As the band looks towards reuniting with the Australian scene, bass player Joel Tyrrell attributes part of this homegrown success to a few factors; UNFD’s strong marketing efforts for their last album Dissonants and strong touring, including a near sold out tour coming this February. However, heavier music has its own pulling power – an energetic performance has the potential to market itself.
“For most of us in the band, heavy music isn’t something that at least I’d listen to on a regular basis; it’s not my favourite type of music at all. If I go home and I’m writing music, I’ll be doing something like a funky, bluesy-jazzy number,” says Tyrrell. “However playing this kind of heavy rock music live, the feeling of playing in a room with all this energy, I don’t think there’s any kind of music that has that intensity or emotion to it. Playing it live gives it new meaning – nothing else we’d play would be as special or full on.
“Some of the comments we get are that we always look happy when we’re playing to a crowd – probably because we are really happy. It’s not that we’re putting on a show or putting on a face, we’re enjoying what we do. We get lost screaming at each other or screaming at the crowd because we’re getting so into it. Every show is going to be unique in its own way, including with crowd interaction. Lately the crowds are getting bigger and the crowds are singing back and we’re really enjoying that. If we have the ability and potential to keep performing like this, we’ll keep running it while we can.”
Tyrrell touches on an urge for Hands Like Houses to re-integrate with the Australian market – their strong start in the US has caused the band to, in part, see themselves as an American act. With larger changes to the back end of the band on the horizon, they’re learning to respect themselves as a business – not so much in a money-making aspect, but more in oiling the gears so things run smoothly.
“When we first started playing, all we wanted to do was play music,” says Tyrrell. “It’s still all we want to do, but considering how rapidly our career has built we’ve needed to take time to question how we run things. We’ve always been hands on and dealt with a lot of stuff that other bands wouldn’t get involved with to give ourselves the best chance to do as well as we can. Part of that is in developing relationships with new people. We want to have a good reputation within the industry as you never know when it’ll help you get a tour. We’re trying to piece together how we fit in it, how we can exist in it, in a way that’s natural to us. It’s taken some time but we’re slowly getting there.”
In between a vigorous touring schedule and the plan for re-evaluation, the band are also coming to realise that their own positivity and mental health on tour are important factors for a happy touring life.
“Mindset can change how you view things,” says Tyrrell. “It’s very easy to take the negative road, but I think if you can look at each situation differently and you talk to other people about issues, it can change the vibe of the group and how everything works. If one of us goes down then it’s pretty evident the group will suffer so we all have to be honest with each other and communicate what we want. Essentially that’s why we’ve sat down and said we need to maximise in terms of how everyone’s mental health is going to be and how everyone is going to perform. It’s this growing up thing. I think we’re becoming adults, which is weird to say.”
By Thomas Brand
