STACK #164 June 2018

MUSIC

FEATURE

(L-R) Dean Gordon, Jason Bovino, Amy Sheppard, George Sheppard, Emma Sheppard, Michael Butler

listening experience to our fans.

trumpet eventually, but ended up deciding it was a unique enough sound to keep as is. So yeah, it was kind of a random experiment which then got left in. There’s actually a bunch of random things like that on the record. There’s a tiny toy frog that was in the studio that made this weird croaking sound whenever it was shook. That features as part of the beat on Love Me Now . Are there any songs on the album that almost weren’t included because it took you some time to find their groove? It’s safe to say we had our struggles making this record; the whole thing nearly didn’t get made numerous times, but anything worth doing properly is going to demand heartache and sacrifice. In the end we actually managed to squeeze more songs on this record. We probably could’ve cut a song or two, but we just couldn’t do it. We're so proud of these 14 songs and they worked so nice together as a whole experience, that we couldn’t bear to lose one. Plus we’d taken a little while to make this record, so we figured we owed a longer

deal with those feelings, and we want to make sure the song is hitting the right tone lyrically. We Belong has a tiny bit of beatboxing in there, just before the final chorus. It sounds like it could be your voice… is it something you practise? Haha, yeah, rapping has never been my specialty. But I’ve always had a rhythm in my head, so beatboxing is something I did a lot through high school, knowing full well it would never truly have any useful application in adult life. Turns out, it had one … Similarly, in RidingTheWave I’m sure I can hear a mouth-trumpet noise.Was that a placeholder, but you decided to keep it in? That’s something I used to do all the time in writing sessions – I used it to work out melodies. It just so happened that the producer we were working with at the time heard me doing it and was like, “Wait... Do that again into the mic. We need to record that.” We spoke about replacing it with a real

Which songs are you most excited to play live? Are there any which you found (or anticipate finding) more difficult than the others to translate from studio to stage? There’s a bunch I’m excited for people to start hearing and getting to know live. Choke has these tongue-twister lyrics that I feel like people will love to learn, and sing along to live. There’s all kinds of sing-along moments. In terms of songs that were more difficult to transition from studio to stage, that was actually a lesson we learned from the first album. We wrote Watching the Sky with big live venues in mind, making sure every moment would be able to translate well in a live scenario. So far it's been great! We can't wait to share it with the rest of the world.

Watching The Sky by Sheppard is out June 8 via MGM.

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