Small Mercies play Rosie’s Tavern Friday 25 July 2008.
There’s energy around Small Mercies that is hard to put your finger on. Hailing from Brisbane, the home grown four-piece have just released their debut album, Beautiful Hum.
Not afraid to pay their dues, the band earned their stripes in various touring outfits. Names such as Cyber Trip, Merrick, 7th Avenue and Blake all pop up in their history. Now a solid live act in their own right, Small Mercies have an armory of top draw tunes in their set.
Vocalist Steve Blaik and guitarist Danny Procopis met at high school. Together the pair make up the band’s songwriting hub.
“We went to school together,” begins Danny, “We went to St. Laurence’s. Steve was two years above me and I’d heard of this guy who could sing. It wasn’t until a year later, when he’d finished school, I had a bass player and drummer lined up … but we needed a singer. I contacted Steve through a school friend. Along the way we had a couple of line-up changes and so on. It took a little while to get this line-up.”
“I’d played in bands all through school,” admits Steve. “We used to jam at lunch time on our acoustics and get a bit of a crew together. When we should have been doing maths, we were probably jamming and playing guitar.”
Drummer Marty O’Brien and bassist Jeff Reeves provide a rock solid rhythm section.
Produced by Matt Wallace (Faith No More/Maroon 5), Beautiful Hum has an ‘international’ quality. Wallace discovered the band through MySpace. Impressed by what he heard, the producer set about making contact.
“We sent out some demos when we were looking for a producer,” explains Steve. “Believe it or not, Matt Wallace was at the top of our list. He got back to us via My Space saying ‘Hey guys, love this stuff … are you still looking for a producer?’
“That was the first thing we heard and it blew our minds. It was like a dream come true … getting a My Space message from Matt Wallace! I grew up listening to Faith No More and he did most of their stuff, which is amazing. He also did Train and Third Eye Blind.”
The band recorded with Wallace in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley for six weeks at various studios, including The Pass and Van Eyees. Tim Palmer applied the finishing touches to the record with some top-notch mixes.
“Tim mixed Pearl Jam’s Ten, which for Steve and I,” exults Danny, “is one of our favourite records … he also did some U2 tracks. We’d come in at the end of the day and hear what he’d done and be blown away.”
Small Mercies have quite a team behind them. The band recorded their initial demos at Brisbane’s Modern Music Studios. From the home of The Butterfly Effect, the demos found their way to John Woodruff (Savage Garden) who, for a time, adopted management duties.
It's all about the songs
The first single from Beautiful Hum was the radio friendly, ‘Innocence’. It’s hard to pick favourites, but titles worth a mention include ‘Sorry’, ‘Stand On The Outside’ and ‘Almost Perfect’.
At the end of the day, it’s all about the songs … and Small Mercies have plenty of them. Wallace believes they had fifty tracks he could have chosen from for their debut.
“It was after I received my second batch of about 20 songs that I realised that this band was well prepared to make a record,” the producer explains. “They had almost 50 songs to choose from and not a clunker in the bunch. They certainly had enough material for a double album, which put us in a great position to have many excellent songs to choose from. Suffice to say, this record is actually more like a ‘Best Of’ album due to the strength of their material.”
Ask Steve Blaik what his favourite albums are and he’ll rattle off Counting Crows’ August And Everything After and U2’s The Joshua Tree. Steve is a lyricist that loves great storytellers.
“I also love bands like Pearl Jam,” he admits, “Coldplay are another influence. [I like] the way they structure their songs into anthemic uplifting pop songs. So, I guess when people listen to Beautiful Hum, they’ll find their own influences; but they’re key things for us when we write our songs.”
“When I write the lyrics, inspiration can come from anywhere, a lot of the songs are personal but I’d like to think they’re personal for other people too. I’m just like anyone else, so things that affect me will affect other people as well; I write about relationships … you know [and] anything that happens in life.
Beautiful Hum is out now through Sony BMG.
Small Mercies play Rosie’s Tavern Friday 25 July 2008.
