“It was very, very inspiring … really magical surroundings to do the record in,” says frontman Fyfe Dangerfield (full name: Fyfe Antony Dangerfield Hutchins). “It was just incredible and it definitely set the atmosphere for the record.”
During the making of Walk The River, recurring images of an individual coming into consciousness on an empty planet and that of returning to an undisclosed home were prevalent, which rendered the album’s creative journey a profound period of personal and artistic self-discovery. “I think life should always be a journey of self-discovery… I hope that never stops,” he avows.
Dangerfield enjoyed his break from the bustling, bright lights of urban living while recording Walk The River. “Part of the charm of it is there’s a lot less distractions and we’d go for walks,” Dangerfield relates. “We all lived in the same house together and at the end of the day, we’d still watch bad TV for an hour or so – there was a lot of bonding, talking about life and not having to go off and check emails. It just felt very immersive.”
The album’s title track features Dangerfield singing the poignant lyric, “And I’m still here / Holding on to nothing, man / Walk the river / Like a hunted animal”, and proved a defining moment. “It was probably the first track that we wrote that made it on the record ’cause we had a long period of writing,” Dangerfield explains. “We had a year or so before we started recording where we would just meet up every week a few times and I would be writing at home as well and bringing stuff to the band…
“It was one of those moments where you felt, ‘There’s something happening there’ and we all felt that there was something about it and its atmosphere. The album itself wasn’t gonna be called Walk The River until near the end… in retrospect, it makes perfect sense. You only join up the dots afterwards.”
Guillemots’ third album maintains an emotional potency and sonic clarity, as captured in I Don’t Feel Amazing Now, one of the record’s most movingly introspective tracks. “I Don’t Feel Amazing Now was a weird one – it was like dismantling this ornate thing and then piecing it back together as something a lot simpler,” Dangerfield ponders. “It had a real emotion to it; it was very important to keep that on the record.”
That the four-piece have managed to concoct a rather unique musical template can be greatly attributed to their divergent personalities, backgrounds and influences. Dangerfield remains pleasantly surprised by the ideas of his three band mates, Scottish drummer Greig Stewart, Brazilian guitarist Magrão and Canadian double-bassist Aristazabal Hawkes. Dangerfield reflects on what drew him to his band mates in the first place.
“I bonded with Greig instantly because he had an enthusiasm and sense of adventure about his music,” notes Dangerfield. “I quickly realised that when I played with him… he’s got his own spin on things – he’s just brilliant. I knew Arista for a while before she joined the band and she’s amazing – she feels everything that she’s playing.
“It was funny when I met Magrão because I’d been talking to a few different guitarists in London, trying to get everything going and finding it really hard,” Dangerfield recalls. “He’d seen an ad of mine and written his response in all funny small letters and capitals mixed up saying, ‘I saw your ad; I play the matchbox and the accordion and the typewriter’ and I was like ‘who is this dude?’ I was far more drawn to that than someone who said ‘yeah, I like Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin’.
“And the first time I met up with him, we met up after our lunch shifts at work and I could tell it was going to work. He had that really cool vibe about him. When he first came to my house to play, it was really awkward, though – probably even more awkward than if you brought a date back. But the moment he walked into my room and saw that I had all these old things that I had been collecting, he just starting playing them and I started joining in. So we were kind of making music before we were even trying to.
“It’s especially interesting with Magrão because I think probably more than the other two, the way he plays just grows and grows. Now he has a very different way of playing and he’s become enraptured with different pedals and things, especially over this past year. I guess it’s funny because I play guitar as well and Magrão does all these things on the guitar that I can’t understand.”
Guillemots are currently planning an Australian tour, which Dangerfield is notably enthused about. The singer/songwriter/guitarist also found the time to release a solo album, Fly Yellow Moon, early last year – considering how prolific a songwriter Dangerfield is, it’s no surprise that he constantly has a vast collection of new songs to put onto record: “I can’t really imagine a time when I don’t want to be putting stuff out and writing – it’s the way I live, I guess.”
