When Money For Rope headed into the studio with producer Steve Shramm on Melbourne Cup weekend in 2011, the opportunity arose for Money For Rope to explore a different side to the band’s sound. “This is the first chance we’ve had to go back and relax in the studio and think about the rhythms of the songs, which we haven’t really had the opportunity to do yet,” McKenzie says. “If we could have had more of that soul on the record, we would have, but we haven’t really been able to incorporate that into our live set yet.”
The vast majority of the tracks on the album were already part of the band’s live set well before the recording session began. McKenzie says his songwriting hasn’t changed much over in recent times, though he hopes the band’s next album will showcase another aspect of Money For Rope. “The next album we want to do is go away into the countryside and bring a whole of recording equipment and just piece together a whole bunch of ideas,” McKenzie says. “I think that will allow the songwriting to become a lot more prominent, but with the tracks on this album, they’re pretty simple – verse, chorus and we’re a two-chord sort of a band.”
While there are moments on the record when Money For Rope look ready to indulge the elasticity of psychedelic exploration, McKenzie doesn’t see Money For Rope as mature enough at this point in its evolution to jam out a song into unforeseen territory. “I’d really like us to be the type of band who could just launch into a song and give up on it half way through, and start playing something completely different,” McKenzie says. “I’m really opposed to the idea of jamming – I’ve never felt comfortable with that sort of stuff. But if we could never jam in the rehearsal studio and then get on stage and do this big psych jam, then that’d be awesome. But we’re not really that kind of band yet – I don’t think we’re brave enough. It takes a lot of balls to go and do these big psych things. I think we’re still too overwhelmed when we’re on stage,” McKenzie laughs.
McKenzie is used to fielding questions on the double-drummer aspect of the band’s lineup, although he’s not prepared to launch into a pretentious explanation of the artistic benefit of having two drummers. “I don’t really think about it as a thing – everyone just turns up and plays,” he says. “I think [the drummers] have a really good time being part of a two-drummer thing. It’s the thing that always gets mentioned in interviews, but to be honest we don’t really think about it that much. They’re two guys in the band with different roles, and it’s kind of like having two guitars.”
For the record’s local release, Money For Rope turned to the fledgling Thornbury Records label, based around the shop on High Street, Thornbury. Having release a couple of 7” singles from Damn Terran and River Of Snakes, Thornbury Records chose Money For Rope for the label’s first 12” release. “We were trying to find someone to work with for the vinyl. We dug that you could be associated with a shop in some way – it’s kind of a good partnership,” McKenzie says.
Having previously contemplated some of association with a record store to promote the record, the Thornbury Records angle worked out well. “We were kicking around this idea of basing the launch around a shop, doing some interviews or an in-store,” McKenzie says. “And we thought Thornbury Records were really good supporting local people putting local records out on a budget, and also taking people’s records on consignment and putting them in the store. So thought it was a cool thing they were doing up there, and it was cool getting the jump in on something as it’s starting out – it’s a bit of an unknown,” he says.
McKenzie hopes that Thornbury Records’ overseas contacts will assist the band’s European exposure. Money For Rope has already arranged with a Spanish label to put out a vinyl-only record of the band’s 7” releases, plus some previously unreleased tracks. “We’ve got a trip planned over there – we’re trying to piece together a European trip in March next year, based around doing the Primavera festival, so we ought to be brushing up on our Spanish language skills,” McKenzie says. McKenzie concedes his Spanish linguistic abilities need more than simple brushing up. “I did some really rudimentary Spanish, which I forgot just about straight away. The only thing I remember is ‘Soy un bombero’, which means ‘I am a fireman’, which isn’t even true,” he laughs.
BY PATRICK EMERY
