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Friday, August 6, 2010

INTERVIEW: Autumn Gray

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A few miserable winter nights have passed since Autumn Gray's stunning launch of The Diary of a Falling Man at the Evelyn last month (read Paper-Deer's write up here), but there are no signs of dying down for this hauntingly beautiful seven-piece. Paper-Deer talked to Jim O'Neil about the Melbourne alternative folk pop troupe's logistical nightmares, home studios and democratic song writing methods.
Is autumn the band’s favourite season?
Personally, I’m fan of the “forgotten” seasons - spring and autumn. Everyone talks about summer and winter, but I like the moods that come with the other two. With spring there’s a sense of anticipation for the summer and the weather to come. Whereas in autumn there’s a kind of wistful retrospection as the days get shorter, which kind of suited our material. That’s not actually where the name came from, but I think it’s why it stuck.

It seems that The Diary of a Falling Man has received lots of lovely reviews. What is the best thing that anyone has said about your debut LP so far?
There’ve been a few very flattering comparisons, but I think we’ve just happy that people seem to like it. We had a friend tell us that the album has helped him get through some tough times, and that’s probably as gratifying as it can ever get.

How did the launch go?
Great! There was dancing, sing-a-longs, guest musos, the other bands that played were awesome, and the crowd was great. We had a cracking good time and it seemed like everyone else did too. That launch party has been a long time coming for us so it was a bit cathartic.

Paper-Deer has heard things about your amazing stage presence and live show. What’s the difference between watching Autumn Gray live and just listening to Diary of a Falling Man at home?
There’s more energy live than you might expect from listening to the album. We do our best to maintain the gentle qualities of the quiet sections, but in the louder bits we tend to let a bit loose. We’ve done our best with the seven of us to get as many of the layers from the album reproduced on stage, so it’s a pretty full live sound.

What was it like to record The Diary of a Falling Man in self-fashioned recording studio?
Honestly, a bit taxing. Right in the middle of recording the album, we weren’t even sure the band would survive. The recording just seemed to be stringing out to eternity. It was a pretty incredible learning process though, about a whole bunch of things.

We did the first sessions for the album in a little country retreat in a town called Blackwood, and sort of rather optimistically hoped that we’d be able to get most of the bed tracks done there. In the end, it turned out to be more like pre-production. Some of the tracking from those sessions survived onto the final product, but it was the sort of thing where we came away with the understanding that in order to do the songs justice, we’d need to invest a whole heap more time. Hence building the studio. The Hovel is actually a run-down share house that I used to live in and it was hot in there in summer. With all the foam and egg cartons on the walls, after a hot stretch it would be too hot in there to record for a week.

The other thing that worked a against us was how much better we all got as musicians through the process - we had to actively draw a line in the sand and say “We’re not re-doing anything anymore” because it became too tempting to iron too many of the imperfections that were more present in our earlier sessions.

There are so many of you. Does it get tricky with moving mountains of equipment?
Ha! Yes! Back before Greg joined the band, we used to be housemates. I put a poster up for one of our gigs in the lounge room and he crossed out the band name and wrote “Logistical Nightmare” instead. And that was when there were just six of us.

The band is often praised for your beautiful melodies and moving lyrics. How does the Autumn Gray writing machine work?
Typically, one person brings in a song and then the band has its way with the song. Sometimes that means that a complete song, harmonies and all, and we just need to learn it, or maybe it’s just a riff and we’ll build a song up from nearly scratch. We’ve sort an understanding that once the song comes into the band, you have to be comfortable with it moving in a completely different direction, but the principle songwriter still has the right to veto. That person tends to be the person who writes the lyrics - so the music’s collaborative, but the lyrics are personal. You also need to have a thick skin, because no one’s shy about telling you something is crap, or not working, which is great actually.

Any funny stories about Autumn Gray that you’d like to share with Paper-Deer?
With seven clumsy idiots in the band, there’s any number of stories of stupidity: Greg almost starting a fight with an audience member at a show, Pato accidentally smashing a chandelier, me forgetting lyrics to my own songs nearly EVERY show, the zombie face that Matt pulls whenever he’s blissing out playing guitar... but I don’t know how many stories I can tell that don’t end in “You had to be there!”


DATES:
  • August 8: Wesley Anne
  • August 27: The National Hotel, Geelong [Geelong album launch]
  • September 7: The Wesley Anne [acoustic show for Darebin Music Feast]
  • September 16: Yah Yah's [Pensive Penguin's album launch]
  • September 18: The Birmingham
  • September 24: The Cornish Arms
  • October 16: Gertrude's Brown Couch

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