This year the Big Sound conference is hosting some great bands. Joining the ranks of this year’s line-up are The Boat People.
With the recent launch of their second album Chandeliers, the band delivers eleven new Boaties’ tunes. They will also make the rounds to Valley Fiesta and The Sounds of Spring gigs here in Brissie.
Well worth investigating is their video for ‘Awkward Orchid Orchard’. In the clip music fans are challenged to find the 52 different band names that are hidden in the visual clues put together by long time friend of the band, Paul Underwood.
The Boaties James O’Brian now works in Melbourne and we caught him on his lunch break for a bit of a chat.
Where did you record the album?
We did it in sort of two locations. We started off recording in Byron Bay at the 301 Studios there which are a very well know facility, very kind of plush. After that we decanted down to Victoria at our producers house and did a lot of the vocals and guitar down there. It’s been a very rural kind of album considering we all live in big cities.
What was the thought process when deciding to go with Jay Walker as the producer for the album?
He does a lot of production; he did the last Whitlams Album, a lot of Melbourne artists a lot of homespun, quirky, folk stuff. We’ve always been a big fan of his records and he’s been a big fan of ours. So we put the challenge for him to put together a shinny pop album and he was keen to give that a crack to we decided to go with him.
Is it true you wrote about 25 songs for the album?
We did write a lot of tunes we sort of started culling them early in the process we sort of whiffled it down as we went along to get the group of songs that would create the best possible marriage and make an album that was going in the direction we were aiming for, which was an up kind of pop record but still kind of tip it’s hat to the eclectic and odder music we’ve put out in the past.
With two songwriters in the group do you consciously keep it even?
If you have two songwriters in the group, part of what makes it sound cohesive is, you do need to have it representing both people reasonably evenly. Or you can end up with a situation [where the] guy sings most of the tracks in the album and the girl who sings one or two. I sort of find that quite jarring. We try to keep it even stevens, to make it something that sounds cohesive and balanced.
How is your new record label?
We’re signed to Ivy League for publishing only we put out the record completely independently through a great distribution company called Shock, [with whom] we have a really good long standing relationship. Ivy League signed us for publishing. That’s been a good help for us. They’re amazing people to be hooked up with.
I see you're going to the states soon, where will you be going?
This time just to LA and New York. We got accepted to a very prestigious music festival in New York CMJ Music Showcase. We are going to LA to do some showcase shows and meet and greets and a live to air at a radio station and then we’re going over to the UK it’s a bit of a whirlwind trip to drum up support for further ventures over in those territories.
The Boat People play the Big Sound Wednesday 10 September, Valley Fiesta Saturday 13 September, and Sounds of Spring Friday 11 October 2008.
Chandeliers out now through Shock/Ivy League.
