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6S & 7S Deep Blooze Sea

THE WHIGS

With the help of his new band 6s & 7s, 2007 WAMi Song Of Talk Of The Townies The Year winner Josh Fontaine has produced one of the year’s most captivating local releases - Choose The Sentinel Hailing from Athens Georgia, neo-college rockers The Whigs Blooze. DAVID CRADDOCK spoke to Fontaine ahead of the have always held strong ties to their place of conception. band’s album launch at The Rosemount on Saturday, July 3. JENNIFER PETERSON-WARD spoke to frontman Parker Gispert who confirmed the influence of their musical-Mecca Fontaine says of distinctive sonic palette that the whole album draws on. “Once something didn’t hometown on recently released album In The Dark.

6s & 7s

6s & 7s are not a band that are scared of reverb and echo. Every corner, nook and cranny of their expansive debut swells and thunders with a cavernous production value. It’s like putting your ear against a tiny hole in the ground and hearing The Beach Boys jamming in a concrete maze hundreds of kilometres below. “We found a tonal quality that we just splashed on everything,” 6s & 7s songwriter Josh

have it, it really stuck out. We’ve had to throw it over everything. I guess the philosophy or idea behind having this sound for the album… it’s meant to be a bit dreamy. Something a bit nocturnal; a little bit David Lynch-ian perhaps.” Indeed like the cycle of sleep itself, Choose The Sentinel Blooze begins at dawn and ends at dusk. The album’s lengthy introduction Drunk Liberties rises with cricket, bird-song, and an uplifting chord change, while closer Drunker Liberties is a balmier or, as Fontaine says, “crepuscular” affair. “It’s not my favourite by any means,” Fontaine explains of the tracks, which were originally one song that was split at the seams to book-end the album. “It’s one I used to play as a solo artist and they were kind of lonely times – not just from an on-stage aspect - but there was a period of life where there was some kind of hermitage that was occurring. It became the soul of the heart of the album I think. It’s not necessarily my favourite song, or the one that encapsulates everything, but it has a grace that I found sort of summed everything up.” Light and dark is a dynamic explored right throughout the release, both musically and emotionally. The playfulness of Todd Rundgren, the brass and string arrangements of Randy Newman and the big vocals The Beach Boys are cited as influences, but Choose The Sentinel Blooze is by no means a wildly experimental or off-puttingly whacky – there are still plenty of shiny, summery hooks and pop melodies hidden just beneath the dark swelling waves. “Yeah, well they aren’t all good days are they,” Fontaine jokes of the way even his upbeat pop numbers can have melancholy to them. “I try to balance the sad and the happy somewhat, even the way that they’re stacked [on the album]. If there’s maybe two sad ones in a row then something will come along. There is an element of chronology with that also. I wanted to it to have ups and down, just like the way you’d mix a set.”

As The Whigs’ vocalist, Parker Gispert attests there’s certainly something in the water in Athens, Georgia. Recognised as the epicentre of the early evolution of the alternative rock and New Wave genres, the southern city is well-known as the home of chart-topping bands REM and The B-52s, as well as the birthplace of several hugely successful indie rock groups including Neutral Milk Hotel and Of Montreal, and is also the hometown of psychedelic garage rockers The Whigs. “It’s a small town run by a very artistic community,” Parker explains, “There’s a college, so there’s always lots of kids, bars and clubs to play in. It’s not a place where there is a ton of entertainment other than bands, so it creates an environment where music is really encouraged.” Recorded in a small studio in downtown Athens, with good friend producer Ben Allen (Animal Collective), Gispert speaks fondly about small-town rivalry. “There’s a clear divide between the people who live in town and the students who reside in the colleges on the outskirts of the city,” he continues. “There is a playoff between the two, kinda like a long-standing traditional opposition.” Despite emerging from the student contingent, Gispert explains that The Whigs’ third LP In The Dark blossomed when the band embraced a maturity that came from a growing awareness of their surroundings and a willingness to merge elements from both camps. “We came to realise that the ‘artistic townie’ aspect of things was important because it’s crucial to be true and credible to your art,” he explains. “But also, at the same time, we were writing music knowing that we were primarily going to be playing it in a bar to a hundred drunk 20-year-old kids and we didn’t want to be party poopers, we wanted everybody to have a good time at our show. This album is our attempt at being introspective and being artistic, but also

being aware of our surroundings and knowing how to put on a good time.” While The Whigs continue to present garage rock heavy on hooks, riffs and swagger – breaking guitar strings and drumheads along the way – Gispert explains that there is a wider range of textures and tones present on the new record. “It’s a little darker than the last couple,” he says. “It’s still an upbeat rock record; it’s not a dreary record per say. It’s just a little more moody.” However, despite the depth and complexity which differentiates In The Dark from their previous two records – 2005’s Give Em All a Big Fat Lip and 2008’s Mission Control – Gispert attains that the fundamental Athens musicmaking ideology still remained at the forefront of production. “As artists we’re always pushing ourselves to try new things, to do things a different way,” he concludes.“And with this record we wrote songs in a way we had never written them before, but it was always in the back of our mind that we would be performing them at home, and that desire to entertain which comes with being an Athens band really drove where we were going.”

The Whigs

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