STACK #149 Mar 2017

MUSIC NEWS

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think there’s about a 30 foot ceiling, so it’s [an] incredibly open space with a lot of reverb. It’s a very live room. We brought a bunch of baffles to dampen the sound, but the idea was just an informal setting. It’s all very live and, I think, a really good representation of where the band is at after 25 years. This is who we are. This is what we sound like.“ Part of The Waifs' unique output over the years has found the Australian folk trio with their share of sad songs. But it’s Thorn’s new track Long Way From Home that strikes a chord for the girl who used to live by the Australian ocean. “Where I live in America, it’s the Wild West, it’s not the America you see in television or in the news,” she states. “It’s a very isolated part of Utah that I live in, with a house at the end of the road. I just have these moments where I literally feel so far from everything I know, and everything I’ve grown up with, and everything I love. I actually love it in Utah, but I write a lot of homesick songs because I feel it. I feel it there. I feel that distance.” Despite living in vastly different areas geographically, Thorn laughs when the battle theme of angsty tracks Lion And Gazelle , I Won’t Go Down and Done And Dusted is raised. “Well, the interesting thing is, all those three songs? One’s written by Donna, one’s written by me, one’s written by Josh,” she chuckles. “I think it reflects a pretty common experience of middle age. I think we all sort of struggle with the same thing. You have kids, you see the good and the bad in the world, and the struggle within that, and you’re always walking that line.”

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THE WAIFS INTERVIEW Words Savannah Douglas

TOURING 02/03 - 15/04

E mbarking on their astonishing 25th anniversary together, The Waifs knew only two things. The first was that they would make an album to celebrate and the second was that it would be made for the fans. The rest just fell in to place, according to Vikki Thorn. "We didn’t plan too much,” Thorn reveals. “We set aside two weeks and said ‘Let’s go to Josh’s house’, and we didn’t put a lot of forethought into it. But when we landed there, we sat down and faced each other and went, ‘Okay, now what are we going to do?’ We talked about maybe recording an album of covers and old songs. The premise was

[that] we were going to sit around in a room together and just play acoustically. ‘Cause the whole approach was not what do we want to do, but what do we think the fans would want.”

Ironbark by The Waifs is out now via Jarrah Records/MGM.

Continuing the album process in true Waifs nature, the recording of Ironbark found its place in an unlikely, makeshift spot. “Josh [has] built this magnificent old farmhouse that is actually modelled on an old school house he used to drive past, and it’s just a big open plan room. We set up the studio where his kitchen will be,” she enunciates. “I

INTERVIEW

TOURING 23/03 - 29/04

KINGSWOOD Words Tim Lambert

whole recording process – it says a lot about the band’s ambitions. While you should never publicly out your favourite child, the lads relent. For Linacre: “At the moment, Golden . It’s just amazing. But I think Rebel Babe is my favourite.” Laska is more undecided: “I don’t know, man. One time I was at the gym and I put on Atmosphere , and I listened to it 20 times in a row. I was like, ‘Ferg, it’s the best song on the album.’” Along with the beautifully-

shot cover art and each song’s particular female icon (included in the album’s liner notes), the deliberate celebration of powerful women continues in Kingswood’s selected support acts for their huge album tour: female-led punk act WAAX and indie-pop crooner Maddy Jane. How the new material will translate live is still being nutted out, but rest assured the three-piece have something very special in store for their regional and major city dates.

T here’s a perception going ‘round that Kingswood’s new album is a wild departure from the riff-heavy, guitar-driven rock of their huge debut Microscopic Wars . For lead singer Fergus Linacre and guitarist Alex Laska, After Hours, Close To Dawn is the most Kingswood they’ve ever sounded. Recorded in Nashville at the legendary Sound Emporium Studios, the three- piece really set out to embrace the Tennessee lifestyle. “There’s everything going on there," Linacre tells us. "There is still the country layout that sort of smothers everything. But all the cool stuff’s happening in Nashville.” It sounds mellow but the recording process employed was very intensive; in order to get that "five star take", Laska would criticise Linacre’s vocal

performances to push him further into "Spirit Mode" – a plane apparently every track on the album reached, whether it was through that negative reinforcement, the gruelling 50- plus takes it took to nail Looking For Love , or even weighting Linacre’s chest with cinder blocks to record the vocal for Alabama White . In terms of the album’s unifying feel, the boys recall across a couple intimately rolling around in the grass, completely infatuated with each other. To the side of them was a work sign, reading ‘Tree Falling Ahead’. So keen were the guys to absorb the emotion of the couple on the grass, they mistakenly read the sign as ‘True Feeling Ahead’, and that became the motto of the walking through a park in Nashville where they came

After Hours, Close To Dawn by Kingswood is out March 3 via Dew Process.

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MARCH 2017

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