The strength of Kingswood’s Change of Heart EP – released in 2012, but re-released in a deluxe edition with Ohio in 2013 – saw the band playing the country’s biggest festivals (Big Day Out, Splendour in the Grass, Pyramid Rock) and supporting Aerosmith (“I didn’t realise how badarse they were. Steven Tyler swore more than any young band I’ve seen”). All this before releasing their first full-length record.
Unleashed last August, Kingswood’s debut album Microscopic Wars showcases the band’s versatility and shifts effortlessly from invigorating QOTSA-summoning rock to soulful piano ballads while abounding in bluesy grooves and soaring melodies. It’s no surprise Microscopic Wars was nominated for ‘Best Rock Album’ at the 2014 ARIA Awards.
Despite an early passion for music, Linacre lacked confidence that it could turn into a career. “No one told me that I could,” he says. “I had a nice moment when I saw Midnight Oil at The Forum and I went backstage afterwards. I think I would’ve been 15 or 16 and Rob Hirst said, ‘If you want to do music, then that’s what you got to do. If you have music on the side or hope that something works out, you’re never ever going to make it. You have to say, ‘This is what I’m going to do’.’ That was an inspiring moment. And now we’ll be playing The Forum, so it’s a nice full circle. I might try to invite him along… I haven’t spoken to him since, so he’d probably forget that story.”
Although Linacre grew up singing a lot of Aerosmith and hearing “all these big, wailing guys,” he regards Otis Redding and Ella Fitzgerald as his favourite singers of all time and reveres Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys and Tame Impala. “I really like bands that are good musicians as well,” states Linacre. “You can be in a thrashy rock band and have a catchy song and it might be fun to dance to, but it’s not my thing. I like people who take a lot of care with being creative, recording and getting really interesting sounds. It’s really intricate behind it all.”
Before the formation of Kingswood, Linacre immersed himself in the local punk rock scene (playing in bands with drummer Justin Debrincat) while Laska studied piano, classical and jazz at the Victorian College of the Arts (bassist Jeremy ‘Mango’ Hunter played in a jazz band with Laska). “Alex is one of those really talented musicians and I feel very lucky to be in the band with him and the other guys,” says Linacre. “There’s no straight way of writing songs in Kingswood. Every song is different, but the common one would be Alex bringing in an idea for a song and we’ll bust it out together. I know he’s been working on some new stuff as well, so I’m really excited to hear what he’s come up with when we get back into rehearsal and writing songs.”
Kingswood always wanted to work with award-winning producer/sound engineer Vance Powell (Jack White, The Raconteurs), mostly due to their shared love of Jack White’s Blunderbuss, which Powell engineered and mixed. Fortunately, Powell heard their EP and got in touch with them. “We all grew a lot from being in the studio with him,” says Linacre of recording their debut album with Powell at Blackbird Studio in Nashville. “Whatever musicians and creators we were before we went over there, we left as if we had years and years of experience in just three months. He has this ability to make you feel fearless and be able to take an idea to its extreme and to feel comfortable doing that. We made a far more diverse and creative album than we would have without him because we didn’t know what to expect. Because we’ve been around for a while and we’ve done big festivals before we had an album out, we wanted to make something really interesting and creative.
“If a song sounded great and normal, Vance would be like, ‘Okay, that’s been done before, let’s turn it into a banjo and a synth.’ He’d say, ‘This song’s cool, but you guys need to channel a little bit more and figure something out, so I’m going to have lunch,’ and then we’d be forced to try and come up with something, so that when he came back he’d be like, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’ So we’d try to take it into areas we hadn’t been to before, and that’s how our songs ended up on grand piano. It’s a diverse, interesting album to listen to and not just a thrashy rock album.”
Linacre recalls some of the most memorable experiences during the creation of Microscopic Wars: “I remember singing the high note in Micro Wars and we were having so much fun, and Vance would go, ‘Let’s go higher,’ and I’d be like, ‘I don’t know if I can.’ And eventually, we did that big note and now I have to sing that big note every night, which is a pain in the arse, but it’s all right,” he laughs.
“I really loved how we put Eye of the Storm on piano. It was the most emotional thing for me to sing because it’s kind of about a breakup that I’ve just had, and I deliberately allowed myself to get into the emotions of what was happening and think about it a lot before we sung it. So when I was singing it, I was welling up, which is a good way to do it, but it was a pretty full-on experience. But you’ve got to remember you’re in the studio, so you could do this really emotional take and be almost in tears, and they’re like, ‘Nah, don’t like that one – do it again,’ and you ruin the moment. We’re going to be playing it live for the rest of the tour now.”
Linacre is surprised the band weren’t more terrified going into Blackbird Studio with Powell, but it was Powell who didn’t want the band to feel unsettled or daunted. “You’re singing into the same microphone that Buddy Guy and Jack White sang into,” he contemplates. “People would come to Vance’s birthday and all these people would come in and drop off these bottles of bourbon for him and wish him happy birthday, and these people recorded with Queen and one guy was the last person to talk to John Lennon before he was shot. The thing is, we didn’t feel intimidated at all or feel the pressure; we had the most relaxed, fun experience recording and that’s a credit to Vance to get a young Australian band who’s taken a leap coming over there, and he wanted us to feel at home and he did that.”
Touring is what Linacre thrives off the most (“I hate not being on tour,”). What Kingswood plan to do next may very well be their boldest move yet. “After the tour, we’re moving to America,” Linacre enthuses. “We don’t really have a ticket back at this stage – we’ll see what happens. We’re going to start in LA, but that’s to get our feet on the ground; our wishes might change, but we all love New York and we’ve been there a couple of times and played there, so we would love to live there. It’s all very new, but we’re going to be starting again and living off rice and tuna and touring in a van and playing to ten people, and that’d be great – we can’t wait.”
BY CHRISTINE LAN
