GOLDRUSH
THE HEART IS THE PLACE
With their new album, released throughout the world in late Jan/early Feb, Goldrush have pulled it back. With The Heart Is The Place they have created a stunning and defiant record that warms our hearts to the core. It’s a turning point for a band that were on the verge of throwing it all in… a record that signals triumph over adversity.
When Goldrush started trying to work on the first couple of tracks (over a year ago) they felt utterly burned out. To them, none of the new material sounded powerful, emotional or original. They couldn’t get anywhere near where they wanted to be, and they had spent most of their recording budget. One member left the band, another moved to New York whilst the rest hid in their homes in Steventon Oxfordshire. For the first time in two years of constant touring, the band came to an abrupt halt.?
Fortunately Goldrush had a ‘cowshed, turned studio’ to fall back into. They started from scratch, and hired producer / musician James Rutledge (has worked with Dangermouse, Kevin Shields etc) to work things out with them. Goldrush had previously worked with the legendary David Fridmann (Mercury Rev / Flaming Lips), but Rutledge took a different tag, and encouraged the band to be more sonically adventurous, whilst simultaneously helping them re-discover their supreme song writing ability.
They drew on their shows supporting Brian Jonestown Massacre, Broken Social Scene, Calexico and Flaming Lips and felt inspired by records that were made under duress, like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Robin Bennett: ‘By the time of the Truck Festival, when our small village becomes Woodstock for a weekend, we were spending all our time building stages, and the record was still being worked on. I noticed things creeping in - other worlds past, future and supernatural, magic realism. These were literary influences that I could no longer avoid. A character, or series of characters, seemed to move through the songs in a ghostly way. Our music was no longer set in America, or its music. It was in our own location and our own minds. The record became about all these things, and the relation of love to mental collapse… A battle against material constraints and shallow emotions.’?
?We forgot to mention the Truck Festival didn’t we?
What started as a gathering of friends in a field, watching bands playing on the back of a truck bed, became a legendary happening with more than 5000 guests every year. Even though they have bands like Forward Russia, Battles, The Futureheads, Mystery Jets and Chicks On Speed headlining the billing, it’s not your usual festival. It’s a community fest involving nearly everyone in the village. You have the Rotary Club doing the catering, local kids doing the security… Hell, even the Church helps out at Truck. All the money they make goes into charity organisations like Amnesty International and also into their very own Youth Centre in Steventon. The production office is in the Bennett’s house. Mother Bennett and her husband act as the production managers while their three sons stay awake for about five days. Everyone ends up totally exhausted but happy as one could possibly be. It’s a unique example of a community doing the right thing, which was supported and documented by BBC 6 and Channel 4 this year.
By the way, there are also loads of big songs on this album, amidst all the swirling psychedelics. You can hear the energy and joy in every note, but also the doubts and sleepless nights. What else do we want from a record?
Keep up to date with us on tour. You can read our diary HERE!
:: GOLDRUSH "Ozona" CD / LP can be ordered from Amazon.com by clicking HERE!
For more information on Goldrush:
BetterLookingRecords.com LowTransitIndustries.com
Film-maker Jeremy Fowler captured the remarkable success-in-adversity story of Truck festival in the July floodsAfter the village of Steventon was dramatically flooded the day before the festival, the Truckers, led by the redoubtable Toby & Genevieve, rallied to hold a remarkable, short-notice, emergency indoor event at Oxford Brookes SU.
Here's a reminder of good times and Rickenbackers: the video for Feel, also by Jeremy Fowler
