“Most of the time it’s just like ‘We’ve got a bunch of songs, let’s go and record them.’ This time it was a little different in the sense that ‘We’ve got some songs and then a bunch of ideas, let’s go in and record the songs and then work on the ideas.’”
Having been together for over seven years, communication between the band members has become fairly intuitive, allowing them to reasonably infer what each other is thinking or motioning towards. Crain explains that the group’s increased mutual understanding has given them confidence in the fruits of their more spontaneous explorations.
“There was a few songs on this new record where more or less what you hear on the record is the first or second or third take of just us improvising something. [By] now we’ve learned it and we’ve played it and we’ve structured it a little more by editing, but I think that’s what we were trying to capture, just the pure sense of us playing in a room… half of the new album is like that.”
It can be difficult to put your faith in material that appears without any major effort, but Crain indicates a spur of the moment outburst can give rise to songs with just as much depth as those that are studiously laboured over.
“There’s songs that we’ve toured on for six months and [they’re] still not done and we’ve made all these various endings or parts in the middle that we’ve taken in and out or deconstructed or re-arranged for months on end. Then there’s ones that where we’re like ‘Everybody feels good right now in this room and the mics are up and it sounds cool, let’s play,’ and it’s almost equally as nice to hear. It all comes back to one point, being [if] it feels natural.”
Threace is characterised by a lack of clutter and the record’s well-measured arrangements frequently induce a meditative state. Cave have subtly opened up more space in their music with each consecutive release and Crain emphasises that the band are determined not to meander into rock cliché.
“For us there’s always a time and place for somebody to step out and lead something but when it comes down to the core of the group it’s everybody trying to play as simple and as open as we can, which most of the time for us is not always about a lead or somebody doing an obvious thing. It’s about building the tension and getting the audience locked in and immersed and seeing how far it goes.”
Adhering to such an aesthetic of restraint could be challenging, particularly considering Cave songs often follow a core rhythmic motif or guitar riff for upwards of seven minutes. Crain admits that a good deal of patience is required to satisfy their artistic agenda.
“If it does variate and it builds tension, and it might speed up or slow down, that’s a hard thing to do and everybody’s got to stay focused, whereas it’d be easy if only half the band did that and half of us were just noodling around doing a solo or something.”
Next month Cave make their long awaited first trip to Australia and Crain explains that their live shows generally allow them to relax into the songs and conjure a sensually gripping sonic atmosphere.
“After I know a part, after I know what to do and it’s all based off of sound and how it feels with my hands, it’s easy for me to get immersed in it. I feel like I do at every show, at some point in the show or multiple times. Something will lock us in and I think if it locks us in and it keeps interesting us, our goal is that it keeps interesting the audience as well.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
