Also along for the ride that night are The Loveless, who are launching their long-awaited EP of dirty, grungy, snarly-vocal rock (“We’ve been wanting to play a show with them for a while, so that’s really cool,” Andie says) plus Dead River (“Bad ass stoner rock!”) – who have played Cherry Rock and supported Truck Fighters – and A Basket Of Mammoths, playing a selection of melodic psych. And as bassist Andie Holiday reveals, the band hopes to have a new recording unleashed in time for the show: a remix of their latest single Insane with the magic touch of Mr. Beau Hill. Andie, where do we know that name?
“Warrant! Cherry Pie! Alice Cooper! Eric Clapton! Ratt!” she says. “He’s done all sorts of stuff, and he contacted us and said he liked the song, and would we like him to remix it? So we sent him the tracks and hopefully it’ll be up on our Bandcamp in time for the gig.” You can check out the pre-Beau Hill version of the song at longholiday.bandcamp.com, where you can download it and Hit Machine (Unplugged) for free if you want or you can kick the band a few bucks in thanks.
So what is it about the grunge sound that seems to be resonating with audiences so much at the moment, especially in Melbourne? “I think it’s partly just nostalgia,” Andie says. “A lot of people our age look back fondly at that style of music, and it’s something that hasn’t really been around for a while.” Is it also that there’s a human element to grunge that has been missing from subsequent, more Pro Toolsed genres where all the fine little details that breathe some life into a track are removed?
“That could be it too!” she says. “It was definitely a time when people had to play their instruments, for better or worse, and that human element is so important.” Andie’s bass playing is influenced by players from the ‘90s such as Rayna from Coal Chamber, D’Arcy from The Smashing Pumpkins and Sean Yseult from White Zombie – female musicians who confidently held down the low end with authority and drive, and weren’t afraid to rock. Check out She Ain’t Dead (But You Are) for a great example of Andie’s edgy bass tone and in-the-pocket rhythm.
Long Holiday formed back in 2011 when drummer Marc (who you might know from Melbourne alternative-funky-metally-hard-to-categorise band Uncle Chunk) mentioned to Andie that Gina had picked up a guitar and started writing some songs, and would Andie – a veteran of Melbourne bands like The Kissingers and Sugarfree Masons – like to hear them?
“I thought, ‘Oh yeah, this’ll probably be crap’,” Andie laughs. “But they were great! So I said, ‘Yeah, I’d like to be involved.’ We worked out some arrangements and went into Marc’s studio to record them. We had all this stuff recorded before we’d even played a gig.”
The songs bore definite influences from the grunge era, in terms of moody, shifting riffage, driving basslines and dirty textures – more of the ‘post-Pixies’ approach to grunge than the ‘post Soundgarden’ one. And yet already the band’s sound is shifting into a new direction.
“The new songs we’re writing are more hard rock, more rockin’,” Andie explains. “The first album was very grungy and that’s who we were at the time, and we still love that sound, but we’ve written a lot since then and played a lot of gigs since then, so the band’s starting to develop more of its own thing. We’ll be going into the studio to record album number two and hopefully have that done around the end of the year.”
With Marc having access to a pro-level recording studio, the band is able to work up material without having to watch the clock. Sometimes when that’s the case it results in a band disappearing up their collective butts with overdub after overdub, but in Long Holiday’s case it seems to manifest itself as the ability to wait for the perfect take that captures the band’s overall feel and sound. You can hear the progression between Greetings From… which was released in July 2013, and Insane, released in December – the latter sounding more confident and guitar-driven.
So any last thoughts, Andie? “Just come on out to the gig, catch some great bands and tell Gina she’s old.”
BY PETER HODGSON
