“It’s still very much Calling All Cars, I guess we’re just expanding our palette,” he begins his explanation, “it’s definitely more groove based. The whole mantra of the record was that we want to make people move more. It’s definitely that, that would be a good way to describe it, it’s more groove orientated as opposed to thrashing guitars the whole time. “There’s plenty of guitars there, it’s a guitar record,” he qualifies, “but it’s just more of a groove vibe, across the whole thing.”
Ing goes on to explain that the change in approach wasn’t planned or contrived, just the way it panned out, a ‘natural evolution’, to reluctantly use a tired old, but in this case appropriate cliché. Plus, it partly came as a result of changing listening patterns and tastes on the part of the members of the band.
“We’d written two really thrashy guitar based records,” he says, “fairly fast rock ‘n’ roll records, but by the time our second record came out, and we were really proud of those records, we weren’t really listening to that kind of music very much. I think that ultimately we just wanted to write a record that we wanted to hear. Not to say there’s not great records out there, but we just wanted this particular type of sound, and that’s what happened, what came out.
“It was an organic process, it wasn’t that we sat down and said ‘we want to change drastically’, it’s just what we wrote.”
More often than not, a new single generally means a new album is on the way, and in this case it’s no exception. And Ing tells us that most of the rest of the record follows this new direction to a certain extent as well.
“Yeah man, it’s basically done,” he reveals, “it’ll be early next year. We’ve got a new label, a new vibe, and everything’s kinda really exciting. It’s all coming together. It’s not quite as sonically different as what Werewolves is, but it’s definitely got an underlying theme of that…that was our whole thing, if I go to a gig I want to dance, you know? We want to make people move without them really knowing it. So the album has definitely got that theme running through it for sure.”
And regarding the people who have heard the single, and even the full album, reactions have been slightly mixed, however most have fallen on the positive side, with just a few of those aforementioned vocal majority voicing their dissent. They are determined to take the negativity in their collective stride.
“It’s been super positive, but then with a few viciously negative things!” Haydn laughs, “but that’s what happens when you commit to putting out a song that’s quite different to anything you’ve put out before. That was something we were totally prepared for, and the polarising thing, we’d take that any day over people just kind of going ‘over them, meh, whatever’, that kind of attitude. But ultimately, it’s been great, man! It’s been better than we may have expected.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
