STACK #130 Aug 2016

MUSIC

NEWS

visit www.stack.net.au

shane nicholson in a handbasket

continued

W ith brand new album Hell Breaks Loose , critically acclaimed country icon and producer extraordinaire Shane Nicholson ('Our Shane') decided he wasn't going to get involved in the nuts and bolts, instead handing production duties over to the accomplished Matt Fell. "I’m a huge fan of what he does; I think he’s probably one of the leading producers in Australia at the moment," Nicholson tells STACK . "When it came time to do [my album], I was just a little bit over producing. I thought, ‘I trust Matt implicitly,’ so we gave it a crack. I think that’s why I actually like this record more than any other too, ‘cause I didn’t get involved in the science of it." What transpired rolled out almost effortlessly, with the singer discovering he'd created something of a career digest. "We never pushed any song into a mould," he explains, "and interestingly, because there wasn’t any plan, it’s funny

now listening back: it sounds to me almost like a summary of all the albums I’ve made before. It’s got little bits of every kind of style I’ve struck out at before, and it kind of references all of them. In that way it’s almost like a career summation." It certainly helped having plenty of recent life fodder to write about; in addition to splitting with his wife Kasey Chambers, Nicholson acquired an entirely new label and and uplifting, but Nicholson admits that the bleak times are best to write in. "It seems to be quite a general rule that a lot of us do not want to sit down and write when we're happy or when it’s sunny or when there’s fun to be had, ‘cause generally they’re the days you don’t sit inside acting all morose at a piano. Often it feels like songwriting is management team.The album is in turns melancholy, poignant

Tim carroll holy holy

Q1/ How did yourself, Oscar and the touring band get along during the recent European tour? We had a lot of fun. Interesting conversations about interesting music, film and politics: the van journeys are pretty good. And adding into that, the European landscape – I’ve travelled around Europe a bit but I had never been to Amsterdam, Belgium or Cologne. Q2/ The new album gives us Fleetwood Mac vibes, and the word "nostalgic" is being used a lot around you guys. What does that word mean to you? A lot of the equipment and the way we record is kind of a ‘70’s approach. We use two-inch tape and Neumann microphones, but as the project developed we did decide at times to use Pro Tools. [Music- wise] Neil Young is a big influence, but there’s also a set of things that influence [us] in the more contemporary world, like Here We Go Magic, Lower Dens, Band of Horses and Father John Misty. Q3/ After last year's The Pacific EP , how did you approach putting this new material together? Once we’d signed with Wonderlick – they feel like a family business: they’re small and don’t have a heap of artists on their rosters, so they put a lot of care and attention into everyone – we could’ve released an album, but they said 'We think you should put together an EP and then do a bunch of touring.' That was great; it was really good for the band to get comfortable together on stage and work out what did and didn’t work. We also wrote a bunch of songs during that [including] History , You Cannot Call For Love , Outside of the Heart of It and Holy Gin . Q4/ You live in different cities; how does jamming work? Organising rehearsal studio [time] is... really important. When you’re going back and forth and you’re all separate, there’s no capacity for the band to work together. The other thing that happens is somebody will do something as a joke, like a solo or

the mental home for creative people; that’s where they go when they need some therapy. I guess it’s a record about growing up or learning new things. I’ve had a few people tell me, ‘It’s so bleak, this record.’ I’ve had other people say, ‘It’s the most uplifting record you’ve made in a long time.’ So I don’t really know what to think," he laughs. Hell Breaks Loose is out on August 7 through Sony – check out our review on page 94.

F ormerYothuYindi frontman and uniquely celebrated musician Gurrumul has released an album of stunning gospel reinterpretations; the Indigenous multi-instrumentalist and vocalist drew from childhood memories spent with his family and the wider Galiwin'ku community at the Methodist church on Elcho Island (several hundred kilometres off of the coast of Darwin, where he was born).The rhythm and blues- bent hymns, traditional lullabies and soulful meditations are wrapped into a devotional harmony in Gurrumul's capable hands. gurrumul gets gospel

The Gospel Album by Gurrumul is out now through MGM.

the maccabees can prove it

C ritics are going mad-dog forThe Maccabees third album, Marks to Prove It ; the gorgeous creation is a love letter to the band's home town of Elephant and Castle, which is teetering on the verge of gentrification. "Elephant is quite an odd place and it gets quite a tough rap from the rest of London because it’s only just started to be regenerated," guitarist Felix White tells STACK . "But just being involved in it you realise what a

special place it is, and how many little communities there are in it." The album's tracks veer all over an emotive spectrum, but a common thread of 'cinematic' growth links them together – they're even getting Arcade Fire comparisons. "'Arcade Fire' has just become a kind of metaphor for an epic sort of joy, hasn’t it? I think there’s a natural positivity in our music and an 'everything is going to be all right in the end' type of thing,"White muses.

Marks to Prove It by The Maccabeess is out now on Caroline/ Universal.

a drum part, and then it ends up being something awesome. When the Storms Would Come by Holy Holy is out now through Sony.

Read the whole interview online at stack.net.au

AUGUST 2015 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.com.au

084