STACK September 2017 Issue 155

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030 SEPTEMBER 2017
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Weight_Falls is experimental pop-folk
with a kind of Rusted Root core and a
sunny mien. Several songs (The Border,
Weight Falls, Heart Of You) employ complex
acoustical percussion, with sounds like extra
taps of the pick on the side of the guitar,
or claps and clicks, built into beats. After
scrapping an entire album 18 months ago (“I
decided at the drop of a hat, it just wasn’t
quite right – it was bugging me”) Churchill
downloaded GarageBand and “went nuts
in the beats department.” He credits his
producer, Ian Pritchard, with encouraging
the DIY philosophy. “He’s got this punk
attitude, where he’d hear a beat that I’d
made tapping a Coke can and bashing on
my desk, and he’d be like, ‘Dude,
that’s great. We don’t need to re-do
that, I’ll just record that in and we’ll
blow it up and bring it to life.’ It
started to give us a sound… [we
were] trying to keep it in this almost
– what’s his name? The acoustic
Quentin Tarantino, they call him. Wes
Anderson! So what he does with
films, I wanted to do that with music
– just have all these layers of natural,
The story of the stand-out track from Kim
Churchill’s debut album Weight_Falls
(and Kim’s favourite of the record) is so
bittersweetly gorgeous, you might get
sweaty eyes if the song hadn't made them
so already. “It’s written from the perspective
of a guy called George, who was in the
same hospital ward as my grandmother
in the couple of weeks before they both
passed away,” the Canberra-born musician
says of Rosemary . “George’s mind was
shutting down and malfunctioning and doing
what I sort of imagine a mind does when it’s
on the brink of terminating itself. And he just
fell in love with my grandmother. She was
the love of his life, the woman he always
wanted to find. My dad was like, ‘This is
pretty full on.’ My grandmother said, ‘Hey,
you know what? We’re on the way out but
we’re still conscious. Why not let him come
in and sit with me from time to time? I don’t
mind the company.’ They had a solid two
weeks of sharing all this time together, in
this very beautiful and odd little way.”
Churchill says he “struck lucky” with
that track, but in truth his whole approach
is about indulging in genuine feeling, right
down to the way he interacts with his fans.
“There’s a lot of cynicism about all of this
social media stuff that’s exploded in the last
decade, and cynicism, for me, is the most
dangerous attitude to get on board with,” he
says earnestly. “I just enjoy the social aspect
of talking crap with my fans; I realised how
much fun you could have with it.”
acoustic, quirky stuff.”
That’s not to say it’s a hurl-everything-at-
the-mic deal; Churchill says he specifically
cut a lot of brass from the album, although
he did allow some cheesy sax to show
its face in the main hook of lead single
Breakneck Speed. “I think because it’s a
bold instrument it can go either way,” he
says. “There is a time and a place for it for
sure, but it’s one of those instruments – like
the harmonica or the trumpet – that has
a certain cutting quality that just ends up
the centre of attention. You can’t have it
everywhere.”
It’s a fluidity of work pace, and being
open to new ideas, which ultimately drives
Churchill’s ethic. “I’m not very good
at spending a long time on things.
I remember drawing and painting
as a kid, and I’d be blown away at
how long [my friends] would spend
perfecting their artwork, and I always
loved theirs more than mine. But I
guess this is one of the few times
that my lack of patience was helpful,
because we’d say, ‘That’s rad – now
let’s do the next thing.’” ZKR
John Clarke – the beloved comedian of Clarke and Dawe and The Games
fame, who sadly passed away earlier this year – was one of the most popular
presenters on ABC Classic FM radio, thanks to his deadpan acknowledgment that
he knew next to nothing about classical music (despite his fandom). "For quite
some time it's been extremely obvious that ABC Classic FM is an organisation in
which people who know an awful lot about music are almost ostentatiously over-
represented," he says in one of these delightful segments, collated by ABC for
Clarke's legions of fans who were awaiting his next hosting stint when he died in
April, at 68 years old. This release includes orchestral, piano and operatic classics
by Bach, Puccini, Liszt, Schubert and Verdi, all interspersed with Clarke's one-of-a-
kind commentary. Not to be missed. ZKR
CLARKE'S CLASSICS
TOURING
14/09 - 28/10
KIM
CHURCHILL
Weight_
Falls by Kim
Churchill is
out now via
Warner.
Clarke's
Classics is
out now via
ABC Classics/
Universal.
INTERVIEW
continued