The batch of 16 songs was cut down to ten to make up the band’s sophomore album. For Immigrant Union, good songwriting is paramount. In comparison to their debut, Anyway has more of a psychedelic undercurrent. Harrow and Lubulwa cite Spiritualized as a big point of reference. But tone and genre aside, they maintain that it’s all about the song.
“You listen to Nirvana or the Beatles, it’s always Kurt [Cobain] or John Lennon sitting at the piano or on a guitar,” says Harrow. “I’m not comparing ourselves to them, but we start our songs in the same way. Like, your girlfriend just broke up with you, instead of kicking the wall in you’re going to write a song. Shit like that.”
Case in point is the song Alison, one of the standout tracks on the album. When asked what that song’s about, Lubulwa whispers, “About a girl.”
“About a girlfriend,” Harrow laughs. “It’s a fairly sort of literal song saying like… ‘Fuck’. With the lyrics of Alison, I sat there and wrote it like I was writing a creative piece for English. Like, I’m going to write a story here and it’s got to be concise.”
As far as Immigrant Union are concerned, the art of songwriting is in capturing something at its most refined. They generally begin as campfire songs, and it’s only once they hit the jam room or the studio that other flourishes get introduced. This has been the approach since the band’s first EP. In fact, that’s how Harrow and Brent DeBoer (of The Dandy Warhols) started the band. They met at Cherry Bar while DeBoer was in Melbourne on the film tour for the documentary Dig! They got chatting and DeBoer invited Harrow to come away with him for a weekend. They spent a lot of that time passing a guitar back and forth, swapping songs. Their relationship grew, and when DeBoer eventually moved to Australia, Lubulwa jumped on board and the band was established.
Their lineup has constantly changed since their inception, at one point ballooning out to a nine-piece. They have now pared back to a core five, which has had an effect on the music. “The kernel of the song always stays the same,” Lubulwa says. “The songwriting hasn’t changed, it’s just what’s done to the song that’s changed.”
“Yeah,” Harrow agrees. “Instead of the fiddle, now we’ll have Gamma do like a fucking synth wahwahwahwahwahwah, and instead of a shuffle [he starts drumming in the air] it’s just a straight beat.”
Since establishing their current lineup – rounded out by bassist Ben Street and drummer Paddy McGrath-Lester – Immigrant Union have come into their own as a live act. Their original lineup included Courtney Barnett, Dave Mudie and Bones Sloane, who left when Barnett’s solo career picked up pace. There’s some hesitation to talk about Courtney. Not in a sour way, more in a ‘we’re sick of talking about it’ way.
“Everything’s always about Courtney, which is awesome,” says Harrow. “They were awesome, but we’re really stoked with the live thing at the moment because of [Street and McGrath-Lester]. It’s like you read shit and you’re sitting with them and you think, ‘Are you guys even in the band because you’re not mentioned here at all’.”
Immigrant Union are performing as part of ACMI’s Bowie Late Nights series on Friday September 4. There is a personal connection here: DeBoer once toured Europe with The Dandy Warhols in support of Bowie. They played stadium shows throughout, and once were invited on stage to accompany Bowie for a song. “Bowie still calls Brent ‘Fat Head’,” Harrow laughs.
BY GIULIANO FERLA
