While in Melbourne, Larry Heath catches up with Henry F. Skerritt of The Holy Sea.

How does Melbourne compare to (hometown) Perth for you to make music?

Both are really supportive places to play; when I was playing in Perth what I liked about it was that it was a very small, indie. In that sense it was a really great place to start. I think that Melbourne will be good for us for a number of different reasons; there’s a lot more bands doing the thing that we’re doing, but for me it’s really interested to move to a place where the history of the place is quite in the present. You don’t get that in Perth; it’s a modern city, and people don’t really seem to be interested in the past of it. I said to someone the other day…Paul Kelly’s songs made a lot more sense after living in Melbourne for a few years, more so then when I was in Perth.

And of course in Melbourne you’ve followed more passions than just music; you’ve completed your Masters degree there, and you curate a Melbourne gallery; are you still involved in that?

Yeah, and to me they’re all kind of connected; when you start doing this sort of stuff, you end up seeing how intertwined it all is.

With the new album; there was a relatively long gap between your first two albums, but this one came out relatively quickly. How did that process compare to the earlier albums?

With ‘Beginners Guide…’, it was very much we’re putting the band together and being very much a recording band. After that it was a year on the road touring the record, we became a proper band. So in one sense it was way more straightforward because we knew that we wanted to go in and capture the sound of that live band. On the other hand, we also wanted to make sure it was still a rich, thick, interesting sounding record. Part of that was we spent quite a lot of time experimenting in the studio just to get that balance; I think we kind of got it. It’s got the messy intensity that we have live, because the album was mostly recorded with all of us playing at once in one room, but there’s enough added stuff on top of that to give it a bit more depth and character. I guess it was a much more focused project.

It really does feel like there was a lot more importance placed on the structure of both the sound and the band, really.

To be honest, it was. With the past albums and especially this one, I’ve always been very conscious of having a body of songs that fit together. When I say that, I mean both lyrically, thematically and musically; we demoed all of this album before we recorded it, and we really did know where things were going to go right from the start. Some of that was to get a narrative flow…we really thought all of that through, and hopefully it kinda worked.

I think it certainly does! And how do you think it translates live?
Well, we are a live band, and we’ve had the good fortune for having these songs for the best part of a year before we recorded it in studio. In that sense we know the show, and it’s different from the albums, where as in live shows we tend to play with the ebb and flow, and go for crescendos a bit more; a lot of the softer songs are at the tail end of the album, but for the live show we put them at the start of the setlist. I think a lot of intensity of the record is from hearing a live band that’s quite comfortable playing off each other, so I think they’re going to be quite good shows!

And of course, you’ve had Nick Cave amongst your fans, singing your praises and inviting you along to ATP; what was that like?

It was extraordinary; I think that you can hear the Bad Seeds were a pretty big influence on us, so I was a bit of disbelief when we got asked to do that. I guess in one way, you can’t begin to imagine how nerve wracking it is to have Mick Harvey and Chris Bailey standing side of stage! I think it’s an unrepeatable awesome experience. It also puts a lot of it in perspective; these guys have been doing it for years and years and years, and you’re just relatively starting out…it’s very humbling as well.