77 / 92
15
FEATURE
MUSIC
The adorable clip for single
Hey, Did I
Do You Wrong
sets out a pretty idyllic
few days in the world of the band, in
which they lark about in the ocean,
pack their stuff for a gig, and fly out
to perform in some very horticultural
surrounds. “Yeah, that was real
life!” Davieson says. “We played at
the Botanical Gardens with Boy &
Bear and Amy Shark. We had… Dan
Craig following us around, filming
everything, just being a fly on the wall
for like four days.” The show was
in Melbourne, but the beach scenes
were filmed in the group’s hometown.
“It’s in South Freo, but I don’t like that
beach very much. It’s the dog beach.
Phil, our manager, insisted we go to
the dog beach so his dogs could be in
the clip. There’s nicer beaches, and we
definitely frolic in them often.”
The Water
by
San Cisco is out May 5
via MGM.
Sunrise
references
“awkward
conversations”
amongst some
textural vocal
effects. Davieson
says co-producer Steve
Schram had much to do
with those decisions during
the recording of
The Water
, but it
was more a case of his holding Davieson
back than slathering anything on. “They’ll leave
me alone in a room for half a day and I’ll do all
the vocals, but then if they leave me there for
too long, I’ll just go nuts,” he says. “Put weird
autotune things on, and then weird harmonies,
and at one point I had 20 of me singing this
part, which I knew we were never going to
use but I really wanted to do it. I like vocal
effects and weird, electric, robotic things. I
find it really interesting and really fun to play
with. Steven’ll come in, like ‘No, stop it, stop
it.’ And he’ll Schramify it.”
Steve Schram has been with the four-piece
for years, and Davieson relishes attempting to
define “this character that [they] get locked in
a room with for months at a time.” He seems
like something of a maestro hydra. “He’s kind
of like our father, and our friend, and our worst
enemy, and an evil villain. He’s like a coach… I
don’t know how else we could do it, because
he pushes us so hard, and we kind of need it,”
he explains. “Then other times, when he sees
that we’re on a roll and getting the idea, he’ll
just slowly drift back into a dark corner of the
room and let us do our thing.”
The bandmember whose ‘thing’ has most
noticeably developed with this album is
drummer Scarlett Stevens, who again lends
her voice to harmonies, call-and-response and
back-up vocals, and her rhythmic instrumental
chops are improving with every record – check
out closer
Did
You Get What
You Came For
for
all the evidence
you’ll need. But
Davieson’s lyrics have
also noticeably matured
into subtle reflections, all
the while still full of the wry YA
observations he’s known for. Sometimes
you might not be able to tell which is
which, but Davieson believes that doesn’t
matter; in
The Distance
there’s a lyric that
feels James Murphy-like in its poignancy
– “You stay you, and I change me” – but
Davieson reveals that the track is actually
about
The Lego Movie
(“I won’t go into
detail because I don’t want to ruin the
movie, it’s a great movie!”). Likewise
Hey,
Did I Do You Wrong
isn’t about a romantic
relationship at all, but a friendship – “a
good friend not hanging out with you
because they’ve fallen in love with a girl.”
“And that’s what’s so sick about pop
music,” Davieson enthuses, “is that it
doesn’t matter what I think it’s about at
all! People grab it and they relate it to their
life, which is just awesome. It’s almost
like a multi-tool. Really, you can change
any songs into whatever you’re needing in
your life at that point in time.”
That's what's so sick
about pop music
–
people grab it and they
relate it to their life
Hey, Did I Do
YouWrong
Photo: Ebony Talijancich