Now the band are placing more emphasis on the bass and synth undercurrents of their songs, giving the lyrics more opportunity to breathe and strengthening that feeling of isolation and distance. It was a very conscious decision to change direction according to Galloway, who is preparing for the last few shows of their current Holy Coast tour.
“I don’t want to stay still and keep putting out the same record a bunch of times and just having different lyrics,” Galloway explains. “It’s what lots of bands do and you get the trouble of people getting bored with it. All of my favourite artists that I grew up listening to changed a lot from record to record and that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s a stylistic decision as much as it is a survival instinct and we don’t want to get bored either.”
“On the new album there’s a lot more space. It’s arranged a lot differently. The first record was pretty much just a band in a room playing the songs. That’s the main difference. The focus of the new record is a lot more on drums, bass and synth. Guitars really sit in the background and they don’t do too much.”
Starting out in Townsville in 2009, the band made the move to the bright lights of Melbourne town about 18 months ago for the playing opportunities lacking in Northern Queensland. It’s tough being a band outside of the inner-city creative hub for the basic reason there’s just nowhere to play. However, Galloway’s early experiences playing DIY shows sheds light on the overlooked role of overzealous police tactics as another reason why bands have to hightail it to the major cities.
“Sound restrictions are really bad,” Galloway laments. “At my first show I got arrested for refusing to yield to the police. They confiscate your instruments so it’s pretty stupid. There are no venues so everything has to be done DIY and when it’s DIY the police will just come around and do whatever they want.”
“They just start arresting you for whatever. You can say you’re not taking my guitar and then they can arrest you. You have to spend the night in the lock up when you’ve done nothing wrong. They release you without charge and you can’t make a complaint because they haven’t charged you with anything.”
For much of the recording of the new album,Galloway was separated from his other band members while working as an engineer on a desert pipeline. This was obviously not an ideal situation for the band, as it meant there were only little windows of opportunity to play together. His isolation lent the tracks those vibes of desolate landscapes, but was also the main reason behind the two-year gap between albums.
“It’s tough playing songs when you’re thousands of kilometres away from your band,” Galloway says. “This is why this record took so long to make. I was only back in town once or twice a month. We’d head into the studio and cram for two or three days and go back out and keep writing and work on rough mixes of stuff out there at night after I finished work. It was very geographically disparate. It came out a lot in the lyrics in the end.”
BY RHYS MCRAE
