Sydney’s dark-popcrew Noire recently dropped their debut EP Baby Blue following on from a string of impressive singles including the hypnotic ‘Just Like Honey’.
Featuring guest instrumentation from drummer Luke Davidson (The Preatures), this mesmerising EP is filled with dark melodies, dreamy honey tones and drifting vocals, taking their somber inspiration from Allen Ginsberg, to Coppola films, to french duo Air. What results are a collection of buoyant, stunningly-crafted tracks, both spectacular and introspective.
To celebrate the release of this impressive EP, the band’s Jessica Mincher has given us a track by track rundown of the record. Check stout below and if you like what you’re hearing be sure to visit the band’s Facebook page for more info on upcoming shows and releases.
Pilgrims
“This is the oldest song on the EP, it was written after watching a lot of David Lynch. We always try and write something after going through a really intense phase of a specific director or writer. Drawing inspiration from something with strong visuals seems to give a song a clearer direction.
Billy wrote the instrumental, drums, guitar and synth parts for the song in a couple of hours. I love the rolling, repetitive, hypnotic drum feel with the clean reverb guitars. I love the contrast of light and dark that David Lynch has in his films, especially the blue tones. I was trying to create that kind of colour with this song. The lyric, ‘Jesus I’m a sinner, come into my heart’ was partly taken from the writing at Salvation Mountain. Salvation Mountain is an artwork you can visit, which is a hill covered in paint in the middle of the Colorado Desert.”
Minds
“This song started off with the bass loop, and Billy put the rest of the instrumentation together around that. It has a real, hazy, smoky feel, which is why we made the vocals sound quite dirty and not so clear throughout the verses.”
Just Like Honey
“This song came about from a really beautiful synth sound we found then manipulated in the CS-80 library. The sound has a real static and fuzziness to it, which is where the idea of the lyric ‘just like honey’ came from. We wanted the drums to be punchier than the other tracks; we were using David Bowie’s Just Dance snare sound as a reference.”
Those Days
“I really wanted to make something sound majestic, using a harpsichord sound. The song was written quickly in half an hour or so, but we always kept changing the bridge. In the end we used this really nice ARP Omni synth, which kind of brought it together. Our producer Wayne also added the chant in behind the chorus vocals.”
Baby Blue
“It has a pretty classic pop structure and we were watching a lot of westerns so for me it has a sense of freedom and an older, timeless feel. A friend messaged me today and she said that ‘it’s making me happy and sad at the same time,’ I like that. It’s about love but what happens if it goes?
The guitar feature at the start is the most beautiful part of the whole EP; our producer said it reminded him of Peter Greens guitar in Fleetwood Mac’s song Albatross. We put the drums mics in the stairwell of the studio so the drums have this pretty big and reverbed sound.”
