Melbourne’s Seagull are launching their second record, Council Tree, around Australia as we speak, hitting Sydney’s Melt on Friday. I had a chat to founder Chris Bolton about what makes the band tick.

(Prefer full article format? Head to page 44 of the online edition of Drum Media #1023 to see my write up as it appeared in the magazine.)

Congratulations on completing your record. Are you relieved?

It’s nice to have it out there for people to listen to. We worked on it for a fair amount of time and it’s nice to get some feedback from people. I’m glad that people can hear it. I guess in terms of the writing, the songs aren’t kind of structured in the kind of verse-chorus-verse-chorus kind of way. I guess with the writing of this album a lot of the ideas were musical at first instead of lyrical, so a few of the songs kind of started with the musical ideas rather than trying to get the lyrical idea across.

Is the songwriting process a collaborative one or does it rest more with you?

I wrote pretty much all of it, the way we kind of did this recording was like, I wrote out initial ideas for the parts of whoever I was jamming with and then we kind of work on it a bit, so it’s kind of collaborative to a point and we would work it out together and kind of add and change things together, but I guess a lot of the initial ideas were mine. Kish [Ryan, drums] kind of had a couple of ideas for the drum parts that had a pretty different feel to how I was thinking about it, so that was really nice to have his input but I kind of always usually have the first ideas for the songs. We’ve been playing together now for about two years, so it’s the same band from about two years ago.

Does having band members involved in different projects cause any strain on Seagull? Does it influence you?

I think kind of the reason why Kish is good at playing in a few different bands is because he’s really good at being sensitive to the songwriter. He’s quite adaptable to what the music is trying to do, so it is good having him in the band and Zulicki’s also played in a couple of bands as well. I don’t know if it affects us. You’ve gotta be quite flexible I guess, if someone’s away or can’t make it or something we’ve gotta alter the lineup or sometimes get in a fill-in kind of musician. It definitely changes how the songs are played and it can be really nice to hear things played by other people and it can be refreshing.

What influenced the existential themes on Council Tree?

There are some things… I guess I just started… I don’t know, there are kind of personal things like going to hospital and stuff and that kind of…when things happen that are kind of extreme I guess it changes how you think about music, I guess I just really wanted to make this album for my own musical tastes more, something that I would rly want to pick up and hear. It sounds self involved, but just kind of an album that I would really like. I don’t think it’s better, it’s better for me personally to listen to because it flows more easily in the process it was made, there weren’t too many road bumps, it just happened pretty easily in a pretty short amount of time and because there’s less stress associated when I listen to it I can enjoy it a lot more.

How has your classical guitar training helped your work with Seagull?

I guess I don’t really get nervous when playing, which is funny because I used to play classical guitar but if you get nervous playing classical guitar it really is bad news because if your hands get a tiny bit shaky you made lots of mistakes. Because of that kind of pressure when I was younger playing classical guitar, I really feel fine playing in any situation Seagull songs because even if I really screw them up its not like I’m doing anyone injustice, I’m not upsetting Bach or Albeniz or something. It’s just helped me kind of feel better about performing. I played classical guitar and I really didn’t learn anything about songwriting from that, I just kind of I guess learned about songwriting as much as you can just by listening to bands that I like. I didn’t really learn anything about writing music from studying classical guitar.

What has your experience been like writing film music?

I did a soundtrack for an independent Melbourne film called Further We Search, and that’s really nice to hang out and make music without any words. That probably affected the making of this album, kinda focusing a lot of the nature. I think doing that little soundtracking that I did, I think I really enjoy film music and I think hopefully parts of council tree are a little bit filmy or cinematic or something, the sounds, I like that kind of music. The director/writer, a guy called Darius, he had heard Goodbye Weather and also heard Nick [Huggins]’s Shipwreck LP and he just liked it. We were kind of friends and friends and kind of got in contact and said something kind of in that vein but different enough. The approach I have for writing Seagull songs kind of changes every single song, some parts, it’s hard to know if that experience of making film soundtracks affected that at all. But I think it affected the time in the studio as opposed to the actual writing of songs, me and Nick worked in the same place we did the soundtrack in so it felt really comfy in there, kinda made the recording of the Seagull songs more comfortable.

What can people going along to the shows expect from your live performance?

It’s just a chance pretty similar to recording Council Tree, a bit more flexibility in the structure of the songs and a bit more dynamic I guess. I don’t know, it should be good, it’s been a while since we’ve done a lot of whole band shows so to be honest I’m looking forward to what it will be like as well. I hope it will be sick.

The ‘blogosphere’ (sorry everyone, loathe the word but nothing else is quite as apt) has been exploding lately with mention of Adelaide four-piece Steering By Stars, who grabbed my attention as they sound very similar to one of my favourite discoveries of last year, Kyte. The post rock band has just released their debut album, Cables, and recently wrapped up a couple of launch dates in a few different cities. I grabbed drummer Tom Smeets for a couple of minutes via email to ask him some questions about the band, Cables and post rock in general.

How did the band get together?

We’d all been friends for a while before the band got together and had been playing in other local bands around Adelaide. Steering by Stars formed when we decided that we wanted to create music that was a little more personal to us. I remember it being a very messy and demanding start to a band. There were quite a few ideas and directions being thrown around and I think we were generally just trying too hard to squeeze everything we had imagined for this band into the music. It took us over a year to really get an understanding of how the band was going to work and for us to develop a set of music that we felt was actually honest and worthwhile sharing.

Why post rock? What do you think of Australia’s (very small) post rock scene and where do you think it’s going?

I don’t think we ever made a conscious decision to create ‘post rock’. When the band was beginning we had ambitions to be orchestral and emotive, and at that time no-one was brave enough to sing, so it just kind of happened that we began to write songs instrumentally and that style of arranging stuck. There was, however, always an intention to add vocals to our music but it never really felt right. It wasn’t until Lachlan [Wilson, vocalist] began experimenting with his vocal effects that we thought we had actually found a vocal sound that might work in the band. It started off relatively subtle and we used the vocal sound as more of another instrument, cautious of losing our original intentions for the band. But now as the music is evolving and our confidence is growing, the vocals are beginning to take a stronger role in our song writing and as a focal point in the band. The epic instrumental arrangements are obviously still there and it will probably stay that way for a while.

To be honest, I haven’t really been exposed to that much Australian post rock probably because – as you said – the scene seems to be very small. Bands like These Hands Could Separate the Sky, Panzer Queen and the Burning Sea (from Adelaide) are doing amazing things for the genre. As for post rock’s direction? I don’t really see it taking off anytime soon but I reckon we’ll probably see its influence become a little more prominent in other styles of music. Parades’ Foreign Tapes is a good example of what I mean.

You recorded Cables in 3 days – was that a stressful experience? What is the theme of the album?

It wasn’t entirely stressful. We knew how much time we had available in the studio prior and therefore spent a lot of time preparing and practising our music. Before recording the album we’d pretty much been playing Cables as a live set and so were quite comfortable with the songs and how we intended them to sound. Not everything goes to plan though, and by the third day there seemed to be fair bit to do and not a lot of time to complete it in. The stress levels did rise a bit then but I think in that moment we also became quite aware of how much we had completed and had to remind ourselves to feel proud about that too.

I don’t think there is a theme to the album. Each song was written to create a particular mood or feeling for the listener and essentially drag them through this wash of emotions. I think it’s meant to be disorientating and overwhelming, so maybe they’re the themes of the album – but I reckon you might not get them if you throw the album on while you’re vacuuming the lounge.

You decided to release the album on vinyl rather than traditional CD – why is that? Are you worried that this might limit the number of people who can access your music?

We wrote and arranged the songs on Cables to flow in a contiguous way and thought that a vinyl release would be the best medium for representing that. For me, the process of listening to an LP is also more conducive to absorbing the music as a whole and I think this is important for Cables to work. As for its accessibilty, we’ve also released the album digitally via our website and iTunes. Hopefully that’ll cover our bases.

How have people been reacting to the songs live so far?

Generally I think the reactions have been quite positive. People seem to stick with us from beginning to end, which is a great compliment and sometimes surprising considering our music (I imagine) can be quite demanding? When we play live we really strive to create an atmosphere and sometimes that can work fantastically and other times it can’t. I think a lot of the time the environment and scenario that we’re playing in really impacts on how well the music translates. Ideally we’d love to be playing in theatres or artspaces, which is something we’re beginning to organise with a couple of other interstate bands and will hopefully have some news on that soon.

Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear have risen dramatically in profile over the last year following the release of their third and most exciting album yet, Veckatimest. Their first visit to Australia was only six months ago for Sydney Festival and yet they’re back already, playing sideshows in Sydney this weekend and Splendour in the Grass next weekend. I spoke to frontman Ed Droste about the band’s success, Twilight and Jay-Z.

(Prefer full article format? Head to page 36 of the online edition of Drum Media #1018 to see my write up as it appeared in the magazine.)

How are you? It’s really cold right now…

I’m good, it’s extremely hot here right now. It’s like 102 degrees here, it’s like an unseen record for heat in New York, we’re all dying, so I’m a little jealous, actually.

You’re returning to Australia only six months after your debut tour. Did you expect to be back so soon?

No. We just had such a good time last time we were there and then Splendour in the Grass wanted us to play. It was one of our favourite places we toured so we kinda just were like “Yeah! If we can go back we’ll totally go back”. Any chance we get to go back to Sydney and Melbourne, we sort of jumped at it. I don’t mind the long flight.

How has festival season been so far?

It’s pretty good! We did Glastonbury and Primavera in Barcelona which was really fun. What else did we do? Coachella…I think I might be missing some other ones. But we’re about to go back to Europe, actually, before we come to Australia and do another one in Portugal and one in England called Latitude. So it’s pretty good. It’s been a great summer. Actually we just did one in Maine and spent the fourth of July weekend in Maine and it was amazing up there, coastal Maine is absolutely incredible.

Last visit you played at Falls Festival and Sunset Sounds – how did you find the Australian festival experience?

I loved it, the experience was so much fun for us. Not only were the club shows in the city really great but we really had a good time with the Falls Festival and Sunset Sounds – one, getting to see the country and two, getting to escape our insane winter. Some of the audiences were really fun and cool, and they’re really well organised and generally made us want to come back again when we were offered the opportunity.

Veckatimest has been the biggest album you’ve had so far. What do you attribute that success to? Did you change your approach?

You know, we didn’t really change the way we write, we always kind of write them just in the manner of everyone going off and doing their own sketches and then coming together and collaborating. I think it was just a combination of maybe our songwriting maturing a little bit, and also just having toured a lot for four years or so and it was just another step up for us, but yeah, it was definitely bigger than the last releases.

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Two Door Cinema Club are one of the latest indie dance bands to hit the globe, with their debut album Tourist History, released in March, propelling them to dizzying heights worldwide. Ahead of their appearance at Splendour in the Grass next weekend, I caught up with frontman Alex Trimble.

(Prefer full article format? Head to page 46 of the online edition of Drum Media #1017 to see my write up as it appeared in the magazine.)

How are you? Where are you in the world right now?

I’m not too bad, how are you? I’m at the Roundhouse in London where we played last night, we’re just packing up our gear.

How was Glastonbury last week and how was the experience compared to last year?

Glastonbury was incredible, it’s always an experience, it was really amazing. They were definitely different, they were a lot bigger and a lot more enthusiastic this year, there were kids singing along and stuff, it was really, really cool.

Are you looking forward to Splendour?

I’m definitely looking forward to it, it’s the first time any of us have been to Australia so we’re all really excited for it.

Are you prepared for the cold?

It’s not cold, we’re from Ireland!

Since you’ve been a band from the ages of 16 or 17, how do you think things have changed for you as people since then?

We’ve always been the best of friends and that’s kind of continued. We’ve progressed really together as a band and we’ve progressed as songwriters and musicians, I think. Our reasons for being in a band have remained the same from the start – we do this because it’s what we love. We love playing shows, we love making music, we love recording music and that’s why we’re in this. In terms of inspiration, we love discovering new music all the time, what we listen to is constantly changing and we’re always searching for new music and stuff so that’s kind of always changing.

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Over a decade has passed since Hot Hot Heat formed, but according to frontman Steve Bays, it’s only now that they’re taking total control.

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Interview for Drum Media

When Brooklyn singer-songwriter Kevin Devine picks up the phone he begins chatting animatedly, even though he hopped off a plane only four hours ago. “I forgot that I made the arrangements to do these interviews the same day when I got home from this pretty big tour in Europe, but I actually feel remarkably normal right now. I’ve been hanging out this afternoon getting back to domesticated stuff – making some coffee, paying some bills, watering the big banana plant that I have.”

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Interview for Drum Media

When These New Puritans frontman Jack Barnett answers the phone, he sounds tired. “I’ve just woken up,” he huffily explains. It seems unwise to get on his bad side, so instead of continuing the friendly banter that usually precedes an interview, we start talking instead about the British band’s second album, Hidden, and it’s then that Barnett lightens up – but only slightly. He’s a textbook case of the disaffected musician, barely raising his voice above a mumbled drawl – he’d probably rather be spending this time writing (or, given his current state, sleeping).

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Audio Antihero label kids Benjamin Shaw (left) and Nosferatu D2 (right)

It’s not every day that you hear about a young bloke starting up a record label for pretty much the sole purpose of releasing his now-defunct favourite band’s first album. But you could say that Jamie Halliday isn’t content with being average. The 22-year-old South East Londoner has run Audio Antihero out of his bedroom since late 2008, releasing his favourite band Nosferatu D2′s album as well as signing another artist, Benjamin Shaw. In between busy jobs, Jamie decided to race over to Shakespeare’s Sister and explain what it’s all about.

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Interview for Drum Media

“It’s just so very important to say things that might be hard to say but that are real,” frontman Peter Walker says. “A lot of people might see some things as really hard or a struggle, but those types of opportunities to me can be the most freeing and the most impactful on a person’s life.”

It’s this glimmer of hope in the face of adversity that defines the music of Californian indie rock quartet Eulogies, especially their second album Here Anonymous, released earlier this year. Singer/guitarist/songwriter Walker says that as the band grows more confident with its sound, the space between the musicians and the audience diminishes – and what results is an album that is not afraid to be honest.

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Interview for Drum Media

He was working as a screenwriter and picked up a guitar for fun, teaching himself – now, five years later, Joshua Radin has two albums under his belt and no intentions to slow down.

“I was using it sort of as meditation because I was frustrated with the screenwriting, and the hobby became the job, fortunately for me,” Radin, extremely softly spoken, explains over the phone. “Whenever the hobby becomes the job, you know, you’re a lucky person.”

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