STACK #150 Apr 2017

MUSIC NEWS

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Did you all expect DeathToThe Lads to hit it off with the triple j public so hard?The hottest 100 entry was an amazing result . Not at all! We believed in the song and thought people would like it but none of us expected for it to catch fire the way it did. Love playing it live now as well, people get very into it! The organ at the end is gorgeous; is it a real one, and if you could have the chance would you play this at the MelbourneTown Hall and use the pipe organ? Thank you! Yeah it is, we recorded in an amazing studio that had all kinds of organs and synths and other beautiful gear. I was actually walking past the town hall yesterday and thought of how fun it would be to play on that enormous organ! We shoot some questions toThe Smith Street Band'sWilWagner, ahead of the release of the group's fourth album More Scared Of You ThanYou Are Of Me . THE SMITH STREET BAND

TOURING 25/05 - 10/06

Jeff Rosenstock’s album WORRY. was one of my favourites from last year – what do you admire about Jeff and his approach to music? Everything! Jeff’s been my hero since I was about 15, so to be able to call him a friend now is pretty special. His energy and passion for music is infectious and we have different writing styles that complement each other well. He's a fantastic producer! One of the major thematic similarities between your own and his outputs is, I think, the acknowledgement of ill mental health and anxiety. Do those themes come out in your music because you are deliberately trying to address them, or is it just chance that the way you find catharsis – through creating music – also brings people who suffer together? A bit of both. I try and be as natural as possible with my lyrics, if I set out to try to write a certain kind of song it always sounds forced so I try and let the songs write themselves as much as I can. But whenever I write a song that's about these kind of issues I always try and make it a good song, it's very important to me to talk about this stuff and I love that it emboldens other people to talk about it too!

Did Max the robot (from the Birthdays clip) come from the brain of director NealWalters? How did Neal come into your world? It came completely out of his very cool brain! He's a great person. He's hard working, passionate and very talented, but also super easy to be around and get along with. We just found each other through mutual friends. We have a similar ethos and work ethic so as soon as we entered one another’s worlds it was a There are several unusual sounds in It Kills MeTo Be Alive . I think there's lapsteel, synthed strings, and something that could be a euphonium in a bucket. How much time did you spend experimenting with where these sorts of sounds fit across the album? It's lapsteel, pedal steel and the Lee [Hartney] doing guitar volume swells. We did heaps of pre-production and then had about a month to record, so we experimented a lot. There're definitely a lot more interesting sounds and ideas on this album than on our previous work. ZKR match made in heaven!

More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me by The Smith Street Band is out April 7 via Pool House Records.

Read the full interview online at stack.net.au

The enormous, freaky glitch noise towards the end of Laughing (Or Pretending To Laugh) , the final track on The Smith Street Band's new album, remains a mystery to the band, their engineer and their producer. They decided to leave it in the final recording.

FACTOID:

ALED JONES W e all know what it means for a vocalist to harmonise with themselves – singers have been layering their own vocals in the studio since time immemorial. But on his new album One Voice , world-renowned Welsh vocalist Aled Jones duets with himself... as a child. Jones reached international fame at 15 with the haunting Walking In The Air , and after a decades-long career in musical theatre, radio and television broadcasting, recently unearthed never-before-heard recordings of himself singing as a boy. In what he describes as a decision which has brought him "full circle," Jones recorded accompanying vocals to the collection of classics (including pieces by Handel, Purcell and Britten as well as Celtic Irish and Welsh folk music). The special Australian edition features an exclusive 1986 recording of Jones and Australian bel canto Dame Joan Sutherland performing Handel's Athalia. ZKR

One Voice by Aled Jones is out now via ABC/Universal.

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APRIL 2017

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