NO REST FOR THE WICKED
It’s been quite an ordeal waiting for The Laurels to get their debut album together, but as guitarist-vocalist Piers Cornelius explains to Steve Bell, good things (hopefully) come to those who wait.
F
or years now young Sydney staples The Laurels have been fixtures on the nation’s stages, blowing people away with their accomplished marriage of noise and dexterity, but it was only last month with the release of their debut album Plains that they had a substantial recording to show for their efforts. Their 2011 EP Mesozoic was indeed a fine taster for what lay ahead and contained some monster riffs, but with Plains they upped the ante and have taken things to a whole new level, the record a fitting physical encapsulation of all that they’ve done and achieved so far in their short career. Now that their long-player is on shelves – or in clouds or on playlists or however else is music is disseminated and consumed these days – it’s time for them to take their distinct aesthetic to the people, something that the burgeoning quartet couldn’t be happier about.
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“Yeah, it’s really exciting,” co-vocalist and guitarist Piers Cornelius admits of finally having Plains out there. “We’ve been waiting for the album to come out for such a long time, so it’s a pretty big relief for everyone. We’re just really excited that people will finally get to hear it, and we won’t have to spend three hours every gig we’re at saying, ‘It’ll be out soon!’ – that’s all we seem to get asked, we never seem to get to have proper conversations with anyone, it’s just, ‘When’s it coming out? When’s it coming out?’ kind of thing.” There’s a lightness of tone to Cornelius’ voice which makes it clear that he hasn’t really been vexed by this expectation from The Laurels’ fanbase; who in their right mind could be bothered by people clambering to hear your art, especially at this stage of a career? But he’s definitely glad that they took their time. “In retrospect probably [I’m glad we waited], but while we were working towards putting out the album it was a bit frustrating,” he admits. “We’ve always been wary of being one of those bands who put out an album really early and then they decide that they don’t like that kind of music anymore, and that they totally want to change their style and sound before they do their next album. It was a bit frustrating not being able to put anything out, but we’re also happy that the thing that we’ve put out first is something that we really like. And we won’t look back in a couple of years and think, ‘What were we doing?’” Once Cornelius and the rest of The Laurels – co-frontman/guitarist Luke O’Farrell, bassist Conor Hannan and drummer Kate Wilson – did indeed bunker down to record Plains, they took the time to
articulate their vision for the album, which for them was to transcend the delightful racket of their live sets. “We discussed it quite a bit, which led to some pretty tense rehearsals,” Cornelius recalls. “But we just figured that we’ve been playing so long and everyone’s seen us so many times, that if we just put out a record that sounded exactly like how we do live then it wouldn’t be very exciting, it would probably sound boring and we’d probably sound bored if we were doing that on record. So we just wanted to make one where it didn’t really sound that much like our live show, and used a heap of clean guitars and guitar tones and stuff, compared to when we play live and it’s all feedback and distortion. We wanted it all to sound like a lot of our favourite records, where everything is given its own room to distinguish itself. We were just trying to make a record that sounds like our favourite ones I guess, and not something that you put it on and two minutes later your housemate will walk in and tell you to turn that noise off!” Guitar tones have always seemed an important part of The Laurels’ arsenal, and they did an incredible job on Plains, giving each song its own disparate feel. “Yeah, I guess we’ve always liked really bright, sort of trebly chiming guitars,” Cornelius ponders. “And we have quite a ridiculous amount of guitar pedals, so that’s something that we’ve always been interested in. I think it’s something that you have to be interested in a lot of the time. If you go in to record and you leave that up to the producer, then you probably won’t ever end up with an album that you’re happy with. So we always take that into consideration, yeah.”
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things as well. It was fun working with him.” The Laurels had already built up a solid following on the back of their hard work ethic plus a slew of great high profile supports in both Sydney and beyond – they’ve shared a stage with such acts as Swervedriver, Low, Wooden Shjips and The Black Angels to name but a few – but they still didn’t feel any external pressure leading into the recording sessions. “The only pressure we had was put on us by ourselves, just wanting to make something that we were really happy with,” Cornelius tells. “If you worry about all of that external stuff it distracts you, and I doubt whether worrying if other people will like it is the right thing to do. There was a bit of pressure that we’d put on ourselves to make something that we were really proud of, but we didn’t factor in how we’re viewed because of all the supports we’d done – we didn’t even give that a second thought, we’re just stoked to get to play with all of these bands that we love. Other bands probably hate us because we’ve been pretty lucky, but we just love getting to see our favourite bands up close.” Of course they do, because it’s obvious that the members of The Laurels are complete music nuts – in the best sense of the term – with a combined palette far broader than the ‘shoegaze’ genre that their dreamy soundcsapes so often find them lumped amidst. “If you asked us all to nominate our top ten albums we’d all probably have one shoegaze record in there, probably maximum,” Cornelius laughs. “There’s so much stuff and it’s always shifting, I don’t even really know where to start. Sort of
“IF YOU’RE REALLY INTO MUSIC YOU WANT TO GO OUT ON MUSICAL QUESTS AND DISCOVER THE MOST AWESOME STUFF YOU CAN – WHEN YOU’RE A MUSIC-HEAD, THAT’S INBUILT.”
For Plains The Laurels decided to once again team up with producer Liam Judson (Cloud Control, Belles Will Ring), who’d done enough with them on Mesozoic for them to decide that he was indeed the right person to helm their debut long-player. “On the EP we only got to work with him very briefly, probably on about two or three of the songs,” Cornelius continues. “It was great working with him and he knows a lot of the sounds that we were trying to go for, and he’s very positive in the studio – everything that you want to try out, he’s totally into trying that with you to see how it goes. I think that he’ll probably nick a lot of those ideas for Belles Will Ring, but that’s okay, he did show us some really cool
anything from the early-‘60s trebly stuff like The Byrds or The Beatles, and we’ve started to listen to hip hop recently and stuff like Curtis Mayfield and Blur and The Las... I feel bad naming bands because everyone in the band has different tastes. “Obviously we’re always listening to music, and sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed by how much great stuff is out there, but I don’t think we really listen to bands to incorporate them into our sound – it’s just because we like listening to them. Maybe subconsciously it rubs off a bit on some of our songs, but we don’t trawl through record stores for bands that we can rip off. We all listen to so much different
CALL OF THE OUTBACK
For part of the tracking for Plains, The Laurels decamped to a property near the Hunter Valley in rural New South Wales, with unintentionally hilarious results. There was a flooding incident which found producer Liam Judson crossing a surging causeway in his underwear to save the master tapes, and also some neighbourly interference which helped put a damper on proceedings. “The first night we got there we spent all day setting up, and we had a timeline and had been hoping to finish bass tracks for three songs on the first day, and then the next day we’d get all of the rest [of the rhythm section] done, and then that would let us work on our guitars and vocals for ages – everything revolved around allowing Luke and I to do our thing properly,” Cornelius laughs. “But on the first day we got delayed travelling up there – car issues – and we ended up arriving much later than we expected, and then we spent a little while setting up the drums and everything, and just as we were about to commence the first take of the first song the phone rang, and it was a neighbour from a property about a kilometre away but directly level with us on the other side of the hill, and she said, ‘If you guys don’t shut up I’m going to send my husband around to shut you up!’ So we were sort of expecting not so sleep for a week and spend twenty-four hours every day just laying down stuff, but unfortunately we ended up having to stop our recording time at about half-past five or six o’clock every day so we didn’t get killed by her husband!” music but I couldn’t imagine it any other way, listening to the same thing over and over again would suck. If you’re really into music you want to go out on musical quests and discover the most awesome stuff you can – when you’re a music-head, that’s inbuilt.” Speaking of musical quests, do The Laurels have any plans to take their music abroad now that they have such a perfect calling card? “We’re pretty keen to try and go to the US I think, but it’s all unfortunately dependent on getting a grant because we don’t have enough money to fund it ourselves,” Cornelius reflects. “We have very tentative plans to go there, but if that doesn’t end up happening then we’ve already got most of the songs that we want to put on the next album written, so I guess we’ll start rehearsing those and get ready to go back into the studio. It would probably save us a lot of money if we didn’t go to the US, but going there would be pretty fun. I haven’t really thought about it too much yet to be honest, we’re just really excited to have an album out and it’ll probably hit us soon that we have to be doing things beyond that.” WHO: The Laurels WHAT: Plains (Rice Is Nice) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 17 August, Beetle Bar