Holy Holy
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Holy Holy

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“I just moved down to Tassie in December,” Carroll says down a phone line from Stockholm. The band have recently wrapped up the European leg of their tour, and the singer has been spending time there in his wife’s home country. “Before that I was a born and raised Brisbane boy. So the setting down there is kind of new still, and I haven’t done a lot of writing down there yet. A lot of this album was written over here in Stockholm, with a bit of Brisbane and Melbourne thrown in. But I’m living in the forest down there. I’m 45 minutes out of Launceston, seven ks down a dirt road in a valley with no power, no phone reception, no running water. It’s really beautiful and inspiring, peaceful, and I’m looking forward to the writing I’ll be doing there once I get back.”

It sounds like a refreshing, if challenging environment. Though, the writing of Tasmanian novelists Richard Flanagan and Rohan Wilson indicates the creative potential of such stunning removal is huge. One wonders if building a life in such a location mightn’t be an attempt to exorcise the influence of other music, of other opinions and distractions. Yet as Carroll explains, you can never truly separate yourself from what has come before.

“You can’t help but not be a part of a scene, of various trends and styles,” he says. “Like, there’s obviously a big influence from all of our parents’ record collections. Ryan [Strathie, drums], Oscar and I were brought up listening to people like Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac. I have an older sister and so does Oscar, so there were those influences trickling in as well – The Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M., even Guns N’ Roses sneaks in. But then you start finding your own tastes. There’s so much incredible music being made now, like Father John Misty, The War on Drugs, Band of Horses. The influences are broad, but one thing that I guess runs through it all is a kind of tone. We’re still using pretty traditional instruments – acoustic pianos, guitars, that sort of fleet of sounds – and I think that adds to the sense of nostalgia. That, and some pretty antiquated recording equipment.”

The result, When The Storms Would Come, is a damned impressive outcome. There are some truly epic vocals, somewhat reminiscent of Boy & Bear, yet with a tonal palette that deftly condenses the last 30 years of popular music. It features a notable ‘80s nostalgia, particularly on tracks like You Cannot Call For Love Like A Dog, and A Heroine, and Carroll’s excitement to finally showcase these tracks is palpable; the band has been building towards this moment for years.

“I’ve been wanting to release the album for so long now, over a year,” he says. “We could have released a record quite a while ago; we had a bunch of songs already recorded, but in a way we were still finding our feet. Plus our label really recommended not rushing the album out – to play some more shows, and I think it’s been working really well. We’ve got to play with some of our favourite bands, we’ve been all around the country. But it is great that the album is now finally done. I feel like it’s more of a statement of who we are as a band, and it shows a few more colours of the music we like to make. So I’m proud of the work.”

Even though their debut is only weeks old, the band’s second album isn’t a distant prospect. Carroll and Dawson have already been sketching ideas for the songs to come; the only thing holding them back (beyond their formidable touring schedule, of course) is the practicality of time and space.

“I’ve got about three of four skeleton songs ready,” Carroll says. “I think we’ve learnt a lot over the past year from being in the studio and on stage, so it will definitely be different to what you’re hearing now. There’s development there, but it’s not going to be a huge shift. Also, because we live all over Australia we’ve been talking about this idea that we’d just start recording right now, whenever we’ve got a weekend in Brisbane. We’d just go in and do a song and build the album that way. Because we all have other projects it’s hard to find a big chunk of time. We can’t just all go away for a few months and write an album. So I think we’ll chip away at it like that, and hopefully have an album sooner rather than later.”

BY ADAM NORRIS