“It’s been really great as all the gigs we’ve been playing have been really good supports so every gig has been to a new audience,” vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Jess Carroll says. “But at the same time, for us, it’s been weekly and it’d be nice to have a few weeks off and have a holiday.”
Carroll also takes on most of the managerial and publicity-related duties for the band and although DIY is the order of the day for indie bands, selling yourself is still a strange role. “It was about having confidence in what I was doing,” she says. “In the past year and a half it has become easier. Because we spend so much time as a band discussing what we want to do and what direction we want to take it’s all very collaborative. It’s good to have those skills and as you move up hopefully you get more outside help involved but at this stage it’s good to not be in the dark about these things.”
The path to media attention in Australia is a well-trodden and familiar one but getting encouraging endorsements from the UK and USA seems out of reach for most bands. “I spend a lot of time researching and reading other blogs overseas ‘cause I find it really interesting,” she says. “I just contacted a few and we’ve had others find out about us and contact us. With the latest song, Trouble, it just sort of took off a little bit overseas. We’ve had people run it without us approaching them. You start contacting blogs and stuff, so many people contact them, and with the sheer amount of emails people get, to get stuff up in the beginning is hard. Once you can break through that, it slowly becomes a bit easier.”
Has this overseas attention paved the way for Second Hand Heart to do some touring further afield? “Lily [Parker] and I are planning to go over to Europe next year just to suss out interest,” she says. “After speaking to a few people about it they all seem to say to just go. We’re hoping that in 2014 we’ll leave Australia for a while as a band.”
Parker and Carroll have known each other for a long time, creating music together from their adolescence, so it makes sense that they would lead the band’s trek into new territories. “Lily and I have been jamming together since we were 15,” she says of the band’s beginnings. “Lily did a course with our guitarist John [Waller] and then after moving to Melbourne the rest of the band came together. We are all friends and I think that’s why we’ve been able to do it for so long. We had a bit of a break for a while, with going to uni and schedules and stuff, and in that time we were able to develop musically and in other areas. I was working a lot on the music industry so I think that we’ve passed any point where there could be any discomfort.”
Songwriting appears to be such a personal pursuit but once a song enters the consciousness of the audience, questions are asked. Similarly, as an artist raises their profile the audience wants to know more about the person behind the songs. Carroll acknowledges that although a song may come from a personal place, constructing a solid piece of music often means that the song takes on a completely new meaning. “I think that lyrics are such an important part of songwriting and making music and sometimes it’s like piecing a puzzle together,” she says. “I’ve found that once a song enters the band it becomes separate and even if a song was motivated by a really tough time I find that I can then speak about it like it wasn’t me. Also, writing has become a more collaborative process with Lily and I working together. It used be that we would bring in songs separately and finish them as a band whereas we’re now creating them together, which changes the mood.”
With the band a little tired from playing on an almost weekly basis, an EP and a break seem to be in order. “The release of the EP will be early next year,” she says. “We’re going to be releasing a couple of other songs, a few more singles, towards the end of this year. We’ll probably take a little time off, maybe just release a song, but not necessarily play around Melbourne to support it.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
