STACK March 2017 Issue 149

72 / 97

THE WAIFSINTERVIEW
whole recording process – it says
a lot about the band’s ambitions.
While you should never
publicly out your favourite child,
the lads relent. For Linacre: “At
the moment, Golden. It’s just
amazing. But I think Rebel Babe
is my favourite.” Laska is more
undecided: “I don’t know, man.
One time I was at the gym and
I put on Atmosphere, and I
listened to it 20 times in a row. I
was like, ‘Ferg, it’s the best song
on the album.’”
Along with the beautifully-
shot cover art and each song’s
particular female icon (included
in the album’s liner notes), the
deliberate celebration of powerful
women continues in Kingswood’s
selected support acts for their
huge album tour: female-led
punk act WAAX and indie-pop
crooner Maddy Jane. How the
new material will translate live
is still being nutted out, but rest
assured the three-piece have
something very special in store
for their regional and major city
dates.
KINGSWOOD
continued
10 MARCH 2017
visit MUSIC NEWS
INTERVIEW
There’s a perception going
‘round that Kingswood’s new
album is a wild departure from
the riff-heavy, guitar-driven rock
of their huge debut Microscopic
Wars. For lead singer Fergus
Linacre and guitarist Alex Laska,
After Hours, Close To Dawn is
the most Kingswood they’ve
ever sounded. Recorded in
Nashville at the legendary Sound
Emporium Studios, the three-
piece really set out to embrace
the Tennessee lifestyle. “There’s
everything going on there,"
Linacre tells us. "There is still
the country layout that sort of
smothers everything. But all
the cool stuff’s happening in
Nashville.”
It sounds mellow but the
recording process employed
was very intensive; in order to
get that "five star take", Laska
would criticise Linacre’s vocal
performances to push him
further into "Spirit Mode" – a
plane apparently every track on
the album reached, whether
it was through that negative
reinforcement, the gruelling 50-
plus takes it took to nail Looking
For Love , or even weighting
Linacre’s chest with cinder blocks
to record the vocal for Alabama
White.
In terms of the album’s
unifying feel, the boys recall
walking through a park in
Nashville where they came
across a couple intimately rolling
around in the grass, completely
infatuated with each other. To the
side of them was a work sign,
reading ‘Tree Falling Ahead’. So
keen were the guys to absorb
the emotion of the couple on the
grass, they mistakenly read the
sign as ‘True Feeling Ahead’, and
that became the motto of the
Words Tim Lambert
Words Savannah Douglas
Embarking on their astonishing 25th
anniversary together, The Waifs knew only
two things. The first was that they would make
an album to celebrate and the second was that
it would be made for the fans. The rest just fell
in to place, according to Vikki Thorn.
"We didn’t plan too much,” Thorn reveals.
“We set aside two weeks and said ‘Let’s
go to Josh’s house’, and we didn’t put a lot
of forethought into it. But when we landed
there, we sat down and faced each other and
went, ‘Okay, now what are we going to do?’
We talked about maybe recording an album
of covers and old songs. The premise was
[that] we were going to sit around
in a room together and just play
acoustically. ‘Cause the whole
approach was not what do we want
to do, but what do we think the fans
would want.”
Continuing the album process in
true Waifs nature, the recording of
Ironbark found its place in an unlikely, makeshift
spot. “Josh [has] built this magnificent old
farmhouse that is actually modelled on an old
school house he used to drive past, and it’s
just a big open plan room. We set up the studio
where his kitchen will be,” she enunciates. “I
think there’s about a 30 foot ceiling, so it’s [an]
incredibly open space with a lot of reverb. It’s a
very live room. We brought a bunch of baffles
to dampen the sound, but the idea was just an
informal setting. It’s all very live and, I think, a
really good representation of where the band
is at after 25 years. This is who we are. This is
what we sound like.“
Part of The Waifs' unique output over the
years has found the Australian folk trio with
their share of sad songs. But it’s Thorn’s new
track Long Way From Home that strikes a chord
for the girl who used to live by the Australian
ocean. “Where I live in America, it’s the Wild
West, it’s not the America you see in television
or in the news,” she states. “It’s a very isolated
part of Utah that I live in, with a house at
the end of the road. I just have these
moments where I literally feel so far
from everything I know, and everything
I’ve grown up with, and everything I
love. I actually love it in Utah, but I write
a lot of homesick songs because I feel it.
I feel it there. I feel that distance.”
Despite living in vastly different areas
geographically, Thorn laughs when the
battle theme of angsty tracks Lion And
Gazelle, I Won’t Go Down and Done And
Dusted is raised. “Well, the interesting
thing is, all those three songs? One’s
written by Donna, one’s written by me,
one’s written by Josh,” she chuckles. “I think it
reflects a pretty common experience of middle
age. I think we all sort of struggle with the
same thing. You have kids, you see the good
and the bad in the world, and the struggle
within that, and you’re always walking that line.”
Ironbarkby
The Waifs is out
now via Jarrah
Records/MGM.
TOURING
02/03 - 15/04
TOURING
23/03 - 29/04
After Hours,
Close To Dawn
by Kingswood is out
March 3 via Dew
Process.