STACK #132 Oct 2016

MUSIC

NEWS

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continued

josh smith NORTHLANE

POP THE CLUTCH: JEAN-PAUL GASTER C lutch fans are an eclectic mob, but they all share a very red-blooded esteem for the blues-psychedelic-punk style of the Maryland outfit, who have just released their eleventh album Psychic Warfare . Instead of deliberately veering away from the sound of their last release (2013’s internationally acclaimed Earth Rocker ), the four-piece decided to embrace their fundamentals. “We really hit a mark with Earth Rocker ,” says drummer Jean-Paul Gaster. “It was very well received; we did things on that album that we hadn’t done before… it set the bar very high. We’re always searching for new sounds and new things to get into, but at the end of the day it’s still the same four guys playing the same four instruments. We get together and maybe we’ll even try to do a reggae song, and it will just sound like Clutch playing a reggae song.” This time around Gaster focused on listening to the syncopation of frontman Neil Fallon’s vocal rhythms, and the ensuing beats are full of this juicy swagger which sometimes threatens to tip off-balance. “My favourite drummers are the ones that, when they play, you can hear the melody of the rhythm,” Gaster says. “Guys like Ginger Baker and Bernard Purdie and Elvin Jones. I’m a great fan of syncopation. I like a drummer

Read our full interview with Jean-Paul Gaster online at stack.net.au.

Q1/ New vocalist Marcus Bridge is absolutely killing it. Did you expect the open audition process would produce someone who would contribute creatively to the band? Thankyou for the kind words! He will be stoked. [Contributing] was extremely important, hence why we asked not only for people to cover a song but after shortlisting the best applicants asked them to write lyrics and vocals over a track that we’d only released as an instrumental. Throwing someone into the deep end with the touring schedule we had was a tall order; this was the scariest part, as we really couldn’t predict how anybody new would handle touring. To Marcus’ credit he turned out to be extremely chill, easy to get along with and super professional at his craft, so it was smooth sailing from the moment we boarded the flight to Europe for his first tour with the band. Q2/ Did you always feel that the band would pull through the line-up turbulence OK? There absolutely were moments of self doubt. This is something normal for any artist: surely you need to have self confidence, vision and determination, but you’re always second guessing everything, and that’s how you improve. There was a moment of terror when we realized how vulnerable our position was, but we stayed calm, put together a sound plan of action and used the situation to our advantage. In tough times there’s always an opportunity, and this was one of the biggest opportunities we’d ever stumbled across. Q3/ What has the rehearsal schedule been like in the lead-up to this mammoth tour? We worked our butts off in rehearsals leading up to the North American dates. Now that we’ve had a chance to play these new songs on tour we’re making the most of a brief respite at home, but that being said we all still practise every single day! Q4/ Do you think Node 's diverse style has gained you new fans, or old fans were open to the fresh take (or both)? It’s absolutely been a mixture of the two. Only time will tell what it really does for the growth of our band, we definitely have a lot more flexibility now as to what tours we can play and how we’ll fit onto things like festival lineups, plus we’ve gained far more radio support than ever which all helps. At the end of the day though, what matters most is how we feel about the record, and it’s the record we wanted to release, so we’re happy. Node , Northlane's third album and the first with the group's new frontman, reached #1 on the ARIA chart last month. The five-piece are touring in November: check unfdcentral.com/artist/northlane for details.

to challenge the audience in a way that’s not necessarily a technical thing, but that challenges everybody’s groove ability, in a sense.” Gaster hasn’t changed his kit set-up much since the band’s inception almost 15 years ago, and still doesn’t believe that he has “figured the damn things out”: “I try to pull the most sound I can out of the fewest things,” he says. “I like a lot of tone coming off the drum, and that’s why you can get to a lot of sounds.” He believes that recording in Texas for the first time, with lauded producer and long-time accomplice Machine, rubbed off on the album. “Texas is a very unique place,” he says. “I think a lot of the folks there kind of consider themselves to be a separate country altogether. There’s a lot of energy there. It’s beautiful, very scenic, the hills are amazing. But I will say that I’m a fan of being able to just go to the local shop and buy a beer or something to eat, and that’s wasn’t really a luxury for us out there.”

Psychic Warfare by Clutch is out now via Rocket.

Preachin' with peaches

NORTHLANE (L-R) Jon Deiley, Alex Milovic, Marcus Bridge, Nic Pettersen, Josh Smith.

P eaches’ new album Rub is full of all the rhythmically mesmerising, lyrically convention-choking stuff that we expect from her, along with freshly pulsing beats and experimental sounds and that very dry, droll voice that couldn't come from anyone else's throat. It was co-written with her pal Vice Cooler, whom she says she met a little over 15 years ago. “Let me tell you a bit about him,” she proposes to STACK . “He grew up in Alabama and he had two choices: to get into meth or to get into music. So he chose music. He used to host bands in his basement, bands would come from other towns. This is when he was 14! He started to do a solo electro show and I took him on tour a lot. We have a very similar aesthetic about what music should sound like. He knows what I'm about. We set up in my garage in LA and then we started together

for ten hours a day, every day for a year, and made the album.” Among the bangers on Rub ( Wave Your Dick In The Air is a favourite, as well as the characteristically clever role-swapping going on in the title track) sits Free Drink Ticket , which drips with derision. “To me, it’s about when you’re in love and something happens,

and that person that you loved, you hate. Not just hate but you want to, like, kill him – you want to off him. Those are real feelings, so I wanted to express those,” she explains. Acts of evasiveness and lying are also returned to, themes Peaches expounds acutely. “That somebody I love would lie to me like that – I can’t understand why people are so repressive in this society,” she says. “All these politicians or prominent people hold a certain regard for family or conservative values, and then you find out that they have same sex lovers or whatever. So it’s like, ‘Why are you doing this? Is it just for the secret?’ Why are people so into their secrets instead of really living their lives?”

Rub by Peaches is out now through Remote Control.

Node by Northlane is out

now, through UNFD.

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