STACK #161 Mar 2018

MUSIC NEWS

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continued

Well, when you’ve got somebody like Kiernan Box in the band, there’s always something going on that you didn’t even realise was happening. Again, I have to be honest, I think I did a lot of it when I was drunk, and all of that drunken laughter and stuff that you hear in the middle, that’s genuinely scary stuff. I really didn’t like hearing it the next day, but I had to do it drunk ‘cause otherwise it wouldn’t have sounded [how] it was supposed to sound. I’m not a great guitar player by any stretch, but I do like to make any parts that I play interesting and memorable. TheThird Drink is absolutely poetic – I can’t even choose my favourite couplet. How did you write these lyrics? It was after I just got myself a really sweet four-track. I got this one locally. It used to be in the Village Cinemas; they used it to play ads. It’s one of the really good ones. It had just been serviced and I got it for about 100 bucks. The quality of it… everybody will tell you, it’s just a maagic sound, and you get an immediate vibe from it. I spent about three or four days writing one after the other and just set them down on tape as soon as I could, and The Third Drink was one of them. It’s entirely about what happens – it’s usually the third drink where it ticks over into “Man, I’m going to keep this going,” and usually that’s a bad idea. It is. Write what you know.

TOURING 04/05 - 26/05

INTERVIEW

AUGIE MARCH There are many atmospheric peculiarities floating through Augie March's new album Bootikins , but they all have this affectionate analog quality, which convinces you of your place in the weird terrain. Frontman Glenn Richards explains its feel sprung from dark humour, a four-track previously owned by a movie theatre, uniquely talented bandmates, drunkenness, letting the song's protagonists run amok, and the magical touch of late, revered engineer/producer,Tony Cohen (1957 - 2017).

It was a little bit of a eureka moment when I kind of figured out – I guess encapsulated – the spirit of the record, and really late as well. There wasn’t anything that I could identify that was sort of holding it together, but then it became really clear. This pretty simple, almost like a bit of black humour appeared, but as far as writing it… if I’m going to be honest, it came from a funny guitar sound I came up with. You know the wobbly, raspy thing? It put me in mind of stuff like early T-Rex and early Bowie, the very early ‘70s, when those kind of guys were just starting to form a notion of what it is that they were. So, I realised that, and then half way through it I realised there weren’t enough chords to make it move, so I kept adding more transitionals and stuff. That’s how it got its dynamic, which is a nice, evil dynamic. We dig it.

In your self-written album bio, you mention “the elation that comes from writing something you haven’t written before.” It sounds paradoxical but I also understand that it means you deliberately sought originality – did you choose things or make decisions specifically because they felt unfamiliar? Yeah. Pretty much every time you write a song that you’re actually pleased with – which isn’t that often for me, especially as I’m getting older – it’s usually because it feels new. It might just be a small thing. The only person that’s going to notice it is me. But, with [this album], I reckon there was just something going on. There’s a looseness, and I suppose it’s a ‘don’t care’ factor. That was more [that] I let whatever character [who] appears to be present in the song, tell the story; not putting the brakes on and not trying to make it any prettier than it ought to be. Go anywhere as ridiculous as it wants to. So that’s probably what I was getting at with that line, this time.

I have to be honest, I think I did a lot of it when I was drunk

Could you expand on your comment that the lateTony Cohen made you "feel like, and play like, a real band again"? Well that’s exactly what happened, even though Tony slowed down a little bit – he was having to look after himself quite a lot. This is also the guy who was apologising after doing eight or nine hours in a day. Insane. The art of it, I suppose, is being unobtrusive, and then revealing a the art a bit later in the session. Some pretty simple miking – but very

That wonkiness is all over the album, but I feel like there’s a

particularly atonal chaos going on in the background of Mephistopheles Perverted – there’s some demonic shouts and things as well.Tell me how that happened.

clever miking – and then just very slowly adding some reverb here, or space where there wasn’t space, or drawing something up. He’s really great to experience. ZKR

Bootikins by Augie March is out now via Caroline.

The title track definitely seems like an experiment in nutty chords and lyrics.

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MARCH 2018

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