The Kill Devil Hills are renowned for smashing out cow punk, swamp and psychedelic rock in rollicking stage shows, playing a gruelling regime of gigs across the country and overseas and semi-regularly releasing much loved albums, including their fifth studio release In On Under Near Water.
A perfectionist rather than a contrarian, the band’s frontman and guitarist Brendon Humphries has expressed at least some displeasure with all of the band’s previous releases. “That was a good whinge,” he says. So, how does he feel about In On Under Near Water then? “You’re always going to say this, but it probably is the stuff that I’m most satisfied with. I think it’s probably healthy to be a bit dissatisfied with your work otherwise you start to lack initiative.”
Admittedly, there was a fairly extensive gap between the band’s previous album Past and Future Ghosts (2013) and the new release. Humphries attributes his satisfaction with In On Under Near Water at least partly to the extra time spent in making the album. Is the gap also an indication that it was a difficult baby? Humphries says it was more because the band had spent a fair whack of time touring Europe and dealing with the vicissitude of life. “That sucked up a lot of oxygen,” he says. “In that time the band lineup changed somewhat. There was also a lot of demoing and one of the guys had kids. Just life really. All of those things conspired, but we also realised that we weren’t going to be quickly retiring on the proceeds of our musical careers, so on that logic, we had to get back to it.”
Named after a chapter in Greil Marcus’s book about Bob Dylan and the Band, Invisible Republic, The Kill Devil Hills are now a settled six-piece lineup, with 50 per cent of the original members including Humphries and fellow founding member Steve (vocals and guitar). “It hasn’t been a matter of saying, ‘Let’s sit down and figure out how big we want the band to be and with what instruments’,” Humphries says. “It’s happened pretty organically, by say having a jam with old friends or someone sitting in, which then becomes a residency, which turns into something we want to follow. If it feels good and that person brings a kind of chutzpah to the band, then it evolves.”
However, making a truism of that old adage that you should never work with friends or family, when Humphries is asked whether the lineup changes have been amiable, he circumspectly answers “yes and no”. “It’s always a weird one when you spend years playing with people and you’re pretty tight,” he elaborates. “It’s hard dealing with that business friendship mix. It’s tricky to know who should make decisions about things, or whether it should be as democratic as possible – it’s never perfect. It hasn’t always been amiable, we’ve had our share of disagreements.
“There’s no simple solution to working in creative collaboration with anyone. You’re going to have amazing results sometimes and other times you’re going to think that each other are the biggest dickheads you’ve ever met and you won’t be shy about expressing it. If you can’t handle that, you have to go and work on your own. A band with any longevity is going to be peppered with breakups and makeups.”
BY GEM DOOW
