And yet, one detail seemed slightly off. When questioned about plans for In Hearts Wake’s second album, Taylor had very little to report. Fair enough, we thought, maybe they haven’t had a chance to knuckle down on songwriting since Divination came out. But given the band’s prevailing good fortune, it seemed imprudent to delay their second record.
Oh, but what fools we were to take Taylor at his word. A mere four months after our conversation, In Hearts Wake rolled out their second LP Earthwalker. The album’s press release pointed out that it was recorded in late 2013, which meant that Taylor’s vague nonchalance was in fact a well-executed ruse.
“I think any dog with a special bone will bury it in a special spot out in the backyard and when it’s time they’ll share it with everyone,” says a good-humoured Taylor, 12 months down the track from Earthwalker’srelease. “It’s OK to tell a white lie when it’s for the greater good of the potency of a message.”
And boy did Earthwalker make a potent impact upon release; landing at number five in the ARIA charts and triumphantly surpassing the success of its predecessor. As a consequence, In Hearts Wake started playing bigger headline shows and their overseas profile considerably expanded, which suggested their next album would be a long way off. But, as it turned out, the full details of the band’s white lie were yet to be exposed. At the beginning of May 2015 – bang on a year since Earthwalker’s unexpected arrival – In Hearts Wake delivered their third LP Skydancer.
The back-to-back releases weren’t just recorded at the same time, but together they form a complementary conceptual unity. “I’ve got a knack for always being very ambitious with things,” Taylor says. “Whether or not I pull them off, it’s up to the world to decide. But it wouldn’t feel fit to release a record that was just a collection of songs. It really needed a focus, just an anchor point. You go to so much effort with all of this, from interviews to film clips to photo shoots to touring the world. So the concept provided motivation for us to really want to get this done, not just for ourselves but for the world and for our fans.”
Divination was also a concept album, with each track centred on a separate card in the Major Arcana Tarot deck (giving rise to songs such as Death, Strength and Judgement.) So, while the band were eager to capitalise on the success of their debut, the chief concern was with how they would advance artistically.
“There was a need to not just produce a product, but we had music flowing from us,” Taylor says. “We really wanted to get that down and get it out there. That was the motivation behind getting [these albums] together without taking time off. We were so dedicated to this cause and to really pushing as far as we could. It was a great achievement and it showed us that if we can do that, then who knows what else is possible.”
Indeed, one-upping an album like Divination was always going to be a tough ask, but Taylor’s ambitious streak encouraged him to tackle an even more elaborate concept. Put simply, Earthwalker is entirely focused around femininity, while Skydancer takes an in-depth look at masculinity. But wait, there’s more; rather than producing two distinct and separate entities, the albums link together to portray the complementary relationship between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
“They’re identified as mother and father because they’re two common energies we can all relate to in our lives,” Taylor says. “Everyone has been created from a mother and father and that’s why I think in native cultures there’s Mother Earth and Father Sky. Part of respecting those two energies is that you wouldn’t want to inflict pain upon your mother or your father and you therefore gain respect and love for both.”
With these two records, In Heart Wake have managed to encompass an exceptionally comprehensive concept while also presenting it in a cohesive manner. This seemingly hair-tearing task was made a little easier by the fact they didn’t need to divert from their regular method of composition.
“We always write for diversity,” says Taylor. “So Ben [Nairne, guitar] won’t write a very melodic song with lots of clean parts and then follow it up with the next song being almost in the same formula. He’ll always change it up and say ‘I want to write a really ridiculously heavy song right now.’ Obviously, the really heavy, more downbeat, hard, structurally rigid songs would be a lot less unpredictable. That to me would just go into the male category straight away.
“When it came to dividing the two albums, there were a couple of grey area moments, but for the most part I really felt a masculine vibe or a feminine vibe and so did the other guys.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
