Seabellies’ upcoming album, Fever Belle, has Melbourne & Berlin to thank for it’s roots. The band bunkered down in Melbourne for five weeks in late 2010 in Richmond’s Bakehouse in the initial writing sessions that eventually produced the 12 tracks on Fever Belle, the band’s sophomore record.
After this stint in the Victorian capital, To shake off the cobwebs of touring, the band simultaneously set off to different parts of the world in source of inspiration for their forthcoming album. Some months later they all found themselves in Berlin and continued working on new material in the German capital in mid 2011.
Written and recorded in Melbourne, Sydney and Berlin, the forthcoming album is a real departure from where By Limbo Lake left off, and draws upon specific places and memories.
You’ve just been signed to Shock Records. Exciting times! What does it mean to have a label behind you?
Having a label like Shock behind us is a major asset, as not only do we get to plug into a team of really experienced people who know and love music and the industry, and know it inside out, we also get a bunch of people who believe in what we do, and have the same goals for our record that we do, in getting our music out there. And that feels damn good.
More importantly you have a new album, Fever Belle, due out October 18th. How does it differ from your debut?
Fever Belle still has some links to our debut album, though I think it is markedly different in tone, perhaps because the first album was written entirely in our hometown of Newcastle. Overall there is more of an emphasis on marrying our old ideals of electronica with our more recent style of guitar lead melody, but this time we really laboured over creating a more rhythmic sound. It is far more diverse than our first record, and we are really proud of that.
It was written and recorded in cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Berlin. How do you think those cities influenced the development of the LP?
The first record was written entirely in the comfort of our hometown, Newcastle. Fever Belle was written in Melbourne and Berlin, and the local scenes definitely rubbed off on us. I think playing the Melbourne scene for a while made us focus on our guitar elements, as we played with some incredible acts during that residnecy, such as I, A Man, Kins, and Alex and the Ramps, all of whom had really beautifully crafted pop songs. Our time in Berlin was at the other spectrum, being the homeland of electronic music.We pulled out all of our old school sequencers and tried to find beauty and interest in odd blippy beats, time signatures and buzzes. Fever Belle is our attempt at melding those two schools into our own sound.
Lyrically is there a theme that runs through the album? What stories are you telling on Fever Belle?
It’s a funny thing, the time between when you first have the idea for a song, and where it lands. Fever Belle was initially an album written in a happy place, half the album rejoicing in how my life was, in love, and well defined paths for the future, whilst the other half of the tracks were imaginings of how things would be if I wasn’t enjoying such happiness. Everything changed for me in the middle of tracking the album, and I fell apart. I’d love to say that didn’t effect the album, but it did. It’s an album about that time, rejoicing in absolute happiness, and then what happens when that all goes.
On your new single, ‘It’s Alright’, you used four different drum kits. Are there any other tracks on the album where you experimented in ways that you previously thought you never would have?
Yeah, ‘It’s alright’ actually has three different time signatures going on over the top of eachother too…it’s mental. Rhythmically, this album has a few tracks which were written around the rhythm first, which seems like a backwards way to do things….but we loved it. Producer Berkfinger also rewired some of his gear and ran drums and various things through his keys, just weird stuff like that, which worked out in some amazing ways. Lots of double drums is something we did a bit of on this album too, which I always love. The weirdest thing that worked in the studio is Berkfinger had this idea of recording the drums in one track by wrapping an old mic up in plastic bags, surrounding it with bricks and ‘see what happens’. somehow, it sounds amazing, and is the best drum sound on the album! I definitely didn’t think we’d ever have tried that!!!
It has been three years since your debut was released. In a sense has it been a long time between drinks? Did this album take longer to make than anticipated in the beginning?
It definitely did take longer than it should have, but it was all my fault! We all went travelling for 6 months after our last album cycle, as we had been touring as a band consistently for about 5 years, and we needed refreshing…but by mid 2011 we had the songs in the bag. When it came to recording it in early 2012, I had major heartbreak and kind of ran away to Uganda to volunteer in an orphanage for a while to get some perspective. By the time I was well enough, Berkfinger was back living in Berlin, so I headed back there and finished the album there, almost a year later than we had intended. But I think it means the album has some real feeling to it that it may not have had previously. whew, that was heavy.
What records have you stolen from your parent’s record collection and why?
Houses Of The Holy – Led Zeppelin, that band just reinvented new ways to play their instruments with every album, they were so inventive and the diversity on this album is amazing. They also didn’t seem to ever heed to people’s ideas of what structure a song ‘should’ have. They were renegades.
What Australian artist would you most like to collaborate with and why?
Kimbra. Because that would be nice, right?
What’s on the cards for The Seabellies for the rest of the year and early 2014?
We will be hitting the road quite a lot through November and December to promote Fever Belle. It will be the largest tour we have ever done, and we can’t wait.
Seabellies ‘It’s Alright’ Single Tour Dates:
Thursday 26th September @ Workers Club, Melbourne
with I, a Man & Al Parkinson
Friday 27th September @ X & Y, Brisbane
Friday 11th October @ Spectrum, Sydney
with I, a Man & TBC
Listen to ‘It’s Alright’:
