The factual background to Lost Animal is, as Quarrel tells it, simple. “It came about in late 2007, just after we’d recorded the St Helens album,” Quarrel explains. “I wrote the bones of about four songs one day, and then finished them off and recorded them over the next few days.” Quarrel took his fledgling solo repertoire to a few smaller venues and, buoyed by the audience reaction, set out about developing and refining the music.
While St Helens was received with critical acclaim, Quarrel knew very early on that Lost Animal would become his artistic focus. “It was pretty clear straight away that this would replace St Helens,” Quarrel says. “In some ways it was what I wanted St Helens to be from the get-go. I could write the songs alone, record it alone, and I didn’t have to be tied to particular arrangements,” he says.
For the title of his new solo project, Quarrel chose the truncated version of a phrase – ‘The Lost Animals of the 21st Century’ – that he’d used for some songs in other projects. “It’s been a running theme for a while,” Quarrel says. “I had actually toyed with calling St Helens ‘The Lost Animals of the 21st Century’, but it was too long for a band name. I decided Lost Animal suited this solo project – the idea of something from nature being thrust into an urban environment and getting lost,” Quarrel laughs.
Having written the songs that would eventually appear on the debut Lost Animal record, Ex Tropical, Quarrel made a notional list of musicians he admired, and whom he thought could help in bringing his songs to life. “I chose people that I trusted, and whose musicianship I admired,” Quarrel says. High on the list was mercurial local musician Shags Chamberlain (Pikelet, Smallgoods). “When we were in the studio I’d suggest ballpark sounds and a mood, and maybe give Shags a rough reference point for the bass parts,” Quarrel says. “I’d give him some ideas, and some he came up with himself. And I like everything he came up with – I was very happy for him to suggest stuff. He’s got the Midas touch!” Quarrel says.
For the title of the record, Quarrel looked to a seminal period in his childhood when he lived in the tropical environment of Papua New Guinea. “My Dad worked for a bank, and he was given a transfer to Papua New Guinea, so we moved up there with him,” Quarrel says. “We lived up there for a couple of years, and it was an awesome time. There was lots of time going out to reefs and snorkelling, and going to untouched islands, playing in discarded World War II planes, digging up bullets in the backyard,” he says. “It made a really big impression – it inspires a lot of freedom. They refer to cyclones being ‘ex-tropical’, so I decided that would be an appropriate title for the record.”
