The Necks continue to evade categorisation nearly four decades into their career.
The Necks famously don’t know what they are doing.
“People say we don’t rehearse,” says the band’s pianist Chris Abrahams. “Well, that’s kind of true, but it’s sort of like we can’t rehearse. There is no concept for that. All we can do is play.”
The Necks
- Thursday 29 January
- Melbourne Recital Centre
- Tickets here
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The Necks are nearing their 40th anniversary as a band. Across more than 20 albums and countless local and international tours – they’ve latterly been touring Europe twice a year – Abrahams, drummer Tony Buck and contrabassist Lloyd Swanton have more or less evaded categorisation.
The Necks are commonly referred to as a jazz band, a descriptor that makes sense if jazz is primarily understood as a wholly improvised form of music. Or, as critic Geoff Dyer wrote in his book Working the Room, it’s fine to call The Necks a jazz trio, “as long as this is immediately qualified by adding that they’ve completely re-conceived the idea of the jazz trio.”
The band’s predilection for amorphous, long-form improvisation has also seen their work referred to as avant-garde or post-rock, but neither tag feels accurate. Yes, The Necks’ music pushes past the conventions of rock and art music, but there’s nothing academic or theoretical about Abrahams, Buck and Swanton’s nightly excursions into the collective unconscious.
“We’re discovering stuff while we’re playing,” says Abrahams. “We kind of reach somewhere, to the acoustics of the room or the quality of the instruments or the quality of the PA, and suddenly really interesting things can start happening. I think we can convey that to the audience. If we knew what we were going to do, I’m not sure we could do that.”
The Necks’ entire way of working, both artistically and commercially, seems ill-suited to the demands of advanced neoliberal capitalism. And yet, with each passing year, the band’s legend grows. They’ve been called the “greatest trio on earth” by The New York Times, and a “post-jazz, post-rock, post-everything sonic experience that has few parallels or rivals” by The Guardian.
Their latest album, last year’s Disquiet, features more than three hours of music. The track Ghost Net alone goes for 74 minutes. But that didn’t stop The Quietus naming Disquiet one of its albums of the year, saying “there is a strong case” that it’s “the ultimate expression of [The Necks’] craft.”
Boomkat ranked Disquiet at #21 in its year-end list, writing that “Disquiet provides a complete Necks experience over three hours of focused, gripping experimentation that matches windswept, atmospheric ragas with twitchy, percussion-heavy prog and transcendent jazz.”
But the band members aren’t putting too much stock in all the superlative praise. “We basically do the same thing again and again and again and again,” says Abrahams. “And part of my philosophy with music is that things start to get really good the more you do them.”
The Necks formed in Sydney in 1987. They released their first album, Sex, two years later. The album is proof that the uncanny musical synergy between Abrahams, Buck and Swanton was there from the start.
“We were in our mid-20s and we’d all grown up in improvised music, jazz, modern jazz, post-Coltrane in Sydney,” Abrahams says. “But when we first started playing with The Necks, within two or three plays, we suddenly realised that there was a way we were playing together that we thought was really interesting – and we were taken to a place by playing it.”
The Necks will perform at Melbourne Recital Centre on January 29, returning to the venue just 12 months after their previous visit. There will be no rehearsals in the lead-up to the gig, and no stated intentions before jumping on stage. But Abrahams promises they’ll sound exactly like The Necks.
“The Necks aren’t a verbal band in the sense of we don’t give instructions to what we want to do,” he says. “I think there’s enough trust that Tony will do what he does, Lloyd will do what he does, and I’ll do what I do. And someone might have an idea along the lines of, ‘Let’s play something really quiet,’ for instance, and that will be about it in terms of the composition, so to speak.
“So, there’s no real room for us to state any obvious aim for the music we’re about to make. I mean, we’re deadly serious about what comes out, but we’re not trying to achieve a goal.”
Get your tickets to see The Necks at Melbourne Recital Centre here.
This article was made in partnership with Melbourne Recital Centre.
