Starting its life as Pizza in a short period of time, Josh Lane (bass), Alex Trevisan (guitar), Joel Rennison (drums), Brendan Anderson (guitar), Hayden Somerville (vocals) and Lily Hall (vocals) became proto-psych meets Americana act Lurch & Chief, and garnered a large and loyal following, seduced the selectors at triple j, toured with Stonefield, played Groovin’ the Moo sets and this Friday are playing a massive free show in The Espy front bar.
Forming from the ashes of Melbourne party-punk band Hey Fever, Lurch & Chief formed in early 2012, and within a month the band released their debut EP. And then, only two months later, they were back in a studio recording their second EP, the triumphant Wiped Out that has produced four singles: We Are the Same, On Your Own, It’s Easy and Mother/Father with the true former and the latter proving to be a hit on triple j where it achieved high rotation and a multitude of requests from listeners.
“The EPs were recorded only a couple of months apart,” reveals Somerville. “Paranoia was basically a collection of songs, some of them a few years old, some of them just weeks old, that we had written in jams. The first EP was basically just an effort to capture every song we had at the time and get it out of the way.”
Trevison offers a further, fascinating, insight into why the band chose to record two EPs so close together. “Me and Hayds were just angry at the last band in not doing what we wanted to do so it was very deliberate of us to start something new and get it going straight away.”
Somerville now rejoins the narrative of the Paranoia EP that was recorded in just one weekend. “We didn’t spend a lot of money on it,” he reveals. “We went to this recording studio a few hours outside of Melbourne and we got a little bit rowdy and we lost the guy’s dog,” (awkward group laughter). “That was the first EP, then the second EP was much more professional. We took our time with it and did it in a studio,” contends Somerville.
However, your intrigued correspondent pushed for more details on the recording of the first EP… lost dog? “It was Beveridge Road Recording Studios in the Dandenongs where we recorded the EP,” clarifies Lane in a sobering tone, that is at splendid odds with Somerville’s excited warble. Somerville then Lane continue the sordid tale: “They eventually found the dog,” he says. “It came back but everyone was too stoned to care – Hayden had let it out originally and was too stoned to deal with it so we had to go looking for it.” Rennison now closes out the topic by addressing Somerville. “That was after you went to bed in the parents’ room?” All five band members in attendance crack into laughter.
All the male members are present for the interview; it is the vocally divine Lily Hall who is missing. Hall’s voice works as a stunning counterpoint to Somerville’s nasally intoned low-end voice. Hall has been singing in choirs and vocal groups since Somerville first met her at school, so getting her to join the band – even though she wasn’t a rock vocalist – was a very natural decision.
This interplay between Somerville and Hall is glorious coalescence that harks upon a classic thread throughout all the arts – the relationship between man and woman. The fourth single from Wiped Out, and, for many, the release’s highlight, Mother/Father captures the aforementioned interplay at its best.
“We were trying to work out a way for me to be angry and for Lil to be cruising along in the verses. I wanted to my vocals to drive the song and Lil just to chill-out and cruise with hers. Alex just showed us the chords he had and we just started singing and it was written in an hour,” concludes Somerville with a muted, yet pervasive, sense of triumph.
What is evident from anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing Lurch & Chief live is that this six great friends making great music. And after getting to chat to 83% of the band, the ‘organic’ description is genuine.
BY DAN WATT
