“There’s not necessarily a set plan, we tend to get ahead of ourselves,” Dammit coyly understates. “When we’re on tour all the time, there might be two weeks when we’re not on tour and we’ll write a couple of songs, then throw those into the live set. Basically, after playing them live a few times they become a lot more natural. When we come back off tour we’ll write another couple of songs, so within six or seven months we learn enough stuff for a new record. We’re always writing and always messing around. Instead of writing an album’s worth of material before the studio, we’ll have it in the bag already by the time we get there. So that makes it a lot easier.”
In line with the enveloping cascade of new material, Thee Oh Sees will be hitting the studio to put together another full-length album. Chances are there will be another album’s worth of material on top of that primed for when the band return to Australia in February. “We have almost a whole record’s worth. The whole month of November we don’t have any tours or shows or anything, and we’re spending three to four days a week in the rehearsal space. We’re working on all these new songs to have them under our belts by the time we go record in December. We have six or seven songs that we’ve been playing live for a while, and now we’re working on another six or seven and working out what we want to do with those,” Dammit reveals. “By the time we go into the studio we’ll have everything done, then it will take two or three days to record everything. We do two takes, maybe three for safety, then we’ll spend another few days in the studio messing around and jamming to hopefully get more songs from that.”
The band’s resolve doesn’t fall in line with modern record-release-tour conventions, but it’s not a case of the band defining themselves by the difference from others. “People do what they do, there’s no right or wrong way to do anything. Personally, I enjoy touring, travelling and seeing other countries. I feel really fortunate that we tour as much as we do. That way I do get to go to places like Australia and Europe,” Dammit beams. “Right now I don’t have a job or anything when we’re not on tour, so I get really bored. It’s nice to always be on the road”.
With an exponential growth in terms of written material, honing in on a setlist proves to be a considerable task. But as Dammit explains, the process is instinctual. “There are songs that you notice getting a stronger crowd reaction, so we keep the classics in. Really we never have a setlist, we just write out the songs we can remember offhand. Then we have that one sheet of paper next to John [Dwyer, lead singer], and he will either start playing a song or tell us what it is. Then we just follow along, really. Then on tours we get into a groove where we play the same songs. Even if we don’t have a setlist, within a week or two of the tour we kinda know what is coming up next.”
One of the most attention-commanding aspects of Thee Oh Sees’ live show is the metronomic swivel of Dammit’s skull, raising concerns of OHS issues in regards to his neck. “It’s strange, because very rarely I will be sore at a show or the next day. But the funny thing is, if I’m watching a support act or something and start to get into it and move my head, then it almost immediately hurts. For some reason I can’t do it with other bands, I can only do it with ours. We played a show in France one time and this lady came up after the show and said, ‘I am a doctor, what you’re doing is wrong, you’re going to hurt yourself.’ That kind of made me a little scared,” he chuckles.
In the past year or so, Thee Oh Sees have established a palpable rapport with local outfit Total Control, resulting in joint tours on both sides of the pond. “We had played a show in San Francisco many years ago with Eddy Current – I believe it was their first American tour. And we immediately fell in love with those guys. They’re just the nicest guys and an incredible band. When we came to Australia for the first time we got to play some shows with them again, making friends with them, and being friends with Mikey [Young] – and that’s how we became friends with Total Control. They wanted to come tour here and we asked them to play with us. It’s amazing to see a band that good play every night. I could never get sick of seeing them play live.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
