Earlier this month, Brisbane-based outfit Hey Geronimo released their new album Content. Off of it came the single “Working For Google”, which saw a video released around the same time as the album dropped. We asked the band to share with us five tracks that inspired the track:
Boys Better — The Dandy Warhols
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw0N0bIBKvc
‘Google’ is supposed to have the psych rock stomp (and cheekiness) of prime Dandys, and this song best epitomises their blissed out swagger. The countermelody in the chorus of ‘Google’ is a pretty direct homage to the kind of organ/synth hook the Dandys love throwing in their songs.
Good Vibrations — The Beach Boys
The harmonies in the pre-chorus of ‘Google’ are an attempt to repurpose the religious ecstasy of ‘Smile’-era Brian Wilson for evil rather than good — we’re imagining a new Summer of Love, but one in which the smiling faces are directed up at our new technological overlords. Will there be drugs? Soma, maybe…
Children of the Revolution – T-Rex
Production and arrangement-wise there’s a definite nod to T-Rex and that guitar riff heralding the ‘dawning of a new age’. But overlaid with this A.I. robo-scream that to me sounds like the computer trying to break free from it’s chip. Very much like the narrator in our song.
Good Morning Good Morning – The Beatles
We wanted to capture that panic and dread at the sound of your morning alarm, and Good Morning was definitely a touchstone for this. While “Good Morning” uses a pastiche of different samples and sounds from the BBC library of that era, we use more modern samples (see modem dial up sound :-/) to give this sense of the hyper-real and the absurd.
I hear John Lennon was inspired by slogans from cereal ads when writing Good Morning. Well ‘Google’ too is a parody of our ad-cluttered news feed future (and present!). Listen to the brass riffs in both songs, we really wanted to commandeer that in-your-face-whether-you-like-it-or-not feeling!
Coffee & TV – Blur
Another exasperated narrator (except ours has been juiced up on productivity-enhancing-adrenaline!). Listen to Graham Coxon’s paranoid and borderline absurd guitar work in the outro – we wanted a piece of that to channel the inner world of our future Google employee as they get to breaking point.
And you can listen to Hey Geronimo’s track here:
“Working For Google”, For more details about the band, head to their Facebook Page.
