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“W
e’d finished about half
the songs and we just
got burnt out, or hit
the wall, and got stuck,” explains vocalist/
guitarist King. “We thought it would be
good for us to go out of town for a bit.
We decided to rent a house far away,
[and] we ended up in Nashville. That
house became the Japandroids place for
about six weeks. It was really good for
us, we had a really good time, it really
inspired us.” Not surprising it was where
the pair wrote perennial banger
The
House That Heaven Built
.
“This time we picked New Orleans,
which is another classic American music
city. It’s a city that we both love and love
spending time there, but at the same
time we don’t know a lot of people so
we’re on our own. We’re very much living
together 24/7, working on songs and
then going out for meals together. It’s a
bonding experience as much as anything.”
The great shift in approach, this time
around, was the songwriting.
Near To The
Wild Heart Of Life
presents experiments
in studio production, with far more
changes in tempo (such as the wonderful
slow build in
Midnight To Morning
), yet
we still get that tangled background
chorus of voices, the parts that encourage
any old wet sock to sing along. “In
the beginning we really didn’t have
conversations about what we wanted to
do – it was more about what we didn’t
wait to do,” King says. “We made the first
two records by a very similar process,
with the mentality of making a live record
that’s very simple, very raw, very direct.
I think with
Celebration Rock
we felt
we had achieved this thing we’d been
trying to achieve since we started the
band, which was to make a really great
live-sounding rock and roll record. If you
feel like you’ve achieved it, all you can
really do is a) have a new goal or b) just
continue to do that same thing over and
over. This was the big conversation we
had in the beginning.”
The rule book was thrown to the dogs
and the table was open to any and all
ideas. “[We] set our sights on trying
to make a more proper studio album,
where [we weren’t] afraid of different
instruments or different layers or different
styles of production; [we weren’t] afraid
of the idea that the listener might not
believe that we’re really playing that in
the studio. ‘Let’s not
think about performing
live. Let’s not think about
how we are going to [perform] this.
Let’s worry about that later. Let’s just
do whatever we think sounds cool and
serves the songs.’”
The boys also found motivation in their
own musical loves, allowing the freedom
of expression of their influences to inform
their own letting-go. “A lot of our favourite
classic rock records, they’re a little bit
all over the place,” says King. “There’s
different tempos, there’s different moods,
there’s different song lengths. There’s a
bit more of a journey from start to finish.
It’s not easy when you’ve figured out
how to do one things really well, to all of
a sudden decide to do an album full of
all kinds of things. Any time that we had
an idea that was different or us, that was
when we were more excited to roll with
it… maybe the fourth record is going to
be totally f-cking nuts, and this one is that
bridge between the old band and the new
band.”
2 1
In the beginning we really didn’t have
conversations about what we wanted to do
– it was more about what we didn’t wait to do
continued
•
Near
To The Wild
Heart Of Life
is out now via
Inertia
MUSIC