Faced with a dead spot in the timetable we eventually decide to have a look at what Kram from Spiderbait has been up to during the band’s hiatus. Mistake. From where we were it looked as though he has gone all Neil Young on us. Standing alone on the main stage with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, Kram was playing a fairly woeful take on folk crossed with country to a rather disinterested crowd when we arrived. The final straw came when he launched into an acoustic cover of The Ramone’s “Blitzkrieg Bop” in the same unlistenable style. I felt like someone had raped my ears, so immediately head over to the GW stage to see what Jack Ladder is all about. As we walk away it sounds like a full band is joining him but there’s no way I’m going back after the earlier atrocities.

Looking a tad uncomfortable guest fronting You Am I the previous day, Jack Ladder is far more in his element on the more modest McLennan stage. Possessing quite a remarkable and unique baritone Jack (real name Tim Rogers) serenades the crowd with his tales of heartbreak and loss. Ladder has a disaffected rock swagger and style that comes from a long gone era of music which draws heavily from folk, ‘80s indie and classic rock and blues, often all at the same time. Thank god for Spunk Records for continuing to bring us some of the most interesting names in Australian indie rock. Expect to hear a lot more in the future about Mr Ladder. (SD)

Constantly drawing comparisons in their native London to either Editors or Interpol, depending on which side of the fence you sit, must be hard for White Lies. To be fair we can see why after this set. It’s nothing mind blowing but the huge early Sunday crowd don’t seem to care. “Death” though shakes the last remnants of last night’s hangover from us and for that we’ll be grateful for the rest of today. (GT)

Jebadiah never really did it for me back in the day. The combination of their teenybopper fans and how irritating I found their single “Leaving Home” caused me to never give them much of a chance. Vocalist Kevin Mitchell, almost as if for my benefit alone, fooled me into listening to him by performing under the pseudonym Bob Evans. No one was more pleasantly surprised than I that he has dropped the nasally whine and started churning out Beatlesque pop gems. Live, Bob and his backing band have a much fuller and warmer sound than I was expecting. While the crowd assembled is by no means the size that his former band commanded in their heyday, he has a great pop sensibility, a fine singing voice and I wager a much better shot at not having to get a day job in the near future. Jebadiah are apparently returning with a new album soon, one can only hope that these new sensibilities and maturity carry over to them. (SD)

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Doves live round these parts and they don’t fail to disappoint. As festival veterans they know how to pitch their set perfectly, mixing just the right amount of new songs in amongst the old favourites. Opener “Jetstream” kicks them off and for the next hour they are absolutely faultless. There’s not much chatter from the boys but they soon let us know that they’ve just flown in from Japan so we’ll forgive them. The double salvo of “Black and White Town” and “Cedar Room” have us thinking this could be band of the weekend and when they round things off with “There Goes The Fear” there’s more than a few Cheshire-like grins near us — and why not? — the boys have played a blinder.

Quickly hot footing it across the site to catch some of The Gutter Twins we’re left a little under-awed by the size of the crowd. Maybe it’s the vast numbers waiting around elsewhere for the impending Grinspoon set but secretly we’re not going to complain at seeing musical luminaries like Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan at such close quarters. Lanegan’s voice sounds as whisky soaked as ever resembling a drone bass that perfectly underpins Dulli’s soulful tones. They don’t disappoint from the songs that we see and when they pull out Afghan Whigs’ “Summers Kiss” the sparse crowd is in raptures. (GT)

So, on the main stage tonight we have the privilege to be entertained by The Doves, MGMT, The Flaming Lips and Grinspoon. Did something sound wrong with that sentence? Let’s check that again. We have three bands who give a critically acclaimed widescreen take on modern rock and then we have Grinspoon. When was the last time a friend, whom you respected the musical taste of, turned to you and said that they don’t mind the latest Grinners album? Probably never I’m guessing. It is a little more than embarrassing, hell, let’s go one step further and call it a travesty that this is the best Australia can dish up to mix it up on the main stage with our international visitors. Same could be said for The Living End (we all know ARIA’s are worthless guys) and Birds of Tokyo.

Grinspoon, at best, are a limp, sub standard neanderthal take on nu-metal. In any other country in the world they wouldn’t even be allowed to roadie for any of the international acts playing. I know I am breaking the first rule golden of Oz music writing in outright lambasting a local band instead of writing an indifferent or moderate review, but someone has to make a stand about this. I realise that we should give our local talent a leg up and occasionally look the other way to get them to a level where they can compete with the big boys, but this is affirmative action gone mad. (SD)

Possibly the most hyped band of the weekend, MGMT really were never going to live up to their billing. It’s a shame for the band that they have to play to a crowd expecting a full on party live show, and what they get is a duck’s ass tight band simply playing great tunes. “Time to Pretend” almost tears the roof off the tent but until they reel out the rest of their singles everyone again falls kind of flat. From where we’re standing though it sounds pretty damn good and if only the expectations were a little less, then the crowd would be a little less disappointed. Not in recent memory (and we checked with a few folks on the way home) has a band been such a crossover hit and not ended up sounding blander than three day old rice. “Electric Eel” and “Kids” sound as great as you would expect but ironically it’s actually the album tracks that standout for us tonight. On record “Weekend Wars” and “The Youth” may not be distinct but here they are as strong live as anything we’ve heard flogged to death over the last year. Personally we’re hoping that this is the step to something much bigger for these guys but we can only think that with their next release they won’t be playing to anywhere near this size of an audience. (GT)

The Flaming Lips are pretty much the perfect festival band. They are a spectacle to behold and have the songs to match. Talking to random strangers this weekend it seems they are the must see band on every other person’s list. I’m not sure how many dead beats were watching the Hilltop Hoods play but it seemed like everyone was trying to squeeze into the tent as the Lips were gearing up to come on stage. If I was an 18 year old with little idea of who they were, I am pretty sure I would have found my next favourite band after this show. After a lead in tape of a psychedelic soundscape from their Christmas on Mars soundtrack the band emerge from the centre of a large screen on stage from a naked green female being’s vagina (yes you read that correctly), followed by Wayne Coyne crowd surfing over the crowd in an orb. Okay it was a transparent inflatable beach ball, but still.

Opening with perennial favourite “Race for the Prize” the sky fills with confetti and large coloured balloons which are thrust continually back into the air by the celebratory crowd. Any spare stage space is now occupied with dancers (in a very loose sense of the term) dressed as frogs and kittens. After a few minutes of vocal microphone hiccups the band are in full flight. Following up with new song “Silver Trembling Hands”, which is a total psychedelic freak out that bodes well for their soon to be released double album Embryonic.

Continuing with a handful of songs from At War With the Mystics including “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and “The W.A.N.D.”, they also play a stripped back “Fight Test” and dust off “Mountain Side” from 1990’s Priest Driven Ambulance. Closing with “Do You Realise?” mountains of confetti again fills the air and the whole place seems to turn into a hippy lovein.

The only gripe we have is the length. Limited to an hour, once you take away intro tape, inflatable ball, bugle solo and all the other trimmings that the set came with, you are left with only forty minutes or so of Lips’ music. Splendour organisers could probably take a leaf out of the Big Day Out’s timetable and allow headliners to perform ninety minute sets to accommodate this.

Or better yet allow Brisbane to have some sideshows. I read the explanation in the interview on this site but for the life of me between the size of the crowd watching them, the amount of people who travelled to Sydney and Melbourne to see them and those I know who wished that they could have seen them, I can’t fathom how a Flaming Lips show at the River Stage/Tivoli/wherever could have possibly lost money. When your run of tickets sells out in less than two hours every year before the full line up is announced it is pretty much impossible to cannibalise your ticket sales. This notion of festival exclusivity in Brisbane has to stop. Sydney and Melbourne resident’s have always had the option of seeing their favourite bands in a more intimate setting.

What hurts the most here is that the festival (at least initially) was started on the huge profits that came with Brisbane band Powderfinger’s success and is organised by locals, yet we are treated with the same contempt that we are shown by southern promoters every year. I urge you to stop passing us over on sideshows every year. You have a great festival going on here, in a lovely location, with a much friendlier crowd that is ten times more enjoyable to be at than the Big Day Out, it just needs a little tweaking to keep some of the Brisbane fans happy.(SD)

Splendour in the Grass (Day One) – Saturday 25 July 2009

Text: Garry Thomson (GT) and Scott Daniels (SD)
Photos: Marc Grimwade (Splendour in the Grass)

Okkervil River
The Zoo, Brisbane
3rd May 2009

“No one wants to hear about your 97th tear” offers Will Sheff, he of red beard, bookish glasses and shaggy hair, during tonight’s opening rhyme heavy “Plus Ones”. Oh but we do. We want to hear ninety odd minutes of heartbreak and loss, songs about self harm, child abuse, life on the road, groupies and unrequited love. Fans expect the extraordinary every time Okkervil River lurch into their town. They demand one of America’s most passionate, witty and engaging rock bands to sing and play with unbridled passion, not sated until Sheff himself sweats blood. And tonight, probably just a typical show on the Okkervil River’s punishing tour schedule, they got it.

True, Okkervil River, eleven years and five albums into their career, should probably be selling out venues bigger than the Zoo but the band seem happy with quality over quantity and the cosy environs suit the crowd too. Second song, the scathing “Singer Songwriter” has us worried when we can’t make out Lauren Gurgiolois’ lead guitar, but any fears it will be a repeat of last year’s Way Out West show are set to rest by the loud and lean riffs that accompany “All the Latest Toughs”. Her stage presence is still subdued, but the crowd naturally focus on Sheff’s wailing and alternating between thrashing and gentle strumming his acoustic guitar, although Travis Nelsen’s flailing arms and mop top behind the drum stool are also something to behold.

With virtually no filler in their catalogue a seventeen song set can’t capture everybody’s favourites (Webcuts was hoping for “President’s Dead” and “On Tour with Zykos” in particular) but it would be churlish to complain. Indeed the gig is split surprisingly equitably between the last three albums with around five apiece from last year’s triumphant The Stand In’s, its predecessor The Stage Names and 2005 fan favourite Black Sheep Boy.

The bouncy Motown bass lines of “A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene” and “Lost Coastlines” get the crowd grooving but it’s “For Real”, still a dark, vicarious thrill, and the ball to the walls anthem “Life is Not a Movie (Or Maybe)” which garner the most love. It’s refreshing then that the ballads, the wrenching rock star/groupie melodrama of  ”A Girl in Port”, and glassy eye inducing “A Stone”, match similar heights.

The highlights of the night are rightly saved for the encore; “Blue Tulip” combines both delicate folk and heavier rock modes with an acoustic beginning slowly building to a layered, cathartic second half that envelopes the Zoo in a thick haze of distorted bliss. Dishevelled and soaked with sweat the six piece have one more song, yes it’s the examination on the faceless nature of evil (and also a cracking tune) that is “Westfall”. Then they’re gone. The crowd bays for more but Okkervil River have to shed their tears on more crowds, including the Groovin’ The Moo regional festivals and southern states. 10/10 (Plus 1)

The fabulous Austin ones return to Australia this May for appearances in regional Australia as part of the Groovin’ The Moo festivals, as well as club dates in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.

Renowned for their vivid lyrical imagery, their infectious and bittersweet melodies, as well as their intensely passionate live performances, this tour marks the band’s fourth trip to Australia, but the first since the release of  The Stand Ins.

Tickets for club shows go on sale today, Friday February 27. 

Brisbane
The Zoo
Sunday May 3
Tickets from Oztix phone sales 1300 762 545,  www.thezoo.com.au, Rockinghorse Records (City), Kill The Music (City), Butterbeats (City & Valley), Bombay Rock (Townsville), Cooly Hotel (Coolangatta), Disasterpiece (Southport), Gooble Warming (West End), Great Western (Rockhampton), Moshpit Music (Maroochydore), Rockaway Records (Springwood), Sands Tavern (Maroochydore) & Sunflower Music (Broadbeach) 

Perth
Capitol
Tuesday May 5
Tickets from Mills, Planet, Star Perth, www.heatseeker.com.au , and www.moshtix.com.au

Sydney
The Annandale Hotel
Friday May 8
Tickets from the venue, online at www.annandalehotel.com, and over the phone on 02 9550 1078

Melbourne
Billboard
Sunday May 17
Tickets from www.billboardthevenue.com.au , Moshtix (www.moshtix.com.au or Ph: 1 300 Get Tix (438 849)) and Polyester

Okkervil River are also appearing on the Groovin’ The Moo Festival. Go to www.groovinthemoo.com.au for more information.

Okkervil River The Stand Ins & The Stage Names albums out now on Spunk Records

Expectations are always high when Andrew Bird releases an album. This is largely due to Bird’s sheer consistency: he’s yet to release a dud album, and Noble Beast is no exception to the norm.

I was immediately interested to hear where Bird was going to go on this album: he’s been to so many places already. Noble Beast is an album full of insects, natural disasters and human nature, and is less conventional than its predecessor Armchair Apocrypha. In some respects, this album harks back to Bird’s excellent 2005 album Andrew Bird and The Mysterious Production of Eggs: Noble Beast sees Bird’s eerie whistling return to prominence, and is noticeably less electric than Armchair.

Noble Beast is a complicated album that lacks any real resemblance of a verse/chorus/verse structure. Bird’s fantastically detailed violin plucks and strums weave over his Theremin-like whistling, and his lyrics are a series of convoluted wordplays. Heck, at times Bird isn’t just playing with words, he’s playing with syllables: who else could come up with the line “From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans, Greek Cypriots and harbour sorts who hang around ports a lot”?

Bird manages to strike a balance between using words predominantly for the way they sound, and managing to convey a piece of himself in them: on the track “Effigy“, Bird closes with the contemplative lyric “Like the words of a man who has spent too much time alone”. Despite the sometimes ridiculously elaborate lyrics (see “Nomenclature“) one would struggle to find a musician truer to themselves than Bird: Noble Beast draws you in and leaves you feeling an emotional connection to the songs.

Bird branches off into some new territory violin-wise on this album, and it is obvious that his talents in the area continue to grow. Noble Bird is not just about pizzicato (playing a violin more like a guitar, a trademark move of Bird’s) – he heads boldly into some country fiddling on “Effigy“, and the album concludes with a goose-bump inducing finale, which sounds like it has been lifted from the soundtrack to a particularly dramatic film. There are plenty of high notes, too – the swirling violin and flamenco-ish handclaps of “Master Swarm” are a highlight.

This album is absolutely a ‘grower’ – Noble Beast is complex and dense, and as a result, it takes time to reveal itself. Initially there’s so much going on it seems impossible to really appreciate the songs for anything other than an elaborate (yet thoroughly pretty) mess. There was always something, though, making me return to this album over and over: a part of me that knew this album simply needed a bit of effort, and a bit of work. It paid off, and I’m thankful to Andrew Bird for not giving himself up easily.

Kelly Ventress

The Austin boys in Okkervil River are back with another album and like always it’s filled with surprising stories, dense lyrics and great tunes that stick with you. The Stand Ins sees the band explore the issue of stardom and fame from different perspectives including those of groupies, porn stars, ex-boyfriends and ageing pop stars.

Few bands reference pop culture like Okkervil River do. The Stages Names’ “John Allyn Smith Sails” told the story about the end of poet John Berryman’s life and “Plus Ones” referenced a number of different songs from the likes of David Bowie, Nena and R.E.M.. The Stand Ins instead touches on the life of Jobriath, a failed glam pop star from the ’70s, in “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979″, and continues the story of Shannon Wilsey’s troubled life. On the last album we heard from the mother or father of Wilsey, a porn star that committed suicide, in “Savannah Smiles”. This time over singer and lyricist Will Sheff gives Wilsey herself a voice in the beautiful “Starry Stairs”. With phrases like “Safe behind a TV screen/I let them pry, pick apart and hang up to dry almost every piece of me”, you can’t help but be moved. The horns suit the subject perfectly and give the piece a touch of sleazy soul.

“Blue Tulip” and “On Tour with Zykos” both focus on the issue of groupies, a topic which the band had previously explored with “A Girl in Port”, but like “Starry Stairs” the perspectives have been changed. “…Port” was from the rock star’s viewpoint; now the groupies get to have their say. Both songs showcase Okkervil’s more subdued side, displaying a gentler pace with a predominance of piano although the guitar solo in “Blue Tulip” is spine tingling.

“Lost Coastlines” is more up-beat, featuring a bouncy bass line and a guiding melody, and definitely the highlight from the first few listens. The duet, between Will and former keyboardist Jonathan Meiburg, is captivating and is supposedly about the band evolving without Jonathan who left to focus on Shearwater. There can be no better way to part than this. Despite an engaging narrative about fame and pretention “Singer Songwriter” intially grates, the accompaniment seems too dense and layered, and the country influences are a bit overwhelming. However upon repeated listens it begins to make sense and the harshness of the song dissipates to the point that it may one day become one of the stand outs of the album… that is if the shimmer from the “Lost Coastlines” ever fades.

The Stand Ins, Okkervil River’s fifth full length album, is very much the companion to last year’s The Stages Names. According to Sheff the band first envisioned The Stages Names as a double CD which might not have been such a bad idea as while this disc does stand by itself if you take away the three instrumental interludes, which are all under a minute and more a teaser of what could have been, you are only left with eight songs. Create a playlist of your favourites from The Stages Names and The Stand Ins, create your own track order or hit shuffle, and you’ll have one killer album.

Lisa Hallquist

Never has a record so wrong-footed me like Evil Urges has. Louisville’s My Morning Jacket were always a band with broad influences in their sound. 2005′s Z was the strongest indication that their fret-tapping southern rock roots had run their course. Playing a solo show in London to promote the album, singer James brought?out an omnichord, looking like a kid with a brand new toy. My Morning Jacket gone electronic? The reality wasn’t quite so simple, but the results proved to be their best album to date. As experimental as this album was, it has nothing on Evil Urges…

Where Z pulled some new moves and delivered, Evil Urges is an awesomely confounding record. It’s not quite Kiss Unmasked, but Jim James without his cloak of reverb, pushing out a falsetto vocal is an altogether unexpected moment. Even with the reassuring knowledge that this is the new My Morning Jacket album, you could swear this is a weird rock band with a curious Prince fixation as they do on the title track, James explaining these “evil urges” as being “about how all of these things that you‘ve been told are evil really aren‘t, unless they‘re actually hurting something or somebody.” Ah-huh…?

The ardent My Morning Jacket fan will be aware of the extent of James’ influences, where on a previously released collection of demos and early recordings a young James covers the Pet Shop Boy’s ‘West End Girls’, so it’s not a stretch of the imagination for the band to record an electronic track like “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream” with its stuttering syncopated beats, itself sounding like a continuation of Z‘s “It Beats 4 U”, but for them to suddenly want to sound like Cameo on the stupefying electro-funk of “Highly Suspicious” is almost like an attempt to thwart all expectations and thoroughly fuck with the fans heads.

A change of scenery may be to blame, with the band recording the bulk of the album in midtown New York away from the farms and familiarity of Louisville, Kentucky. James expressed a desire to deliberately try to shake things up, and given the almost alien surrounds of New York to that of Kentucky it’s obvious to what effect its had, especially on the first half of the album. The second half though is more familiar My Morning Jacket territory, uncomplicated by keening techno wizardry and in its place is some regular rock and roll and simple balladry. Looked at as such, Evil Urges is an album with two distinct sides that both sit uneasily when balanced next to each other. Quirky funk/r&b vs. Southern country/rock.

“Sec Walkin” oozes Nashville country with its pedal steel guitar. The succinct doo-wop pop of “Two Halves” is layered with some gorgeous harmonies. “Librarian” is appropriately the quietest moment on the album, James alone on guitar, with hearts in his eyes for the local librarian, complete with a sweet chorus that intentional or not, is worth a giggle or two. “Aluminum Park” and “Remnants” are the big head-shaking jam band numbers full of buzzsaw guitars and choppy riffs. If it weren’t for the 8 minute extended mix of “Touch Me I’m Going To Scream” which closes out the album, you’d have almost forgotten about the misjudged falsetto funk of the opening tracks.

Despite all appearances Evil Urges does sound like My Morning Jacket’s most outward attempt to gain wider recognition and distance themselves from the regular Skynyrd Southern Rock pigeon-holing. There’s a maturity with James’ song writing and there’s still that keen sense of rhythm and melody from an incredibly focussed band that aren’t content to rewrite the same old songs. If it weren’t for the throwaway “Highly Suspicious” and the feeling that they were trying to push the bar a little too far, Evil Urges could’ve been a contender.

Spoon
Centre Stage, Atlanta, GA
14th April 2008

It’s Britt Daniel’s birthday but you wouldn’t know it. There’s no cake and candles, no rambunctious behaviour or jokes. You’d be expecting the band to be soused and swaying, playing covers and celebrating the occasion, using the opportunity to cut loose. In fact Daniel looks embarrassed as the audience participate in a singalong and the affair is swiftly swept under the carpet and the show continues on. Spoon are seasoned professionals now. Having existed on the fringes of wider acceptance and acclaim, it was as probably as much surprise to the band as anyone when the cards stopped being stacked against them. Their most recent album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga only solidifying their position as indie superstars, and the audience in attendance recognise this in spades.

Despite excuses to live it up a little, the band play a safe set, breaking ice with “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”, the opening track from 2005′s Gimme Fiction and then moving into two tracks from 2003′s Kill The Moonlight, which seems strange for a band to wait until the fourth song before playing something from an album they’re currently promoting, pairing up the hip-shaking “Don’t You Evah” with the shuddering ambience of “The Ghost of You Lingers”. They momentarily drift out of the safe confines of fan favourites to play a cover of Paul Simon’s “Peace Like A River” which is unexpected as it is odd, a song that the college-aged crowd would be hard pressed to place and even within Daniel’s influence it’s a curious choice.  The brass-absent “The Underdog” receives the loudest of cheers with Daniel affording himself a wry smile in what is probably the bands largest Atlanta show to date. These days it’s more of a truism than a cliche, but it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll and I think he’s more aware of this than anyone.

Set

The Beast and Dragon, Adored
Someone Something
Stay Don’t Go
Don’t You Evah
The Ghost of You Lingers
I Summon You
Finer Feelings
Peace Like a River
Chips and Dip
Eddie’s Raga
Don’t Make Me a Target
They Never Got You
Everything Hits At Once
I Turn My Camera On
The Underdog
My Mathematical Mind
Black Like Me
——————–
I Could See The Dude
Rhythm & Soul
Fitted Shirt
Small Stakes

Chris: Joining us on the phone on Static this evening it’s a great pleasure to have tracked down Jim from Spoon soaking up the Annandale’s surrounds no less. How are you sir?

Jim: Good sir. How are you doing Chris?

I’m doing alright. I’m glad to have Spoon back again. You must know your way around these parts by now. Do you get around in Sydney Ok?

Yeah, you know I get a map and wander around. It’s not bad.

I think every time Spoon has come here you have played a different venue though so you are probably crossing a few off your list as well.

Yeah, exactly right. It’s good to play the Big Day Out and everything. It is the first time we are actually on that tour, so we’re excited.

All this Australian touring for Spoon comes on the back of what was another pretty busy year in the States for you guys as well, right?

Yeah, we have pretty much been touring since about March. So it’s been a long time.

And you think that sort of relentless tour schedule payed off last year as well? The album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was the biggest success you guys have had. It was like a charting American record, right?

Right. We’re really happy with how everything has been going. But for us it has been a gradual sales increase. Every record since Girls Can Tell has basically doubled in sales so it’s been a sort of gradual thing from our perspective.

Every person that bought the last album tells two friends or something? Do you think that is how it works?

[laughs] That is how it works I guess, yeah.

But it also speaks volumes about the groundwork that you guys have done, doesn’t it? I mean, is it nice to see it paying off in some ways?

Yeah exactly. Especially in the States we get zero radio play so it is basically all from touring and word of mouth… That’s it.

Given you’re this far in to the band’s history now — when you guys turn up to make a new album do you pretty much have an idea what the record will sound like, and what pieces will fit where? Or is it still a lot of tinkering?

Well, I think it is a lot of tinkering. The other thing is the way the record is going to sound is based solely on what Britt’s writing at the time. It depends on what he’s bringing to the table and we figure out how to approach each song.

Is there much trial and error in assembling the versions of each song that is going to be on the record?

Yeah, there is. For instance, I think for “Cherry Bomb” that was version three or something. We recorded it with a couple different people, we tried it a bunch of different ways and that one was the happiest with.

So do you or Britt wake up in the middle of the night and go “I know! It needs horns”?

[laughs] Yeah exactly. Usually Britt does that.

I mean, even a song like “The Ghost of You Lingers” is quite sort of spartan in a lot of ways. Was there ever a rocking version of that?

Actually no. That one we liked just pretty much how the demo was and Britt stumbled upon that chord progression when he was just practising one day. He put a song around it and yeah, I think it is a pretty adventurous song

And is it hard to resist putting more and more layers on a song? It always seemed to have been that the less is more approach seemed to have worked for a lot of Spoon stuff. Do you take stuff off as much as you put on in the studio?

Oh yeah, we take a lot of stuff off. We have flamenco guitar on “Japanese Cigarette Case”. I think we had five or six total tracks of that and we probably used three seconds of it.

So does the flamenco guitarist still get payed the full amount though? This is what I want to know.

Oh yeah, he does, he does.

Another song on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga that you rounded out with some studio chatter was “Don’t You Evah”. Was that the first time you put that much talk on a record?

I think so. There was actually more that I wanted on there but it was getting a little out of control. But one of the things about that is that we record on analogue tape so every time you hear the song you start hearing all the chatter and the banter and the noises and when you start mixing the record and you take those away it feels empty, just because you become accustomed to hearing all those different sounds. So it’s sort of an organic process. We do strip a lot a way but it does become part of the song for us.

Yeah, and I mean that studio chatter sort of leads into a song and gives it a bit more of a room feel. So did you have some huge compilation of all the finest studio jokes that you guys had made over the years to then chop up and put in “Don’t You Evah”? Was it much of a composite?

No, those were all done live pretty much where you hear them. You know, they’re on Britt’s vocal tracks, they’re on percussion tracks, and they just happened to fall where they are. It was not a past compilation or anything. It was all live when we were tracking the song.

I was wondering if there was ever going to be a strictly Spoon banter album somewhere down the line?

Yeah, exactly. I wonder if the record company will allow us to fulfil our obligations with that one. [laughs]

Have you captured a few zingers in the studio? Have there been many jokes that you guys have made that have missed tape then Jim?

Yeah, I don’t think my lawyer wants us to talk about those though.

Well you guys in Spoon also seem to keep a pretty watchful eye on the business side of things. For the last album, Gimme Fiction, you gave Matador a try in terms of releasing it in some territories but then you haven’t gone with those guys again. It is important for you to keep an eye on the ball? I guess Spoon is a band that learnt that early on with the troubles that you had with Elektra.

Yeah right exactly. We’ve always had our hand in everything and we felt that was the way you… no one is going to look out for the band except for the band, you know? We are always looking for different labels and things like that because you just have to see what’s out there.

I’m guessing that a major label would never have let you to name your album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga as well.

Oh yeah, they would have. I don’t think we would ever go to a major if they wouldn’t allow us to do whatever we do.

Was that a hard sell to anyone, calling the album that?

No, not at all. We thought it was pretty cool and ballsy. We didn’t really realise what some people would think the name was. I guess we should have thought a little bit more about it.

Did people think it was some off-the-cuff babble or the fifteenth letter of some outer space language or something, were they?

Right, right. Do you know where the title comes from?

No, do tell.

Ok, well “The Ghost of You Lingers’”, the second song on the record, working title was “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga”. Seven Gas.

Because of the way the song goes?

Yeah, the piano. So you spend five months in the studio and little things amuse you and we used to get a kick out of that. And when Britt changed the name we’re like — hey that would be a good album title.

Has it been sort of important for you guys in Spoon to experiment in different ways the last few years as well? Britt did some soundtrack work, he scored the movie Stranger Than Fiction. Was it kind of good to open things up a bit since you guys have working together for so long?

I think so. I mean, Britt’s always been really good at, sound scapes and sounds in general and it was probably good for him to do that.

So you weren’t upset and looking for some Steven Spielberg movie to get your claws into or something like that?

No, no, not at all.

I thought that in most musicians after awhile there is always a frustrated soundtrack composer that thinks he needs to come out.

[laughs] Right. Maybe that’s me. I haven’t tried it yet.

Maybe there are other bits that you could do as well. Because in a minute we’re going to have a listen to something else that I guess Spoon has dabbled with for the first time — which is you guys got the current essential accessory which is the Diplo remix.

Oh yeah, ok.

So has there always been a bit of a hip hop sort of side to you guys waiting to get out as well maybe?

Maybe. We love that stuff. We are looking for people to re-mix “Don’t You Evah” and he wanted to do it which was great.

Are you ever worried about farming those things out to see how they come back? If you have so many versions of your songs when you’re making a record it must put a bigger spin on it to give it to someone else to see how it turns out.

Yeah, totally. But you know, with a remix you can take them with a grain of salt. People understand that it is a different interpretation of the song and it’s not something that is going to go on our record. So we are cool with it.

We’ll let you get on with enjoying the mean streets of Annandale until you have to play later on this evening.

Yeah, yeah well thanks for talking.

That’s alright. Have yourself a great show. I hope you get everybody on stage tonight. You’ve got a horn section and everything. It is a much smaller stage than the Enmore theatre so good luck.

I know, we’ll need it.

Thanks Jim.

Thanks Chris.

First broadcast on Static on 24/01/2008. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3FM) and via the internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

Austin post-rockers Explosions in the Sky have been weaving their instrumental magic for almost ten years now, releasing four revered albums and one soundtrack over that time. During their recent Australian tour Static’s Chris Berkley talked to Chris Hrasky drummer with the band about creating their last disc, All of a Sudden I miss Everyone, the Friday Night Lights soundtrack and curating the upcoming All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.

It’s nice to finally have Explosions in the Sky here Chris. It’s taken awhile; you’re in Brisbane this evening. Are you sound checking as we speak?

We just loaded in our gear and we’ll probably be sound checking here in the next little while.

Do you ever get nervous about what a venue will sound like for you guys? I imagine you would be pretty picky about the sound and the acoustics and how they will affect the Explosions in the Sky sound. Does that ever weigh on your minds?

I guess, sometimes. But we are generally pretty easy going guys and we’ll try and make do with whatever room we are in. Although this place (The Zoo, Brisbane) seems like it will be pretty nice.

I guess also that this far into the band now you must have had all the worst things that could have been thrown at you already happen by now right?

Yeah, although you never know something even worse might happen someday but we’ve had our ups and downs on tours for sure.

Have you guys ever turned up to a venue where the PA’s been run by a mouse in a cage or something and have you wondered how you were going to get your sound out to everybody?

Yeah, or showing up to places where there is no PA and stuff like that but we tend to just deal with what is there and we are just happy to play. We don’t get to uptight or angry for stuff like that.

So heaven forbid you know that Explosions in the Sky acoustic might happen — but apart from that you’d do alright.

[laughs] Yeah, exactly.

As well as taking quite awhile to get here you even took your sweet time in making the last album All of A Sudden I Miss Everyone. Was that a long and drawn out process itself, to get to that record?

Well after the record before this one we just toured and toured. We got a little burnt out from touring and seeing each other everyday for months and months. So we took a bit of a break for awhile. And then when we are home we tend to be fairly lazy so it took us awhile to get going and getting into a process where we were productive. We tried for a few months and were coming up with stuff that we weren’t really that interested in. For us to write records it’s generally a pretty long process just because, I don’t know, it is just the way we work. It just takes awhile. There’s no sort of front man in the band so it’s not like some guy comes in and says “ok here is the song, lets learn it.” It’s much more this process of the four of us putting something together and it can take a long time but ultimately that is the way we prefer to do it.

I actually heard that you guys had done some versions of this album and then sort of aborted them as well. Is that right?

Yeah, we wrote a bunch of stuff that we didn’t like over a few months and sort of just threw it away and started over from scratch. That seems to happen every time we work on a record, I think it is just part of the way we do things. It is basically a trial and error-process for us.

How spontaneous then are any of the takes that end up on an Explosions in the Sky albums? Is it stuff that you played through a thousand times or do you sometimes have some happy accidents in the studio that you get down on tape?

There is always some sort of happy accidents but mostly when we go into the studio we have the songs written, we know what to do and we play them. There’s not a lot of improvising in the studio just because it costs money then.

So going in there actually makes you not quite so lazy and you get your shit together when go to record.

Yeah exactly

The other thing I guess that drew out the process was that in between the last two albums you guys scored a Hollywood-film. Where you initially bewildered to be approached to do the music to the football-film Friday Night Lights?

Yes, we were a little bewildered. Not for the reason everyone assume (because it was a football move), but it happened to be based on this book that was a true story that actually took place in a town where the other three members of the group grew up. So they are very familiar with that world that it portrays the sort of West-Texas football insanity.

We were bewildered that a studio would contact us to do music. It was very strange for us.

Were any of you guys in Explosions in the Sky then high school footballers? Is there a jock element to the band?

No, no one was into football. I think we would have been brutally crushed on the football field.

Did doing that music then sort of discipline you guys to make your music fit a scene or correspond to what was on screen? Was it a very different kind of process than writing normal Explosions in the Sky material — having to put it to this movie?

Yeah, it was very different but it was actually a lot easier than writing songs for a record. It is ultimately background music, you are really there to service the scene as opposed to make this music stand on its own. It was actually not a particularly stressful or difficult task for us to do. It was a lot easier. We were a lot less hard on ourself when we are actually making a proper record.

So you learnt that people like John Williams and Danny Elfman etcetera just coast through life?

Yeah, [laughs] I don’t know if we are quite at that level. We just plug in some reverb pedals and what not.

Another thing that you guys in Explosions in the Sky have done this year is that you are adding another talent to your résumé in becoming music festival coordinators.

Yes.

After here you go to curate the All Tomorrow’s Parties in the UK. Was that much more of a fun phone call to get — to get to throw together a music festival of your own?

We’ve played the festival before and we are kind of friends with the organisers. We’re always kind of whistling in their ear a bit that we would love to be one of the curators. This year they asked us and that was basically it. We sort of put together a wish list of bands and passed it over to the festival people and they go and ask.

So there must have been some late night in the van conversation about making your ultimate festival wish list? Did you get most people that you wanted?

Yeah, we definitely got a lot of the people that we really wanted on the list. There are a few various reunions and things like that that we couldn’t pull off but for the most part we’re really excited about it.

I noticed that you got some of the home town favourites like You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead and Okkervil River playing with you and you got some hip hop represent with Ghostface Killah and Raekwon. There is one name that is missing off the list — I noticed that you guys didn’t ask Smashing Pumpkins?

Yeah, I don’t now if they would do that sort of festival.

You actually supported them in America last year, right?

Yes we did, just this last fall we toured with them for about a month in the States.

How did you pull through that?

Again, it was pretty easy actually. I don’t know, whenever we get involved in these big time operations it ends up a lot less stressful than as opposed to a headline tour. You just show up and play for half an hour and there is not a whole lot of pressure on you. If people don’t like it fine, if they do it’s great too.

You didn’t have any rabid Smashing Pumpkins fans flipping you the bird or throwing things at you when you were playing then?

No, not so much. We did pretty well I think. The Smashing Pumpkins fans were pretty nice to us.

I’m pleased to see that it hasn’t resulted in you guys suddenly shaving your heads or wearing silver dresses on stage or anything like that.

No, no nothing like that.

The pomp and circumstance hasn’t hit Explosions in the Sky just yet then?

No, not yet. Maybe in a couple of years, we’ll see what happens.

When the hair starts to go I reckon do the Billy Corgan — go Kojak!

Exactly

We might let you go to do some sound checking there in Brisbane right now. Thanks for the talk and have fun!

Thank you.

First broadcast on Static on 14/02/2008. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3FM) and via the internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

It’s almost an established fact that once a band hits album number 4 or 5 they’re practically running on empty. Creative juices have all but dried up, different directions are attempted, band friction comes to the fore and as the years go by each new release just isn’t a patch on former glories. There are of course, the anomalies, the bands who seem to have an inverse relationship to this theory. Spoon, thankfully, happen to be one of those bands. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (to be said quickly) is album number 6 from this Austin, Texas (now Portland, Oregon) quintet and all-round faux punx/gentlemen dudes.

“Don’t Make a Target” is frontman Britt Daniel at his most direct, pounding his fists and venting a little Texan frustration at the Bush administration. It’s an obvious opener, carrying that classic Spoon jerky guitar/pounding piano motif, sounding like it could’ve easily appeared on 2005′s Gimme Fiction. Politics in pop ain’t my thing, but if you allow your ears to get lazy, it almost sounds like he’s singing “Don’t Make Me Retarded” which works for me too. The haunting ambience of “The Ghost of You Lingers” is the sound of too much prescription medication and nights alone, the two disparate voices weaving through a shuddering soundtrack, pining for the familiar and oozing nervous anxiety.

“You Got Yr Cherry Bomb” is the flipside of “Lingers”, coming across all suave and self-assured, handclaps,tambourines and ooh-ooh vocals, talking about how you cut yourself loose from your lady and then admonishing her for not letting go. It’s a charming metaphor, but it makes you wonder if there’s an aggrieved lady out there who’s listening through gritted teeth. “Don’t You Evah” is the only song not penned by Britt Daniel, coming via defunct Brooklyn band The Natural History who Spoon befriended. This song, along with “Rhthm and Soul” and “Eddie’s Raga” form the crux of the album and also highlight just how far Spoon have evolved away from being a straight-out guitar led rock band. “Eddie’s Raga” takes this one step further with it’s reverb heavy dub reggae groove.

Britt on-stage at London’s Borderline last month confided to the packed crowd that the Jon Brion-produced single “The Underdog” was almost left off the album, and I can see why, as its bright, swinging mariachi feel and positive candour detracts from the dark and edgy stance of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. It’s not without its merits, most of all highlighting what an asset drummer Jim Eno is to this band. Closer “Black Like Me” is Britt walking home in busted shoes, asking for someone to take care of him, offering this quasi-ballad in return as night falls. It’s got that lazy Kinks feel to it, all acoustic guitar and percussion until the drums rise up and the playful piano seques into the Beatles “A Day in the Life”. It’s a perfect closer to one of the finest albums by Spoon to date and one of the best albums you’ll hear all year.