with a high production value (as well as the opposite), like Tears For Fears or Peter Gabriel. Some, however, would argue that those records are over-produced…” he says. “I just like to keep working on something until it makes me feel the way I want it to make me feel. Normally,
that feeling is just there when I start an idea and am excited about it. My litmus test though, is when the end product makes me feel the same way as it did when I came up with the idea, or even better. What interests me about pop the most is that it is so divisive, and so hard to define. It is a lot more difficult to create than what appears in the end. Great pop, I think, is like a beautifully designed piece of modern furniture – deceptively simple.” Obviously starting out as a producer means Grobler has had to transfer St Lucia from the studio into the live arena, and it’s taken some time. “It’s definitely not the easiest process, but it’s become easier the longer we’ve been doing this. I have a five-, sometimes six-piece band of amazing musicians who help me to achieve the sound on the EP. Again, it’s about whether it feels right, and whether we feel like the audience is going to feel as excited by the live performance as they do by the record.” He brings that experience to Parklife, and the producer cites the festival as a turning point for where he knew the project was on to bigger and better things. “Each time we hit a new benchmark of the amount of people we’ve played to, it’s an amazing feeling… Just the whole experience of the project growing is pretty amazing and I often have to pinch myself. I think that booking the Parklife festival was the big one for me. It was incredible to me that just over one year after playing our first show, we’ll be playing a travelling festival in Australia. Unreal!” WHO: St Lucia WHEN & WHERE: Monday 1 October, Parklife, Wellington Square
I
t’s raining when Leure arrives at the back of a leafy, suburban pub to talk about Holland Sky on a gloomy August afternoon. The air is cold and smells of damp moss, and in a voice of similar pitch and timbre to the rain, Ash Hendriks patiently explains the pronunciation of her stage name. “Lee-oo-a”, she repeats for the third time. “Lay-oar”, I mispronounce for the fourth time. She laughs. With James Gates, Hendriks forms guitar-anchored duo Wolves At The Door, but Leure’s very different sounding tunes emerged rather unexpectedly for most on Soundcloud about five months ago. Since then, Hendriks’s solo project has quickly become a hot addition to many experimental and beatsy shows, accumulating love along the way.
There’s more to this story
on the iPad
She’s got ardor from triple j; Dom Alessio reckons Leure sounds like Grimes or Fever Ray, but her fingerprints match Lykke Li, and Holland Sky is possibly the most cryptically brilliant LP to come out of WA this year. Laughing, Hendriks tries to swat talk of praise like a small insect. “It seriously came about spontaneously,” Hendriks explains. “Wolves At The Door was getting a lot more rock and roll, which isn’t like what this album is. James went to New York for a while, he had this beat machine on his iPhone, and he was like, ‘You should try this out’.” Hendriks was initially skeptical about moving into electronic production. “I’d tried using drum loops before, and I just didn’t understand how they worked. I didn’t do electronics; I wanted to stick to playing guitar. And then I was fiddling around with a few different programs, I’ve been recording with ProTools for a while, and now I’ve got Ableton and stuff like that, so I got my head around a few kind of programs but I’d never experimented with that kind of sound because it wasn’t Wolves At The Door. And then it just came together.”
Hendriks’ music is unassuming and confessional. Prior to Holland Sky’s release, her Soundcloud consisted of three tracks carved from bone - Tired, Ghost Fire, and Waiting - but these alone sourced her gigs all the way up to opening for Chet Faker. While other bedroom artists (hey Youth Lagoon) exploit lo-fidelity to mask a lack of vocal capability, Hendriks’ voice is the centre of her work; an exposed, beating heart surrounded by scratching and twitching. Holland Sky’s minimalism breaks music down to Hendriks’ voice, and affectations thereof. It’s music drawn from her emotional state over the course of the past year, she explains. “I was going through a weird time at the start of the year. I channeled all of my… I won’t say anger, because I’m not a very angry person, but maybe creative frustration or something? Things weren’t happening, and I put all my effort into music, and started making beats,” Hendriks says with a smile. “And I was like, ‘This is quite enjoyable’. Within two weeks, I had the basis of an album, and songs just kept coming out. I have no idea how. I guess I built them on all these different programs.” A collection of feathers and circles and shapes hang from Ash’s neck, ringing as her hands work with her mouth to explain her music. “Oh, those?” she says, after I point them out. “It’s just some jewelry I designed.” After a little prompting, she elaborates. “I don’t have much experience as a drawer, but I draw them and then I get someone else to make them, and then we sell them online,” Hendriks confesses, as if moonlighting as a jewelry designer while making experimental music is the most natural thing in the world. Leure is as humble and measured as her music. WHO: Leure WHAT: Holland Sky (Inertia) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 24 August, The Bird
SIX DEGREES OF SUCCESS DODGING THE STUDIO Millions have leapt out of the gates at a gallop since forming little over a year ago. Dominic Haddad fills Brendan Telford in on their whirlwind ride.
The Bonniwells’ John Waddell explains to Doug Wallen the importance of recording live and at home.
E
ven by garage standards, The Bonniwells’ new album, Sneeze Weed, is noisy, raggedy and crusted over. But what’d you expect? It was mostly recorded live to four-track in the lounge room of singer-guitarist Marck Dean, keeping things super raw despite some choice melodies peeking through the slacker rumpus.
I
t was only 12 months ago that local garage pop collective Millions won the coveted triple j Unearthed slot to open the 2011 Splendour In The Grass festival, the last of its kind at the excellent Woodfordia grounds. The quartet have used the experience as a springboard to bigger and better things, incorporating many support slots into their busy schedule and are now preparing to launch their debut EP onto the masses. “It’s been surprising, I don’t think any of us expected it to go anywhere,” Dominic Haddad modestly states. “We started Millions as a bit of fun, so we’ve been lucky to have gotten this far.” Luck has nothing to do with it of course, as the boys have relentlessly plied their trade both in Brisbane and down the east coast, forging a tight group dynamic, a notion that Haddad espouses as being a major contributor to their collective success. “We’ve always worked well together, and we tend to react to each other’s strengths without effort, which is rare. Ted [Tillbrook – guitar] and Campbell [Smith – bass] hadn’t played their instruments for very long; Ted used to be a drummer and Cam used to play the keyboards. But they’re best friends and everything seemed to gel really well together between them, which we kinda fed on. I think that’s why it worked so quickly from the start; they knew their place in the band, which has made everything very easy.” Their Nine Lives Six Degrees EP was recorded six months ago, and it showcases the quartet at that early stage, their exuberance and excitement in playing together shining through. With half the tracks already familiar to their fanbase through favourable airplay, it’s the perfect time to have something tangible that represents the band. “The songs [on the EP] have been in our live set for some time and are very familiar to us and to those who’ve come to see us,” Haddad agrees. “We’ve been writing new material that heads in a slightly different direction, that shows where our songwriting is going, but the EP is really important 16 • THE DRUM MEDIA
for us now. It’s been quite frustrating to be playing so many shows and not have a CD for people to take home. When people are asking for stuff and you have nothing to give them, it becomes a lot harder to retain them as a fan. We’re looking forward to finally having something for people to listen to.” The impending release coincides with Millions signing with Stop Start Music. Haddad acknowledges that timing is key and that the move seemed the best fit for the band. “They really like what we are doing and are aware that we are still progressing as a band. Rob [Giovannoni] has been our booking agent at Select Music and everyone at Stop Start are incredibly positive and understand where we are coming from. It’s been great.” Millions have come into their own at the same time as other Brisbane bands such as Last Dinosaurs and The Cairos, who mine the same creative seam. Haddad feels that rather than create rivalry, it has helped to form some inseparable bonds. “I think that because we are all the same age and we are really good friends with the guys from Last Dinosaurs and Gung Ho, all those guys, we’re likeminded people of the same age at the same time. It’s created this supportive thing where we all help each other out, we all share the same goals and interests, we all like what each other is doing, not just focused on our own thing. It’s a great time to be in a band in Brisbane.” WHO: Millions WHAT: Nine Lives Six Degrees (Stop Start/EMI) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 7 September, Amplifier; Saturday 8, Rottofest, Rottnest Island
“It’s just more fun to record that way,” reckons bassist John Waddell. “We’ve never really liked the studio. It’s always uninspiring and really dry. Nothing like the crackling garage sound of tape and just turning up loud and playing in a living room, as opposed to recording stuff separately in a studio.” The album also echoes the live show, which was important to Waddell: “That’s another thing. I don’t like listening to records of bands [where] you go and see them and they sound completely different. It works for some people, but we definitely didn’t want to be like that.” Rounded out by singer-drummer Zac Olsen, the Melbourne-Geelong trio weren’t confined to just Dean’s house for recording. They tried a few other spots and even went to Sydney to work with Straight Arrows’ prolific Owen Penglis (Royal Headache, Palms). But only two of the 14 songs cut with him wound up on Sneeze Weed; the rest can be heard on the tape, Sunny Brick, and the upcoming four-song 7”, Yesterdaisy, both on Geelong’s Anti Fade label. Speaking of which, there’s another tape on the way, with Sneeze Weed on one side and Sunny Brick on the other. As scrappy as it is, Sneeze Weed marks an evolution from The Bonniwells’ 2010 debut, Unprofitable Servant, simply because it’s 11 original songs, whereas that one was just 20 minutes, including several covers. “We don’t even play covers live anymore,” says Waddell. “That first album was recorded two days after our first-ever show; hence the covers and not having much original material.” Although all three members hail from New Zealand originally, they didn’t meet until they were all hanging around Melbourne. Olsen moved to Australia at age eight, while Waddell and Dean are both from Wellington but didn’t know each other there. They formed The
themusic.com.au
Bonniwells around three years ago, after Olsen had filled in as a drummer for Waddell’s previous band, Last Gypsys, and Waddell had started playing bass on some new songs by Dean, also of Bleached. “Zac tagged along one day and started playing drums,” Waddell recalls. “It just worked, from the first little jam.” Dean now plays in Geelong’s Ausmuteants as well, and Olson plays in not just Frowning Clouds but also The Heirophants and what Waddell calls a “politically incorrect surf band” named The Towelheads. If Waddell doesn’t juggle any other bands himself right now, it’s because he’s busy booking the Grace Darling on Smith Street, where he ran the bar for several years. “I might be having some relaxed jams with some of my old bandmates from Last Gypsys, but I don’t know where that will go. It’s just for fun.” Same goes for The Bonniwells, despite an increasingly full dance card that sees them launching Sneeze Weed on successive weekends in Melbourne and Sydney before heading off to Perth for the first time. Their tunes are ramshackle fun in the most enjoyably immediate way, as if nothing could rattle these guys. Check out the amiable I Smiled Yesterday, or the shoutalong Ms Anderson. Crack Man almost sounds like an impromptu jam, burbling along to gangly rhythms. But again, that’s garage for you. And there’s no questioning The Bonniwells’ pedigree, considering they’re named for Sean Bonniwell of the classic California garage band The Music Machine. “We just were really stuck for a name,” Waddell admits, but the reference will appeal to garage fans, even if others might be left scratching their heads. “Lots of Australian people pronounce it Bonnie-wells,” he adds. “People call us the Bonnie Doons by accident. It’s become Australianised.” WHO: The Bonniwells WHAT: Sneeze Weed (Z-Man) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 24 August, Velvet Lounge; Saturday 25, Dada Records; Sunday 26 Mojo’s