“I did find a certain sense of liberation in denying myself any kind of platform to be earnest, and to have kind of sense of obligation to be truthful,” Gow muses. “I wrote fictional songs for this record and that meant that I had an extended vocabulary at my fingertips, and that was super liberating. I could use words that I couldn’t if I were writing autobiographical songs – taking on characters and not having to pour my heart out, for lack of a better term. It was really fun and exciting. Paired with the kind of bombastic, groove-based music, it was a really liberating experience. I didn’t have anyone breathing over my shoulder in the studio in terms of song selection and concepts. The whole thing was very much a privilege. I felt free, I felt like an artist – which is something that not many people get to feel.”
While not so much an acute diversion from the Oh Mercy musical trajectory, Deep Heat is emboldened by Gow’s reactionary approach to his perceived reputation. “One of my greatest fears is that people might think that they’ve worked me out, that fear of being defined. Once I caught wind that people had worked me out as this singer-songwriter guy who played acoustic guitar, which is a reasonable assumption given the last record, I just got excited about throwing everyone a curveball and shaking people’s expectations up. Keeping everyone guessing is a satisfying thing for me to do as an artist, as pretentious as that sounds.”
This reactionary approach in turn has resulted in somewhat of anomaly on the Australian musical landscape – an embrace of the sexier end of the musical spectrum. “I’m not looking for truth in music, but I’m not searching for any kind of escapism. It doesn’t excite me. I suppose I just turned the radio off and decided that I wanted to write about the realities of our existence, mainly the primitive, biological urges – desire, and all those things that are real and complex and dark and funny,” Gow muses.
The recording of Deep Heat was preceded by an extensive US tour and took place on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. Though ostensibly a retreat from Australia, the geography didn’t exactly permeate the final artefact. “I feel like I could have made that record anywhere as long as Burke [Reid, producer], Rohan [Sforcina, drums] and Eliza [Lam, bass] were there,” Gow surmises. “It was very pleasant being in Portland, and we worked really hard so we didn’t get into town much. We were just outside of town in a place called Lake Oswego, which is really beautiful – like most of Oregon, surrounded by dense pine forest. There was wildlife walking around – raccoons, deer and chipmunks. We have snakes, cockroaches, spiders and sharks, while they get all the cute ones,” he laughs. “It was pleasant, but it didn’t have an effect on the music we made. We didn’t make a hippie record.”
The first taste of Deep Heat came in the revelation of some arresting cover art, featuring a rather saucy snap from the ’80s – a rather apt complement to the musical content. “Not many people liked it in terms of the suits,” Gow laughs. “There was talk about pixelating her breasts and all this ridiculous stuff. In hindsight I kind of wish they did it, just because it’s so absurd. The work itself is by Rennie Ellis, a very important Melbourne artist. He was a photographer that did social documentary mostly, and took a lot of iconic photographs that a lot of people would be familiar with. His estate were kind enough to let us use one of his works as supporters of the arts, especially Melbourne arts. Using that particular photograph, after having that great painting by Ken Done on the last record, I didn’t want to pigeonhole us as an Australiana tribute sort of band. So I decided to look at his photos from abroad and selected this one from [Rio] Carnival in 1985. I immediately knew it had to be the cover because it was so colourful and bombastic, and that’s the kind of record we made.”
It’s not long until Oh Mercy once again set off, much like they did in the US earlier in the year, on an imposing run of dates. As Gow reveals, there’s still a little way to go in translating the rich instrumental palette of Deep Heat into the live setting. “I think we’re officially still nutting it out, it’s a whole different way of making music for us and we’re having fun working it out,” he explains. “I don’t have to play the guitar anymore, which is also liberating. The bass guitar is the prime instrument on the record, it’s a driving force, so Eliza is having to step up and she’s doing a great job – same with Annabel Grigg our keyboardist. The girls are doing brilliantly, where mine and Rohan’s jobs got a bit easier,” Gow grins with wry cheekiness.
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
