There are a lot of different preferences and approaches when it comes to interviews, both when conducting the interview and when putting it all on paper. My approach is all about letting the artist speak their mind, and in as much detail as they wish. That’s also why my interviews tend to be on the long side, because I like to include as much original content as possible. And these long interviews, man are they fun to conduct (and a bitch to transcribe!). During the course of one, you can really connect with the person on the other side of the screen/phone, if that is your goal, and once you do, you get some really cool insights about a lot more than just the music, and that has always excited me personally – to learn more about the actual people behind the music that I like, because I can conceptualize the music itself on my own. Matt Harvey, the guitarist for Australian instrumental band We Lost The Sea, provided me exactly that. Not everything that Matt said here is of absolutely essential value when it comes to the band We Lost The Sea and their craft, and I’d wager he would agree with that statement, seeing as how we start out by discussing his memories of Tallinn and come full circle in the end as I get interested in the Australian party culture (note: it turns out that the most stereotypical Australian things according to the locals are exactly what I thought them to be: watching great whites while chugging a beer, riding kangaroos, and eating spiders), but then again, why edit a man’s thoughts and single out only flashy quotes? With that in mind, I present to you about 10 000 words worth of thoughts from We Lost The Sea’s guitarist. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed conducting it.
So with you preferring the interview to take place so early in the morning (8.30), I take it you’re more of an early bird?
I guess so, I can’t sleep later than like 8 o’clock and I get up early. I work from home, so I’m usually up early, because I work for clients in the US, and I’m up late, because I work for clients in the US. My hours are a bit weird.
Do you also prefer to write music when it’s light outside, or do you just have great energy that keeps you active throughout the day?
I don’t know, that’s a good question actually, I’ve never thought of it like that. I don’t know, it depends when the mood takes over. it’s really difficult in Australia to write really moody, depressing, epic post-rock stuff when it’s 40 degrees outside, the birds are singing, and everyone’s screaming about going to the beach. You kind of write on the rainy days and right now it’s been raining three days solid, which makes it the perfect time to stay inside and write some music. But in general, whenever the mood takes me, really. Whenever I get the inspiration.
These inspiration waves, are they something that occur at random, or do you have a specific set of circumstances that you’d like to be there for you to get to writing?
I don’t think that inspiration has a specific set of circumstances, I just think it comes when it comes. I go through phases where I really feel like playing guitar. Sometimes in the morning I get up and I’ve got an idea that I got the night before, or I dreamt of an idea, and I have to get up and play it. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s really exciting when it does, because that’s the best time to get involved. At other times though, I can go weeks without not even wanting to pick up a guitar. Sometimes, when we are in writing mode, you have to force yourself to write, or at least sit with the guitar and look at things – pretend you’re working, so you feel better about yourself.
You said you’ve been to Tallinn a few times. What are your memories of that place?
You probably don’t want to know haha. I have a friend who lives in Helsinki, an Australian guy who married a Finnish woman. I have visited him a few times. The first time was when I was 21 and it was a part of my first trip overseas. I went to visit that friend in Helsinki and he decided to take me to Tallinn. I was actually very blown away, because I went back about ten years later, and so much had changed. When I went in 2001 (the first trip), it was only the beginnings for new supermarkets and hotels and stuff, and the city was still a bit rustic, a bit old-school, and had this cool old town part. I really liked that, it was snowing – everything was covered in snow, which was cool – and it’s the closest I’ve ever been to Russia. I was kind of all swept up in it. We went to this local Russian restaurant and it was great. The second time was with the same friend, but it was for his stag party. One of his friends organized us to go to Tallinn and the rest is history!
I understand you don’t want to go into too much detail regarding the second trip.
The second trip we were naughty boys, you can put that down haha.
Is there a memory related to your trips to Tallinn that you could write a post-rock song about?
Hahahaha, no, no, I remember that experience very clearly. We had a fantastic time and it was the normal things: strip clubs, bars etc. The entire party went home eventually and it was just me and my friend left. We are old friends and he looked at me saying “I knew you’d be the last one standing” and I said “yeah, of course, I’m not going to bed until you go to bed, ” so we went into the dark night of Tallinn, and that part I won’t go into! I’d have to write a rock ’n’ roll song about that story.
Tallinn, apparently the capital of mischief
Before delving deeper into your new album Departure Songs, and other stuff, have you ever heard of Sputnikmusic? I ask because the album has really taken off over at out website and when typing We Lost The Sea into google search, Sputnikmusic’s review for your album is already the fifth link given. The album has really connected with a lot of our community members.
The last record we released, The Quietest Place on Earth, that got reviewed on Sputnikmusic, and that was the first time we heard about it. It’s all user generated right? I think you have some official writers and then user submitted stuff, is that how it works?
Yeah exactly, we have two sides to the site. One churns out the professional content that gets featured on sites like Metacritic and Wikipedia, but the cool part is that anyone can sign up and write a review for an album of their choosing.
Yeah, that’s cool. There was a guy, I don’t know what his username is on Sputnikmusic, but a guy from the US called Miguel/Mikel. He fell in love with Departure Songs and he bought all the stuff, bought all my prints and wrote a review for the album, giving it 5/5, and I think that’s where a lot of the discussion got started from. He was really blown away by. So yeah, we totally know about it (the site). There’s some heated discussion going on. I briefed through the comments of the review and there’s some really impassioned people commenting on there haha. Truly interesting to read about your own music the same way that you would write about someone else’s on a forum, as if you never expected them to read the forum. A “Oh the new Deftones record is terrible, ah, so boring” and Chino’s scrolling through the website with a little tear rolling down his face because you hate his new record type of situation. You know you’d never actually expect Chino Moreno to read these little places, but since we went on there to read the comments it was interesting and funny to us. People saying this and that part is just meandering, others saying it’s not album of the year material, and we’re kind of like “damn what did we do wrong, we thought it was cool, why don’t people like our record.” But that’s just the reality of it and sites like yours are kind of a good reality check every now and then. I’ve been a massive wanker on the internet and written some stupid things, so in a way I feel like I’m getting my own back sometimes.
You know I haven’t done my homework regarding the local press, so my bad, but has the album been as well received everywhere else as well?
Yeah, I’d say so. We have had a lot of great feedback this time around. I judge by which countries order the most cd-s or merch. Maybe that’s not accurate, but for example last record we got most orders from Europe, and Germany especially. With this record, we’ve gotten a lot of orders from The States. I think that has a lot to do with bandcamp being a really powerful search tool, and a large majority of their audience is from the US. I think we’re bigger this time around compared to the last record, and we also released a bit more accessible record, which has taken us into a different area. Australia itself is a hard market to crack. Europeans and Americans always pick up on this stuff much quicker than Australians do. But I think we’ve done well here as well – we’ve got a lot of dedicated, passionate people over here that have gotten behind us, who have used their free time to get these local bands out there. All of us over here are adopting a bit more professional approach, even though at the moment it’s still a hobby for us. We don’t get payed much for it, if anything. We are still working full time jobs, and have families, and are doing the band around it. But everyone’s adopted a much more professional attitude, which I think the local fans are picking up on, becoming more professional fans, in the sense that they’re buying merch at shows, buying online stuff, being supportive of the band, sharing our stuff on the social media, and all that kind of stuff. It’s a good little community that we’ve got here.
Why did you say that your local Australian market is a much harder market to crack than European or American markets. Does it come down to number of listeners purely, or are there other reasons at play?
I think numbers are the main reason. We have such a small population compared to other continents. The whole population of Australia is 26 million people. In the US, you probably have 26 million post-rock fans, whereas in Australia you’ve probably got a 100 000, if that. We’re also spread over the place. Most people live in or around Sydney (where the band is from as well), but globally that’s still a small amount of people. Besides the really dedicated, passionate music people coming to shows, out of whom most are musicians in other bands anyways, it’s a difficult market to crack, unless you’re Karnivool or Sleep Makes Waves. (To make it big) you’ve got have some kind of an association with our national radio station, which is Triple J, and you’ve got to have people coming to your shows who aren’t necessarily even regular post-rock or music fans. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it over here. There’s a big divide between really passionate music fans and the average mainstream audience, who hears a Karnivool song and goes “Oh Karnivool, they’re kind of like Tool right?” Then they go to a Karnivool show where there’s a post-rock band as a support , and then these people go “oh what’s this instrumental stuff, there’s no singer, that’s really interesting.” Then they discover that it’s really cool and maybe buy a CD, but it’s a really slow process if you get me.
Now that your latest album Departure Songs has been out for a few months, how are you guys feeling? Has everything relaxed a bit and you’re just focusing on playing the new songs live, or is the excitement that comes with releasing new material to the public still at high altitudes?
I looked at the calendar the other day, and it has been five months. For me personally, it’s been ongoing, because I did all of the artwork, which took a long time to get done. Finishing all the prints and that sort of stuff. But as a band, as soon as we walked out of the studio on the last night of recording Departure Songs, we said “can we just keep writing?” to ourselves. We were and are really excited to write new stuff. We don’t have enough time for that though, unfortunately. We’ve got a few shows coming up, and people have got a life to live. Christmas is coming as well, but we are keen to keep on writing. But I guess people are still excited about it (the album), which differs from our perspective, because we are so close to it. We have people coming up to us and writing to us every week – people who have just discovered us; people who have never seen us before coming up to us at shows – their experience is really new. To us though, we’re like “ah Departure Songs is really old now, that’s boring, let’s write new stuff.” We’ve been sitting with this material for about two years by now.
And you’ve probably played these songs hundreds of times already.
Yeah but that’s the deal. We are aiming to get to Europe next year, and we’ll have to play those songs a hundred more times. European fans, who have never seen us before, and who love the album, won’t want to listen to new stuff. Well they might, but they’re going to be like “play the stuff that’s on the album.” I know that’s how I would be. So we are going to be playing a lot of the same songs, but that’s fine. The next step for us is just to write new things and experiment.
As a fan, you of course like to hear material that you’re familiar with, but with you being an instrumental band, maybe that gives you more freedom. When you go to see vocal bands, you’ve got these singalong parts and choruses stuck in your mind, which you’d like to belt out at a concert or something, but as an instrumental band, if your new stuff hooks with the vibe that you’ve already got going on, people could get behind that. Maybe you should think about experimenting (live) if it brings you joy as an artist on stage? I mean, to put on a good show for the fans, you must first make a good show for yourself.
I think we’re in a genre that allows us to do whatever we want really, in terms of that. We’re not the type of band who needs to do a very specific set. I mean, we could turn up and play a whole new song, no other songs, and that would be kind of cool for us, but we’re not exactly Godspeed you! Black Emperor. They can turn up, play for an hour, walk off stage, and you can go out the venue thinking “I didn’t know any of that,” and then learn on the internet that it was a brand new song that they had never played live, and wanted to test out. They don’t have to tell anyone, but they’re Godspeed, they can do whatever they want. We are not that big though. I don’t think people would be pissed off if we came all the way overseas to play brand new stuff exclusively for them – I think some people would get a kick out of that, because we’re in that kind of a genre. Then again, I think you got to respect your audience. We don’t sing, we don’t talk to the audience: we get on, we start, we play our songs, we wave goodbye, and we walk off stage. We don’t have any interaction, and I think you need to connect with your audience in some way or another. Otherwise it’s taking the piss out of them, in a way. Especially with an audience that hasn’t seen you before and loved your album. My opinion would be to go over there and play songs from the album. If there ever is a next tour, we could do more experimental stuff. But yeah, of course, I’d love to turn up with a new song or two. We have done it before, even. We have turned up with half a song written, and have melded it with other songs, and we’ve turned up and done something entirely different from the norm, but that’s for an audience that has seen us before.
Let’s discuss your new album, Departure Songs, a bit. The album is inspired by valiant endeavors by individuals to whom their undertaking ended up as fatal, but whose actions were of pure heart and strove to aid others. Four different stories get told in the course of the album, each with their own art that is drawn by you. It sounds like a very vast project. Is it something that you have been thinking of doing for a long time now, or did the idea develop only after what transpired in 2013, when your vocalist Chris Torpy took his own life?
I think the concept of the album came along as we were writing it. We didn’t have a certain theme that we wanted to write about heading in. We just started writing music, and figured out that the songs made make more sense if we associated them with a theme. From there, we decided that every song needed a theme, and those stories needed to create a theme for a whole album. So we wrote the stories, and from there, I realized that I wanted to illustrate those stories. I did one, after which I realized I need to do another four. So everything kind of grew, with each week and each month; with every new song and riff that came in.
So what you’re saying is that the music definitely came first, not the stories?
Yes. In previous albums, the stories had been associated with the songs to give an epic feeling, so that the lyrics would further inspire the songs. I think we needed that this time as well, especially because we didn’t have lyrics. At some point, we started associating the songs that we’d written with real life things, and I think the audience picked up on it as well once they heard the songs. For example the two-part “Challenger” song – when we associated that with the Challenger disaster, we listened to the two songs together and we started going “ok, so that beat represents that, and this (movement) is where it explodes, and this is the bit in the end where it’s floating down.” It just kind of made sense (even though the music was written separately and before the theme). Instead of this big, meandering 30-minute song that was just kind of floating around, it became a song with a purpose. It had an end, and the story had a start and an end. The song made more sense that way, and we applied that (method of operating) to the other songs as well. Because it made sense.
The album is entirely instrumental, in no small part due to you guys losing your vocalist and best friend in 2013. Now, two years later, you come out with a stunning instrumental homage to those who we’ll never see again. Why is it so that tragedy, as awful as it is, also so often cultivates greatness?
That’s a big question. Like with any life changing thing, it really makes you question what you are doing. It also brings reality and humanity closer. A lot of the time, when living your day to day life, you ignore a lot of things that are so obvious to life. We are surrounded by tragedy and death, and we are pummeled by it via the media, but it’s always someone else’s; it’s always on the other side of the world, like starving kids in third world nations, or America bombing the Middle-East, or refugees. All that horrible shit, that is so close to us now thanks to the internet, is still (geographically) so far away (as well). When you are faced with tragedy, it makes everything real. We were shocked out of a little bubble that we were in. When something like that happened in our immediate circle, when we lost Chris, everything became real. We became closer, started questioning what we were doing and why we were doing it. That kind of openness and honesty makes for great inspiration.
Music is also such a great way of healing. We have all been playing music since we were teenagers and the one thing that we had together, to help us continue on, was music. If we had broken the band up and sat in our bedrooms crying, that would have been no good for anybody. Tragedy makes for a fantastic subject matter and fantastic inspiration. It’s bad, it’s negative, but you got to take a positive out of it. I don’t remember which musician said it, but he/she said that he/she just can’t write albums when he/she is happy, and I am the same way. When I’m happy, the last thing I want to do is lock myself in the bedroom and play moody music. And I can’t, like, write happy punk music or whatever either. “Let’s drink beer and play punk and everything’s fuckin’ great” – that doesn’t interest me. When I’m happy, I’m hanging out with my girlfriend, or with my mates, or at the pub, or riding my bike – the cool stuff to do in Australia when you’re happy. When I’m angry, or depressed, or sad, that’s when I play music and listen to music – and it helps. When I’m angry, I listen to the angriest music that I can. People ask if that doesn’t make me angry, but no, it actually soothes me. Someone screaming at me over the stereo makes me calm. A lot of people who I have spoken to are the same. And that’s the answer to your question. Not that I’d like to go through a tragedy like that again, but people do all the time. We were lucky enough to have a band that was capable, emotionally and musically, to write a record like we did, and put the healing process in motion. To come out with this sort of homage, as you said, we’re closing a chapter on that part of our life, and we mark a significant leap with this record.
Ok, so this will be me spouting out words that you don’t have to agree with one bit, but do you think that going through such a tragedy, not even in your case, but in general, might make moody bands that are akin to you better, than bands that have not actually gone through personal tragedies. People can be sad and mad, but going through something life altering like you guys did is different – can that make you a better band?
No, I don’t think it makes us a better band, I think it made us closer as friends. That closeness makes being honest easier, and when you can be honest and write really honest music, I think the audience picks up on that. Being “better” is not something that comes into play there, it just gives you a different edge. I don’t know the backstory of every single band that I love, but I’m sure there is some kind of sadness or tragedy associated with at least one of the songs, or one of the albums, or one of the members in those bands. If you are a good band, you are going to be a good band, and if you have got talented people, you are going to make something special. We just had this specific event that gave us a specific type of inspiration. When we released the record and it was received really well from day one, we said to ourselves that “well shit, the next record better be good.” I don’t know how we will top it, because the next record won’t come out with this tragic backstory, at least I certainly hope it won’t. The next record, we’ll just write an album to write an album, which will be a good experience. Let’s see what happens. Maybe we will write a positive record and it sucks!
That is to be seen. Maybe we won’t like the next record nearly as much as we like this one.
Or maybe you’ll like it more! Mogwai released Rave Tapes, which had synth on it, and everybody went like “the fuck is Mogwai doing?”, and they responded that they had been around for twenty years already, so who cares? That they were not going to release another The Hawk is Howling record, even though they think that’s one of the worst they have released. When you are in a band, and you’ve been so close to it for so long, you get to a point where you just need to do what comes. It’s different when looking at it from a fan’s perspective, because they only see the finished product, but not the process that goes behind everything. So with us, we’ll see what happens.
Mogwai know what’s up
There seems to be this kind of weird paradox out there: fans, at least the vocal ones who comment on message boards, seem to be caught in this ever-present conflict where, if their favorite band develops away from the sound that made them famous, the fans hate on it, but if the band stays the same for three to four albums, cries over a lack of progression start to ring out loud. It’s a weird phenomenon, which i think has come along with the internet age. There are just so many different bands out there and so much exposure (compared to times past). It is, of course, harder to make a living with a band, but to get yourself exposure is a lot easier nowadays.
I was just thinking about this the other day, and you’re right. There are more bands, and everyone is on the internet trying to get exposure, which essentially is easier, but then again less people are reacting, because there is so much out there. Let’s be honest, and this is not me being arrogant, this is just being objective – there is a lot of shit music out there. And it is the same with amateur filmmakers and artists of all kind. The internet is great in that it gives people a voice, but then again, it gives too many people too many voices for too much shit. There is a lot of fluff and a lot of junk out there in the whole creative industry, which you have to see through. At the same time, a kid in his bedroom in the US who is like thirteen and is a genius painter, if he was doing the same thing thirty years ago, he probably would have stayed in his bedroom, but nowadays he can go on the internet and within a week he can be a youtube sensation. So the success stories are there, I just think sometimes the internet is a little counterproductive. Someone said to me the other day that it is so much easier for musicians to make money because of the internet, and I said “what money?” Yeah, we have ways of selling things without record labels, like bandcamp and similar websites, which is great, since the money comes directly to us, but there’s so many other people trying to do the same thing and at the end of the day, nobody’s really getting payed that much to not work. We are not breaking even with the amount of money that we spend on making vinyls and recording, and we don’t expect to. The fact that over the span of a few months we can make a few thousand dollars back from our music is fantastic, and that goes straight back into the band, but whether or not that is an easier way of making money compared to, for example, a band from the ’80s? The key is and always will be in being a great live band – you got to work hard on the road and tour a lot, and that has never changed. Touring and working hard, that separates the men from the boys, the shit bands from the good bands.
In that sense, it’s really frustrating being an Australian band, because we look at a lot of these American bands and go “we are as good or even better than you, but because you are an American band, you can tour the West Coast of America, and play in front of hundreds of people every night, whereas we can’t.” We can do an Australian tour, and if we don’t do the regional areas, only do the major cities, we do five shows. Maybe do a couple of shows in between for a bigger band, that would take the total to 7-8 shows. There’s a big divide between us smaller bands and the big bands like Parkway Drive, who can indeed do 40 shows and sell most of them out. The big bands can make money – Parkway Drive will sell 30K’s worth of T-shirts in a night, which funds their whole tour, since they do that every night for 40 nights, and that amounts to a shitload of money. I sort of had a rant there, sorry!
That’s okay, and that’s what we’re here for anyway: to hear what the artists thinks about the whole industry and about being in a band. I guess it would bore me as well to only ask the questions that you can read from every other interview, like “who are your inspirations?” or “how did the writing process go?,” or something like that.
I know what you mean. I think it’s actually pretty immature of bands like us to slag off the industry, because for one we haven’t had many dealings with it. Not with big time music industry at least. The industry that we are associated with are the small time guys in their bedrooms, and people like you who do this kind of thing out of passion.
Yeah I’m honestly not making anything tonight!
Our label guys, they are not getting payed, guys in other bands are not getting payed, and everyone’s been doing it for a while (now). I’ve been doing bands since I was 17, I’m 35 now, and I’m still turning up to the same venues, plugging in and playing in front of twenty people, because I love doing it. That’s the music industry that we know, and we are protective of that, because we built it ourselves. We like to slag off the mainstream music media, but we have never had any direct dealings with it. I have never been signed to a major label nor have I been fucked over by a major label; a major label has never offered me a tour or not offered me a tour. So we don’t really know how any of it works, we know as much as anyone else who has read stuff on the internet and seen bigger bands going through good times and shit times.
I don’t even know if I want to be signed to a major label. It might be fun for a little while, to tour the world and all that sort of stuff, but from what I have heard from friends who know people in big bands, I don’t like the way how major labels control everything: what songs go on the album, what you should wear,who you are sponsored by etc. You become a brand, you become a cash machine, and you are no longer your own creative being. The best way to do it is to be independent as long as you can and just get to bigger independent labels that really look after the artist. But they are really hard to get onto, because there are so many bands!
You actually mentioned this already a bit, but I’m going to re-ask it: during an average show, when you are not supporting a significantly bigger band, how many people are you playing to?
In Sydney, if we headlined, we could easily play to a couple hundred people, if we promoted it properly. On our record launch party for Departure Songs, we sold-out a venue for 300. But that was an album launch. Usually we don’t try and play Sydney shows too much, because people will get bored of us. Also, a lot of times our Sydney shows are when we are supporting international bands, so we have played in front of anywhere between 40 and 300 people. It’s going alright for us! We’ve got a bit of a following in Melbourne now, and in Brisbane. It’s just a matter of continuously trying to play shows.
I get the experience. Being from Tallinn, where we have around 400 000 people in the capital in general, then for the usual show with local bands, if we get 100 people there, you could say it was a decent night.
For us, it depends on the venue. If it’s a really small venue and we get a 100 people there, and it looks packed, then it’s a great night; if it’s a venue that can hold 250-500 people and you get a 100 people there, it looks empty. But we do alright and the audiences are starting to react. The good thing about We Lost The Sea is that we can cross over into a bunch of different genres, because of the earlier stuff being heavier, which is fantastic. We were a post-metal band in Australia when there really wasn’t a lot of metal bands doing the same kind of stuff. There was a lot of post-hardcore, a lot of metalcore, and all those dudes wanted us to play shows with them, because they liked our band, and our sound, where we were heavy, but also had these really nice Sigur Ros parts. So (that kind of variety in sound) really opens us up for playing in Australia. For example Caspian can come over, and we can play really pretty post-rock shows with them.
To see you guys on tour with Caspian would be so good
We’d love to! They are lovely dudes. We played a show with them in Sydney last year, supporting their last record (Hymn For The Greatest Generation). We’d love to tour with them, that would be fantastic. But on the other hand, Boris came out here and we played a show with them. The same story with Pelican, Earth, and with local bands, everything from proper metal to grindcore, to punk, to rock, to shoegaze, to indie pop, we can cross over, partly because of our previous reputation, but Departure Songs also has pretty sounds and heavy sounds. But that wasn’t an intentional thing just so we could play a lot of shows. I just think we are lucky, because in Australia you need to be out, you need to be versatile.
Hopping onward from here: there’s a wording that I noticed, which I don’t think I’ve noticed before. On your bandcamp, you call yourselves progressive post-rock. It’s not that hard to see where you guys get the progressive part, as most of your songs last over ten minutes, but since you used the conjecture “progressive post-rock,” what would you then call regular post-rock, especially taking into account that the whole genre is reliant on progressions?
That’s a fair question. I used the word progressive to signify a difference between us and a Caspian-style post-rock. It’s not that they don’t write progressive music, but I think we’re different. A lot of people both in Australia and overseas love modern prog, and we don’t sound like that, while still having elements from that. Once again, we could play a prog show, which is fantastic, because we don’t really sound like a prog band, but we could fit into that kind of a thing. But (back to the topic) post-rock is such a broad term and I’m actually happy with saying “an instrumental band from Sydney.” I’ve started saying that now, because I think once you start putting these secondary labels on things, it all becomes too confusing. To be honest I didn’t listen to a whole lot of post-rock for a while. It wasn’t until we started writing more posty stuff, that’s when people started coming up to me saying “hey, have you heard of this band,” or our label guy would say “so this band is coming over to tour, would you like to play a show with them?” And that turned out to be Caspian, about two and a half years ago, who I then only recognized by name and good reputation. A lot of that post-rock stuff was introduced to us (as they figured out how broad post-rock was). We toured with maybeshewill, and that’s post-rock, and then you have Godspeed You! Black Emperor, …And So I Watch You From Afar, Russian Circles, who are all post-rock in their own way, and it’s like, where do you stop (with the post-rock tag)? So (with calling WLTS “progressive”) it was just a point of difference that I tried to make.
It’s a fitting answer, I mean you got to the bottom of why you used that exact word.
The thing is, we come from a metal background. I used to play in a metalcore band with our drummer, the other dudes used to play in a technical metal, Between The Buried and Me-type of band, and Toby had one of the heaviest voices in the country. We all came from heavy backgrounds, and for us to write post-rock was just a really natural progression. I don’t think we intentionally wrote a (full) post-rock record, and the first track, “A Gallant Gentleman,” is the most post-rock thing the band has ever done: it’s textbook This Will Destroy You, Explosions In The Sky post-rock. When people hear that they’ll expect a certain kind of record, and then the rest of the album really shocks them, because it’s completely not like that at all. We never listened to much post-rock, we never intended to be a post-rock band, and we are not one of those bands that continually listens to that kind of music, and wants to go to those shows, and wants to play (only) those kinds of shows. We fell into this genre, and we ran with it. A lot of our earlier material had posty stuff in it, and it was a natural progression. I said to a few people that what if we turned around and We Lost The Sea released an album that sounded like a Portishead record, would people be shocked and surprised by that, and they said no, that they could see us doing that kind of music if we wanted to. Writing a Portishead-like record after Departure Songs is pretty different, and it might be a bit shocking, but as somebody in the band, I could see that happening. I can see us getting to those points, because we have the cross-section of inspiration, influence and talent in the band to be able to sit down and write a Radiohead song, if we wanted to, and write a Baroness-type song after that. We have all these influences from everywhere else. When we go to post-rock shows, especially the local ones, (we notice how) people try to fit into a genre without trying to explore it.
Every genre has bands that sound almost exactly like other bands (in them), which is fine – metal bands are metal bands because of their riffs, and post-rock bands are post-rock bands because of their own type of writing. But people need to explore (their genre) more. You need to push more elements into it and also take elements out of it. If everything sounded like Explosions In The Sky in post-rock, which a lot of bands do, it’s boring. They did their thing 10-15 years ago and it was their thing then, bands don’t need to write those (same) things now. Bands need to evolve and the genre needs to evolve. If metal bands were still basically be playing the first Slayer records, that would be very boring. You can’t have thrash metal for the rest of your life. With bands even playing with orchestras, there’s so much room to move in post-rock, but people seem to be very boxed in by four-chord major progressions. Like, “let’s play G-major, put some piano behind it, and then we’ll have a really happy post-rock song.” I’m like okay, that worked for sixty bands ten years ago, but let’s do something different.
Yeah, because the music press at large has deemed post-rock a “done” genre for like the last five years already, because as you said, there are more and more post-rock bands coming out who sound like one another, but then again there are more post-rock bands out there than ever before. The hardcore fans of the genre don’t seem to be expecting anything entirely new out of post-rock bands at the moment, but I think it will change in a few years, because as more and more bands emerge, you cannot ride that one sound until the end of time.
I hope the attitude changes as well. In We Lost The Sea, we think big. We have this saying (in Australia): “champagne taste with a beer budget.” We aim really high and pretend that we are a big band, without the money and the budget and the fame of an actual big band. But things like getting a choir on “A Gallant Gentleman,” and getting extra instruments, like trumpets on “Challenger,” and getting all these layers on Departure Songs – these are all things I have wanted to do since my early twenties, once I started figuring out what good music was; when I got old enough to listen to my parents’ record collection, which I thought was rubbish for the first fifteen years of my life, until I found Pink Floyd for myself (from there). I’m one of the oldest dudes in the band (mid-thirties), and we have a big cross-section of ages, so we’ve got influences from very different generations. We’ve tried to swoop all that up into We Lost The Sea. It’s a great thing that we love bands like Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Toto, Led Zeppelin, while also loving Between The Buried and Me, Deftones, and I love early 2000s metalcore bands like Botch and Coalesce as well, while listening to instrumental trip-hop and hip hop at home. And we watch bands who we love live: Portishead live are amazing, Sigur Ros are amazing, Cinematic Orchestra are amazing, and upon seeing those bands, we want to be and strive to be like that. If we could tour the world with an orchestra and a choir, I would do it in a heartbeat. We are not that big yet, but we aim big.
With this new record, we sort of pushed through, and were just like “let’s get a choir, let’s do all this stuff that we talk about, let’s just do it.” A lot of people sat back and said that wow, you guys actually do that, and our response is that fuck yeah, you can do it, you guys can do that as well, you just need to put the effort in. It’s the work ethic and willingness to experiment that makes you a better band. If you want to do one safe thing as a band, that’s cool, but if you go out there, make mistakes, learn new things and aim for bigger things, you might end up with a choir on your album.
I had this kind of a question written down: from a review that I read, it described the song “Bogatyri” as Twin Peaks inspired. Is there any truth to that, or is it just something that particular reviewer heard in there?
Ha, I read that as well, and not really. I think people pick that up from the intro, from those minor notes that I wrote. If anything, it’s film noir inspired, I guess, but those chords I just started playing. They had a real Portished vibe to it, so I chucked a lot of tremolo on it, and that’s why it’s got a Portishead-like thing going on at the start. Someone else described it like being in a Tarantino movie, which is a fantastic compliment, I’ll take that. A lot of people have come up with film references in regards to the intro. Twin Peaks – I’m fine with that as well, I’m a David Lynch fan, but there’s no direct relationship.
More on “Bogatyri”: while the other stories are more known, I confess to now knowing anything about the Bogatyri. Now, that song in itself was about the Chernobyl disaster and the three men who gave their lives in order to prevent further explosions in the nuclear plant, but the song’s title is, as you have marked, taken from a Ukrainian folk tale about three valiant knights. Can you tell us more about this tale, or did you just find the name of it to be fitting and that’s as far as it goes?
When we started adding the themes to the album, Challenger was the first one, and Bogatyri the last. When we decided that we wanted to do these themes (after the Challenger association had sparked the idea), we started looking for more stories that fit the noble failures, humans trying to do great things, failing in the process, but having a positive outcome anyway criteria, do you know how hard such stories are to find? I searched google, bought all kinds of history books, but a lot of stories from history are about great people who succeeded, or epic tragedies where everybody died. We wanted to find that middle-ground, for which the Challenger disaster is a perfect example. Everybody died, which is a tragedy, but the story is also about progress. You can’t reach for something as immense as going into space, and not expect something like this to happen. It was going to happen eventually, and now that it has happened to those seven people who lost their lives, it is less likely to happen again, and we can go further and further and further, so if you are into human progress, that’s a great thing.
We stumbled across the Bogatyri story (found on the album), because “Forgotten People” off The Quietest Place on Earth is based on the town near Chernobyl, Pripyat, where they had that amusement park. It’s a made up story about two people who meet back at that park after everyone else is evacuated after the disaster. I think one of the other guys stumbled across the Bogatyri story though, because I don’t remember finding it, but I do remember reading about it, and It’s the most harrowing of the stories. For the three people to know, that as soon as they touch that water, they will die, and for them to immediately volunteer without a second question is such a heroic and crazy thing to do. These people suffered amazing amounts of pain after coming out of that water, having a gruesome finish to their lives, but for a noble cause. We had to research that story a lot. There are only a couple of articles written about the specific event. The Bogatyri name came about when we were thinking what to call the song. We were like, “what do we call this song, The Black Waters of Chernobyl, or a stupid black metal title, like Buried in Led, or what?” This was the hardest song to name. I wanted to know what was a Russian word that describes heroes, and when I typed that into Google, the story of The Bogatyri came up – a story about three mythical knights. There are three guys in our story, and so I knew immediately that I want to call these three guys The Chernobyl Bogatyri, which was also the name of the song for a while, but people in the band didn’t seem to like that. There were a lot of stupid names being thrown around for a while, and the naming of the song came down to the very last second. I had to submit the artwork for the CD, and I just made the call to call the song “Bogatyri,” because I did the artwork, and the other guys complied. I’m glad the song is named that, because people research the word, learn the story, and that’s really cool. What better way to honour three Ukrainian guys than with a word that means something in their mythical history. It’s me, honouring them, with just one word.
Original art by Matt Harvey
Departure Songs is in its core, among other things, about throwing caution to the wind and going after something big, something that would live forever in history. Is there a cause out there that you yourself would be willing to sacrifice anything and everything for?
Like a noble cause you mean? I’ve always been a left-wing thinker, but I don’t act on it. For example, I don’t go to political rallies, and aren’t politically associated. My thing, that I am passionate about, that I probably don’t do enough for, is saving the oceans. I love scuba diving, I love the oceans, I love sea creatures, and the way we fuck up the entire ocean by overfishing, whaling, pollution, by all that, is disgusting. Scuba diving is the most amazing, singular thing that I have done. That would be a noble, passionate cause of mine, that I would not sacrifice everything for. I am not going to join the Sea Shepherd tomorrow, or fight whalers with Greenpeace, that’s not my thing. My way of dealing with that would be through music. The only things that I would go to the ends of the earth for would be the standard things: my friends, my family, my girlfriend, and music. I have already sacrificed a lot, but not for a global, noble cause, but my own. I’ve sacrificed a lot to play music, to do what I love.
Also, as a band, what has happened since we lost Chris, is that we have involuntarily become spokespeople for suicidal awareness and depression. As a band that never really associated ourselves with anything, we now get people writing to us from all over the world, and we get some really sad messages, happy messages, and also very scary ones. We had a guy write to us recently, who had just come back from standing at the edge of a bridge that he was going to jump off, because his girlfriend left him. He was depressed, and had been depressed for a while. This guy came back from the bridge, he was from the States, and I think it was really early in the morning over there, and nighttime over here, and we were the first people he wrote to – a bunch of strangers from a band across the other side of the world. I wrote back straight away, it was like, reality just set in, and I understood this guy came to us for reassurance. He didn’t write back to me, and I hope he is still alive. That was heavy stuff, and we get letters saying our music helped people through a dark phase all the time. One example was that a guy’s friend was talking about suicide, and that guy thought of us, and how we have reportedly inspired people to talk about it. That’s a fantastic thing. We are a bunch of lazy cunts who have not done anything to help people throughout our lives, who have now been thrown into this thing that we have to deal with, and that’s great. People ask us to play benefit shows for suicidal awareness, and we got interviewed the other day on camera. People turn to us as six young guys, who have dealt with this kind of thing, and are in a band that a few people know of. I think its good for us to have this. If some young kid, who doesn’t want to talk about his problems, but sees us, loves this band, and sees that we can talk about it – if that one kid gets help because of us, then that’s the power of music really. If it can help people directly, then we are doing a good thing.
Yeah, and you could say that it’s something that comes along with being a musician, which you might not account for when you start out: an added responsibility, or privilege to, in a way, take care of the listeners who look up to you (via either your music or through actions).
I agree, I’ve been in bad places before and music has helped me out immediately. It goes with the territory. Our of all the art forms, music evokes the most emotions. It can affect people unlike visual art. The cinema can really affect people, and I think it’s the second most emotionally impactful art form, but music is just the best. Playing music is also so good for the soul. It’s even been medically proven that learning to play music or learning to appreciate music is good for you.
The interview has gone on for quite a while now, and I would like to end on a lighter note, so I have a culture-related question to you that has really nothing to do with We Lost The Sea. A bunch of people who I went to the same schools with have gone to Australia in recent years. Now, Facebook and similar sites are not the greatest filters for how a person actually lives their life, but from what I gather from those sources, it seems that all you do in Australia is party hard and party often, and that they were led on that trail by you Australians! So what’s up with that?
Before I answer that question, I think you already nailed it in terms of Facebook not being a reflection on what a person’s real life is. Unless they are really honest on Facebook, but nobody is really. I lived in London for five and a half years. I spent five out of those five and a half years partying very hard, so you can party very hard in basically every country that you want to go to. When you are across the other side of the world, and you are experiencing pretty much everything for the first time in a new country, basically everything is a party. Like the British culture, the Australian culture revolves around going to the pub. If you want to meet up with friends, you don’t go for coffee, you go for a beer. Especially younger people and Europeans who come over to live in Australia, a lot of them come from landlocked countries, where they don’t have the beach on every single side of the country. Also, the weather is fantastic, the food is great, the environment encourages people to be outside, to do things, and it makes you want to party, even though it’s really really really fucking expensive here.
That’s what I was thinking of as well: I have no idea where those people are taking those funds. I don’t know what your pay-to-prices ratio is in customer service, for example.
We have a decent minimum wage, which is quite high compared to the rest of the world, I think, and it needs to be, because drinking alcohol in this country is so expensive. I think the next most expensive country is Singapore, where they have the most expensive alcohol tax in the world. For six bottles of beer from the liquor store, it’s 25 Australian dollars. One beer from a pub is close to eight dollars for a beer, so it ain’t cheap. But we do love to party, I think it’s in our blood. I have been to a lot of places in the world, and everybody loves their partying, but I think Australians like to party a bit more than most other people. I think the sun helps a lot. We like to be sociable, have barbecues, have our friends around, and it breeds for a good party culture.
Thanks a lot for the interview! Are there any last thoughts that you’d like to forward to our readership?
When I get asked this question, I always just say a genuine thank you to everybody. Without people giving a shit about us, buying our records and paying through bandcamp, giving us that little bit of money back; and also people like you interviewing us and giving us reviews, good or bad, just an honest thank you. There are so many bands, so many people trying to do it, and without people giving a real shit about us, we probably wouldn’t be here. It keeps us focused. When we sometimes turn up to a show and think “why the fuck are we here, why are we doing this,” it’s because of these reasons. We are sharing our art with everybody, and just thank you.
Departure Songs (by Matt Harvey)
