“We definitely had stuff to start working on. We’d had a couple of really cool studio sessions while we were touring, just different little periods where we had two weeks off here and there, and I’d always been working on my laptop.”
A major issue band’s face when recording their second album, particularly following an album as successful as Passive Me, Aggressive You, is meeting the public and industry expectations for an extension of the first release. However, Powers explains that his personal projections for the album were actually more demanding than outside pressures. “I think maybe the hardest thing about doing the second record was my own expectations of myself; the things that I wanted to do, the things that I wanted to achieve for me. I didn’t want to repeat myself, I wanted to feel like I’d done something decent the second time.”
The obvious path to follow up Passive Me, Aggressive You could have either been rehashing the same formula or hiring several pop producers to make an album full of radio-oriented singles. However, In Rolling Waves is self-produced and Powers gives details of the band’s artistic determination. “We definitely had this drive and this plan and this energy, we’re very much in control of everything that’s happening with us, then eight months later we were like ‘ok, here you go record label this is what we’ve got, this is where we’re going’.”
Considering the chart success The Naked and Famous experienced with their debut, they might alternatively have looked to shun the mainstream affiliation, but Powers states they’re completely at peace with the position their first record launched them into. “I didn’t feel at any point like abandoning anything that I’ve achieved, either did we as a band. The aesthetic appeal that we’ve created, we’re very proud of it. The idea of building on that takes more conscious thought than simply saying ‘oh I hate everything on the first record,’ which is a temperamental and volatile thing for musicians to say.”
Powers elaborates that he has no inclination to dismiss anything they’ve created and hopes to maintain a positive relationship with their fans, while also expanding the band’s palette.
“I feel privileged and grateful to all the fans that love our first record and I hope that this record is exciting for them and also new to them like it is for me. There’s definitely no sense of abandoning anything, it was definitely about building-on and going forwards, which is more challenging I think.”
It could be hard to get away from comparing the fortunes of the second album to the first album. Powers admits that he gives thought to sales figures, but says they aren’t really a relevant concern when composing music. “I think if I had the formula for how to write the perfect commercial pop song then I would have just cashed in, but I make music that I feel challenges me and excites me and I think that we’ve made a record that people will connect with.”
Rather than shying away from commercial appeal, Powers explains that gathering and maintaining a widespread fanbase is actually a paramount intention.“I don’t believe when artists say they just do it for themselves, because if they were doing it for themselves then they wouldn’t be on a record label and they wouldn’t have management and they wouldn’t be looking for an audience. I love the idea of having an audience. It’s more exciting than sitting in a room and making music for my own pleasure.”
Something else artists tend to get rather precious about is the genre labels that are projected onto them. Pigeon-holing bands in certain categories can strongly influence who pays attention to the music. Powers acknowledges this potential side-effect of being labelled but he doesn’t get seriously offended by how the Naked & Famous are classified.
“We get thrown in the synth-pop barrel and electro-pop and these kinds of very now terms. One side of me is like ‘oh that’s a bummer,’ because we’re really an alternative rock band and we do lots of heavy stuff and lots of quite emotionally driven stuff. At the same time it’s pretty cool to be included in a sub-culture of something that’s happening right now. To me, that’s kind of flattering, because the alternative was me back working my day job, living in New Zealand.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
