With a documentary, countless live shows, an APRA Award nomination and a Bluesfest appearance under their belts, Melbourne’s Sweet Talk finally have a debut record they would like you to hear.
When a group of Queensland musicians who’ve known each other and dabbled in playing together for around 20 years decide to buckle down and focus on creating their ultimate project together, something cool happens. Why? Experience and focus, that’s why.
If you take this scenario and seal the deal with a group move to Melbourne, you have Sweet Talk, a ’70s-inspired rock band who’ve already achieved some impressive feats without even having a full-length album to their name.
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With performances at Riverboats Music Festival and Byron Bay Bluesfest, which included a guest appearance and live co-sign from Kasey Chambers, Sweet Talk have already proven themselves in the live arena. But what about on tape? And yes, we mean literal tape.
“We’ve always recorded to tape,” explains co-band leader Dave Turner. “It’s fun to record to and it does this wonderful thing with compressing transients on drums and stuff, but the big thing that it does for us is it puts us under pressure to perform.”
Sweet Talk’s debut album, Switch On, will be released in May and features songs recorded mostly live to tape to help capture the aesthetic of the band’s sound. That sound is something the group describe as a rock ‘n’ roll gumbo, incorporating elements of country and funk into fun rock music for all to enjoy.
As other co-band leader, Soren Walker, explains, Sweet Talk have a clear sense of who they are as a band and the debut album reflects that, along with the energy of the group’s live performances.
“We wanted the album to show who we are, but at the same time, we wanted to take it into some different places. We looked at the songs we had as a larger body of work, then decided what was missing to inform the writing that would finish the record. That process gave us some very cool ballads and I’m glad we did it.”
To help make all of this possible, the band got American singer-songwriter Robert Ellis involved in the production. “It happened by chance,” Turner explains. “He was on tour here and had a day off. We didn’t know him at all, but we cold-called him and asked if he would come to the studio with us. He did, and we recorded one of the songs that will be on the album that day, then we liked it so much that we flew him out to record the rest of the album.”
Ellis’ involvement allowed the normally self-produced Sweet Talk to delegate some of the creation process and focus on songwriting. “We did this thing with him where once a week he would kind of challenge our songwriting and ask questions like ‘could this chord progression be more interesting?’ or ‘does this lyric nail the point?’. This was super helpful for us to get an outside perspective on our songwriting.”
Albums mattered a lot more in the time period that Sweet Talk draw their inspiration from, but today, the effort and expense of recording one isn’t often worth the hassle.
“When we made our doco, we didn’t know if people still had the attention span for an album,” explains Walker. “That being said, for a couple of reasons, we thought making one would be the right thing to do. From an industry perspective, there is a legitimisation that comes with a larger body of work and we want to be considered in that space.
“We also wanted to capture a moment of time for the band, and to do that, we had to put all of these songs together.”
Turner adds, “There are no serious artists today that don’t have an album. To show the audience that you are for real and that you have more than that one song in you, you need that body of work.”
Sweet Talk’s debut album, Switch On, will be released on May 23. The band will appear live at this year’s Bluesfest and on tour around Australia with The Red Clay Strays throughout May, including Festival Hall on 22 May.
