“It’s definitely got a challenging side to it. When we got on Warped, a lot of the bands that we’re touring with were like ‘congratulations!’ first of all, but gave us a lot of tips and tricks on just being prepared for the amount of work,” he says. “It’s a long tour with long days and often you have to battle the elements. So it can be 46 degrees like it was in Vegas the other day, and right now it’s wet and cold, so you’ve got to be prepared for everything.”
Although the demands of such a tour can be draining for even the most seasoned bands, for Hands Like Houses it’s an opportunity of a lifetime. “Basically, you do long days, but at the same time it’s such a rewarding thing to be able to see so many bands you enjoy and look up to. And just hanging out backstage after sets and between sets and having people pop up on the stage just to watch your set is a pretty cool feeling.”
Scoring a spot on one of America’s premier punk-rock festivals is just another landmark which has seen the Canberra boys rise dramatically through the ranks, thanks largely to their signing to US label Rise Records at the end of 2011. This was promptly followed by the release of their debut album, Ground Dweller, in early 2012 which gained the band a bunch of accolades as well as an ever-growing fan base. Now on the eve of the release of their much anticipated follow-up, Unimagine, Hands Like Houses used everything they had experienced over the last year or so and channelled it into the writing and recording of the new album. “I think a lot of it has been learning to find our own niche,” says Woodley, reflecting on the period since their signing to Rise Records. “I mean we travel – we spend three, four, eight months away from home at any given time. We’ve got, I guess, different directions in life; a couple of us are engaged, a couple in serious relationships and some of us are just enjoying being young. So it’s six different people, six different value sets, six different priorities and just trying to figure out a way that still allows you to be creative and still be on the road for a long period of time. So we’ve learnt a lot about ourselves and that kind of echoed into the record.”
The expectations which comes with being on a label such as Rise Records as well as the demanding touring schedules could quite easily prove overwhelming for any young band. Although Woodley is candid that the band has had to learn how to best deal with the constant pressures of being a full time touring band, at the same time they have also developed a growing confidence as a musical unit, all of which helped them in the creation of Unimagine. “In a lot of ways, there was a lot of pressure at that time between tours just to spend some quality time to actually get the album cranked out,” he says. “[But] we had more confidence so we didn’t necessarily have to spend months in preparation going over every tiny detail. In the end we did end up doing that, but in the studio in the weeks leading up to it just getting everything fine-tuned.”
For the recording of Unimagine, Hands Like Houses turned to producer James Paul Wisner, who had previously worked with the likes of Underoath, Paramore and The Acadamy Is. It was a partnership which allowed the band to find their musical direction, as well as helping them to use all they had learnt and experienced over the last few years to the best effect. “I think [Wisner] really helped identify some of the arguments we had initially,” says Woodley. “We wanted to make a bit more of, I guess, an emotional connection with this album, so that meant giving different instruments and different parts their own space to breathe. You know, re-arranging a lot of parts and alternating parts and it just helped to kind of give everything room to shine and everything room to have that emotional connection for each part of the song.”
BY JAMES NICOLI
