We caught up with Brisbane’s noise-rock trio Thirteen Seventy, who talked us through the recording process behind their latest album, Bitter Dream, the big-name international and Australian bands who influenced their sound and look ahead to their concert in Brisbane on Friday.
Congratulations on your latest album Bitter Dream. When did you start the process of recording this album?
Thank you! We started work on Bitter Dream back in 2013, it feels like an eternity ago! We’d initially booked some recording time around the middle of that year, but our drummer Fi got her foot crushed under a pallet-jack at work, so we ended up having to put it back until the beginning of 2014. After that the recording studio moved, so we put back mixing and mastering, then I got stuck working out the artwork, and here we are in August 2015!
How far back do the songs go?
Most of the songs were written specifically for this album, but Falling dates back as far as 2008. Occasionally I go back through my old demos and play anything I think can be re-worked to the rest of the band. Our bass player Tony is great at making little changes to chord progressions that can alter the whole dynamic of a song, the time signature changes at the end of Falling are a great example of that.
Who did you work with on the record?
We recorded both Bitter Dream, and our previous album Arrest The Slide with Jeff Lovejoy. This album really benefited from us having worked with Jeff previously; we were able to go in and get most of the tracking done within a week, and he already knew what sound we were after. We’ve got it to the point where he more or less knows exactly what we want in a mix, and he’s pre-empting that my first comment will be; “turn the guitars up and vocals down”. We also had help from our previous drummer James Lees, who organised click tracks and gave us some valuable advice during pre-production. For mastering, we worked with Bryce Moorhead, who also did our first record.
Where did you record it?
Bitter Dream was one of the last albums recorded at Blackbox Studios when it was in Newstead. Jeff re-located the studio not long after we finished tracking, so we ended up doing a few overdubs and the mixing in the new space under his house.
What is a favourite memory of the recording process?
I’d have to say when we were recording the song ‘Dry’. It’s very different to the rest of the album, really just a guitar, a vocal and a few spaghetti-western sounding overdubs. Tony was talking about a musical genre called ‘witch house’, and Jeff thought it was a really funny name, so he kept making jokes about turning ‘Dry’ into a witch house song. We ended up calling it ‘spaghetti-western-witch-house’. You probably had to be there.
Tell us a bit about your writing process – how do your songs start. Is it with the lyrics? Is it with the music?
Most of the time my songs start with a fairly simple chord progression and evolve from there. Generally I like to write around 80% of a song, give it a rough structure and then see what happens in the band room. On the odd occasion though I’ve started out with a lyric and worked backwards. The song ‘Mirror’ started with the line ‘When I look in the mirror I see an older version of myself’. Those words were the first thing that popped into my head when I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror one morning. I immediately went and picked up a guitar and the rest of the song was finished within 10 or 15 minutes.
Is there collaboration or is there a chief songwriter?
I’m probably still the chief songwriter at this stage, but this record is a lot more collaborative than our first one. The best example would be Now; I’d written the music for it but had never been able to work out a vocal melody or lyrics. Eventually I asked Tony to see if he could come up with something and he sent me back a completed demo within a couple of days. He also sang his first lead vocal on this track; it’s probably my favourite song on the record. We’ll be writing a lot more like this in future.
Do you record it “live” or in parts? Tell me a bit about the recording process…
We like to record live and get a good drum and bass take, and then build up the song from there. I try and use the guitar beds whenever possible as well, even if we overdub more guitars it just adds to the ‘live’ feel. Jeff is really big on getting the right guitar sound for each song, so we spent a lot of time playing with different effect pedals, amps and guitars. I didn’t use too many effects on the first album, but I added quite a lot to my pedalboard between records, so we really went for it this time around to get that wall of sound effect.
Along a similar notion – how do you find the newest material is translating for the live environment?
We road-tested nearly all of the songs live before recording them. I’ve never been able to just stick to the same set-list for multiple shows, so we inevitably end up rotating new songs into the set once we’ve rehearsed them a few times. There’s not much on the album we can’t replicate live, since most of the overdubs are to beef-up the sound, rather than adding a new part. I try and replicate this live by running two guitar amps on stage, with different effects going into each. It makes us sound like we’ve got a second guitarist even though we’re only a three-piece.
You can hear influences from the history of music ingrained through every track – who do you point to as inspiration?
Depending on which band member you asked you’d get a completely different answer to this question, which is probably why some of our songs tend to genre-hop halfway through. My main musical influence is probably Nirvana, but I also really love the raw power of Cold Chisel and Fleetwood Mac’s beautiful harmonies. I listened to a lot of early 90’s shoegaze like Ride and Slowdive while we were working on this album, so you can hear that in the mix as well. Tony’s into a lot of black metal music like Bathory and Gehenna, but he’s also got an extensive knowledge of pop music, and Fi is more of a Cure/Nick Cave/Patti Smith fan. We describe ourselves ‘noise rock’, but at the end of the day we’re trying to make messed up pop-music.
What we can expect from the show on Friday night?
It’s going to be a pretty eclectic evening, certainly more so than any show I’ve been involved in before. We’re playing with death-pop band Galapogos, who are also launching a new album on the night; Silver Sircus, who are a dark cabaret act; and Balloons Kill Babies, who play instrumental prog metal. It’s such an odd mix that it’s being presented as part of the Brisbane Fringe Festival. We’re hoping to showcase Brisbane’s musical diversity, as well as highlight the common artistic thread that runs through these disparate acts. As far as our set goes though, we’re going to play a fair chunk of the new album, one or two older songs…and one song that will be on album number three!
Who are three of your favourite Australian acts?
You Am I, Screamfeeder & Cold Chisel. The closest I’ve ever been to a religious experience is seeing Cold Chisel and You Am I on the same bill.
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For all of our Brisbane readers, don’t miss the band’s live album launch this Friday night, 21st of August at The Zoo. For tickets and more details head to: http://zoo.oztix.com.au/?Event=53806
