Eight months after the release of Yuck, Baker reflects fondly on the album.“The response was lovely,” she says. “Last year seemed to go very fast and we were busy in a lot of weird ways. You really just don’t know what’s going to happen. It kind of felt like a slow, steady burner this one. It wasn’t like a crazy response. It was nice and consistent. Maybe that’s a weird way of describing it, but that is what it felt like. And it still feels like that. I think that with the first album the response felt quite crazy, because we were new and it was quite a shock. With the second album, we were a bit more established, people knew who we were.”
There was a lot of hype surrounding the release of Yuck, with the expectations mounting after Alpine’s stellar debut. Although Baker acknowledges the perceived pressures of writing a second album, they didn’t overwhelm her. “I tried to totally ignore it,” she says. “For me, it’s been about writing music that we enjoy writing. The whole process of that is where the joy is. There definitely was that feeling of, ‘If we write a good album, then we will be able to tour and we can continue this momentum.’
“So there was definitely that playing on our minds. But no, I don’t think I felt the pressure. If you feel the pressure, it affects your writing and I didn’t want that to happen.”
Like many Australian bands, Alpine were given their first breakthrough into the scene thanks to the juggernaut that is triple j. And with the Hottest 100 just passing, it’s only fitting for Baker to show her appreciation for the national broadcaster. “Triple j is like this massive, powerful hand in getting bands exposed,” she says. “I don’t know what we would be doing if triple j hadn’t played us when we first put our music up on Unearthed. I think they played us within a day of us putting our songs up. It was just a phenomenal response, and that’s how we got our record label, our publishing deals and our management. Triple j is incredible, but radio stations in general are wonderful forces of nature [laughs].”
Alpine have spent the majority of the last eight months on the road spruiking the new album. A heavy touring schedule can be quite demanding for most bands, but Alpine have entered the summer festival season with a spring in their step. “It’s usually not too bad, because you’re playing on the weekends and then you have the week off,” says Baker. “It’s not too intense, and it has been great. I never want it to end; the summer festival season is just so fun. I just want to keep doing it forever, until I’m old and wrinkled.”
As for whether she prefers a festival stage to a headlining set, Baker says the latter is more testing as a band. “I actually sometimes feel more nervous for them, because at your own show there are people coming just to see you, whereas at a festival they might have just rocked up and caught your set. I think there is more pressure to put on a good show, which is good. I love it either way. It’s always an exploration of space, and when you’re performing on stage you’re always making things up as you go. You kind of react to the space that you’re performing in.”
BY MICHAEL EDNEY
