Children Collide play Sounds Of Spring Saturday 11 October 2008
In 2005 Children Collide released We Three, Brave And True, a six-track EP that didn't so much announce the group's arrival as kick the door down. Next came 2006's equally impressive Glass Mountain Liars EP. Now it's 2008 and the band has finished their debut long player, The Long Now.
This is a record that crackles with smarts and buzzes along with the undeniable sense of a band that knows where it's going, a band that sees your lazy references and questionable stylistic decisions and raises them - into another stratosphere - as Johnny (vocals/guitars), Heath (bass) and Ryan (drums) create a tumbling maelstrom of rock magic.
The single, ‘Social Currency', is a barnstorming disco-political frenzy that observes the perils of cool.
"Musically I felt like it channelled the nu-rave and electro-clash stuff that has been surrounding us for the last couple of years so I had to take the piss with the lyrics," explains Johnny.
"So, it became about bandwagons and self-appreciation societies and people who make art to get blow jobs and keeping your finger on the pulse. Which sounds like a bit of a sook, but it's not."
Far from it, in fact, the song has more dynamism in its pealing opening riff than a whole club load of cool kids could dream of.
Other highlights include ‘Farewell Rocketship' and ‘Brave Robot'. The Long Now might seem like a futurist paradise, but Johnny seems to think it was just the collective unconscious creeping up on him.
"It's amazing to be able to encapsulate whole millennia along with all kinds of feelings and myriad other ideas into one record," he explains. "Most art is in itself a long now, being that it attempts to defy time and become a moment within many, many moments."
"'Brave Robot' is a funny one as I wrote it a long time ago after seeing a doco about a space lander that was being sent to Mars to drill into the polar icecaps. Then, just after we finished recording the album, I turned on the news and the Phoenix Lander had, well, landed and begun the main part of its mission."
It's not all spaceships and robots, though. ‘Cannibal' is the sweetest love song about a meat-eater falling for a vegetarian you're likely to ever hear. Then there's the guttural rattle of ‘Skeleton Dance', which feels like a lost missive from the New York of 1977. These are but a sampling of a record that offers something new to the listener upon every airing.
With Dave Sardy (a veteran of sessions for LCD Soundsystem, Wolfmother and Oasis) taking on production overlord duties, the album encompasses the many facets of the band's sound, while tying the songs together with a common sonic of thematic thread. Far from backing the band into a corner with a ProTools rig and a tight schedule, Sardy became an equal collaborator as The Long Now came into being.
"We wanted to work with someone who 'got' us," confirms Johnny, "and on the first meeting with Dave we realised he did. The bands he mentioned - Suicide, Neu!, Spacemen 3, Einsturzende Neubauten - and way he spoke about the direction he wanted to take this in gave us confidence."
Sardy had confidence in his noisy charges, too - he sent us the following thoughts on the band via smoke signals earlier today: "Lost then found somewhere between Melbourne, Brooklyn and Manchester. Spinning in a way only Children Collide can. Fearless screeching and pink. Brutal. Delicate hammer, Words at the edge of a transfusion. Beaten and raw, a speaker pushing thru a broken basket. Rattled. YES"
When asked what he hopes listeners will absorb from The Long Now, Johnny replies, "Maybe some kind of ear infection, or a curious interest in the lost science of phrenology. Maybe they'll think twice before they fill their cars up with petrol and try running on milk instead. Perhaps they will become better people and start dedicating their lives to some philanthropic obsession after only one listen. Possibly people will hear this record and decide it is time to move on the governments of the world and stop the senseless mining of Martian polar ice-caps."
Phrenology aside (it's the pseudoscience of reading a person's skull to determine their personality,), Children Collide have created an album that is as much a coming together of everything they've been working towards as it is an introduction to the band.
"We really wanted to treat this debut record as an introduction to the band," says Johnny. "We had to try not to be selfish about it. There were a lot of songs we wrote right before the album that didn't make it, not because they weren't great songs, but more so we would have somewhere to go afterwards and so the songs on the album could compliment each other and provide a doorway into what we are about."
Children Collide's debut album The Long Way is out now through Universal Music.
Children Collide play Sounds Of Spring Saturday 11 October 2008 and Alhambra Bar Thursday 20 November 2008.
