“At the moment we’re just doing some videos where we have a whole bunch of friends coming in to record tracks off the album and we rearrange them a little bit. It’s for a video project. So far we’ve done them with Jo Syme from Big Scary and Nick Sowersby from Sunbeam Sound Machine,” explains guitarist and vocalist Daniel Moss, who despite persistent rumours is no relation to Cold Chisel’s Ian Moss.
Lead guitarist Ash Hunter expands on these high quality live videos, which are available on YouTube. “They’re the same songs as we recorded off the album and we just got some friends along to have a jam on them. They were both…” As Hunter is about to bathe Symes and Sowersby in praise I, A Man drummer and resident smart-arse Sumner Fish yells out, “Terrible.” This is received with chuckles all round before Moss rounds out the topic with, “We’ve actually done something with Jo before and Nick is pretty cruisy so he was really easy to work with.”
Gravity Wins Again is a joyfully consistent listen with Moss, Hunter, Fish and bass player Edward McKay all coalescing seamlessly. Moss explains that this harmony was achieved via communicating songs in a non-traditional way.
“We don’t talk about chords too much or anything like that. It’s more visual descriptions.” Hunter adds, “It’s about communicating emotions more than music theory.”
This tacit communication, one may infer, was made easier by the fact that Moss and Hunter have been in bands together since high school with Fish and McKay also being long-time friends and fellow Bay-side residents.
On I, A Man’s previous releases, You’re Us All EP (2012) and Fifteen Thirty Three EP (2011), there was a subtle dichotomy between the band’s ethereal shoegaze elements and more traditional rock sound. Hunter addresses how this consistency was achieved.
“We wanted to wait until we felt ready to make an album. And I think having a specific sound for the band is something that we have put a lot of focus on over the past few years, especially making sure this record sounded like one cohesive piece of work rather than songs stuck together.”
As Moss explains, a fairly brutal song selection policy was enforced to help the band achieve this sound. “There’s probably a fair few songs that couldn’t be on the album as they just didn’t work out. Either they repeated what another song was bringing to the table or they were pulled last minute, when we were sequencing the album, because they just felt out of place.”
So brutal was this regime that the song that album’s title came from, Gravity Wins Again, didn’t even make the cut. Moss now adds, “Also, this time, all the songs were recorded in the same place (The Alamo) with Tim O’Halloran and Dave Williamson, and mixed by Tim Whitten and then mastered overseas in Phoenix, Arizona by Roger Seibel.”
This weekend I, A Man are launching Gravity Wins Again at the picturesque Shadow Electric in Abbotsford Convent. Hunter enthuses about the show, “We’re really looking forward to this show; it feels like this album’s been a long time in the making. So it will be great to launch it in our home town at Shadow Electric.”
BY DAN WATT
