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stack.net.au
with
TIM CARROLL OF HOLY HOLY
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How did you, Oscar and the touring band
get along during the recent European
tour?There’s such a cute snap of all you
guys on Instagram.
We got along great. We had a lot of fun.
It’s a really good band tour and it’s a good
bunch of people. Interesting conversations
about interesting music, film and politics:
the van journeys are pretty good. Tour life is
kind of funny: it is harrowing at times ‘cause
it’s late nights and early mornings and long
drives and so on. But it’s also in some ways
like a holiday, because you’re just sitting in
the van for six hours and reading or talking or
listening to music and then getting to a venue
and having a few beers and playing music.
So it can be really nice. And adding into
that the European landscape – I’ve travelled
around Europe a bit but I had never been to
Amsterdam, Belgium or Cologne.
Which was your favourite part?
We did a headline show in London
which was interesting and fun, and a bit
more poignant because a lot of the other
shows we did we were on a festival or on a
showcase or something, whereas this was
our show; and it was our first show outside
of [Australia] that we were headlining. It was
a really nice venue in London and the place
was packed and there was a real excitement
and buzz in the air, and we got to play a
bit longer, for an hour. That was definitely
exciting ‘cause I wasn’t sure if we were
going to get there and there be no one there.
Amsterdam was really nice. They really know
how to look after artists over there and it was
cool to just see some of the other bands, and
the different styles of music that were getting
some attention in that scene. We played
Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol. Those
shows were underground little cabin venues
of maybe 150 capacity. But sometimes those
small rooms really work, and they were all
packed and really jovial as well.
The new album gives us Fleetwood Mac
vibes, particularly tracks like
Outside Of
The Heart Of It
.The word “nostalgic” is
used a lot around you, too.What does that
word mean to you?
A lot of the equipment and the way we
are 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. We grew up listening
to music through our parents, and I guess
turned around in our 20s and realised that
we loved [those bands]. I used to work at the
Troubadour and Black Bear Lodge in Brisbane,
and DJs would be in there playing those
hits on vinyl and stuff, so that is a big part of
what we were influenced by. 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. Even
Sharon Van Etten, and things like that. So
there’s times when the nostalgia is there but
there’s times when we want to push into
contemporary song writing as well.
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
they 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 and continue to write and record, and
then we’ll do the record a bit later.’ So that
was how it ended up coming together. We
chose some songs for the EP, put that out
and then did I don’t know how many tours;
five or six tours, we were on the road a lot.
That was great; tt 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
.
You and Oscar live in different cities –
you’re in Brisbane and he’s in Melbourne.
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 a drum
part, and then it ends up being something
awesome.
How do you lasso writing inspiration
when it comes, whether it be on tour or in
the studio?
Song writing to me is very hard to control.
It’s difficult to be like, okay, I’m now going to
sit down and write. It’s more the case that, I
guess it’s cliché but inspirational, come what
else. I’ll be in a certain mood and feel like
playing and then things will happen. So, you
have to be more responsive to when things
are happening. But, we do do certain things.
Often before a tour we’ll rendezvous in a
city and get a studio for two days and just go
down and get some cheap beers for two days
before we hit the road. So, because we live
in different places we have to make certain
arrangements.
(L-R) Oscar Dawson andTim Carroll