Interview: Howling Bells

by Jon Fletcher

Australia's best-groomed export gives New Noise a lesson in slumming it and stuffing your face in the English capital (like we needed it)

"If we have the opportunity to meet Chris Martin we may or may not abuse him."

Darkly melodic guitar combo Howling Bells have acquired a loyal following in a relatively short amount of time but, as bassist Brendan Picchio tells New Noise, it hasn't all been plain sailing. There was the eight-month stint on soup and water, working tables in west London while Coldplay put the finishing touches to 'X&Y' for starters...

[Howling Bells are playing the Cathouse in Glasgow on Friday 8 Dec 2006 as part of the JD Set series of gigs]

When you came over to England you did some pretty mundane jobs didn't you?
Yeah, we were meant to be here for about three weeks, record the album and go home. But Ken Russell, who produced the record, was still working on Coldplay's third record. When we finally got here and three weeks had passed we were like, "Why aren't we in Liverpool recording the record now?" We found out later that they had scrapped every song and started again. Then we opened up those trashy news-week magazines and there were pictures of Chris Martin on holiday with Gwyneth Paltrow, and we were ripping them up and throwing them on the floor, getting really angry that they weren't in the studio finishing off their album so we could go home. It ended up being a very long period where we basically fell apart as human beings. Our resolve was strong – you've never seen a bunch of people who are eating soup every meal and still wanting to stick through it. It was tough.

Did you do the standard Aussie thing of living six to a room?
Five to a room! That was in Acton. I haven't been back there – I can't face that.

Have you had the opportunity to meet Chris Martin since?
No. If I have that opportunity I may or may not abuse him.

How was it when you actually got into the studio?
The day we got there, it was just [singer] Juanita and I. Ken decided to come down with his two sons and his wife. We were probably a little bit nervous at first because we didn't really know what to expect. Ken just ended up being one of the most down-to-earth, not-rock 'n' roll kind-of guys you've ever met. Everything fell into place – he's great at time management and he's great sonically. He doesn't do that thing where he keeps everybody until three in the morning trying to do a take; 10 til 10 every day, work hard and rest. He has a very strong work ethic and he really understands space. He was very good at stripping back some of the songs.

Did you have to explain the sound you wanted to him?
No, I think he got it straight away. We had worked a lot on our demos – we ProTooled it all. We were locked away for about three weeks when it was snowing in the woods outside of Melbourne in a secluded old mansion. That's where we assembled everything and arranged it. He'd heard the demo so he kind of had an idea and he just grew it and built upon that.

You've got a brother and sister dynamic in the band [Juanita and guitarist Joel]. How does that work out?
Quite... good. It can be, er, tenuous at times. Musically it's great, because their voices match up very well. It makes for a very interesting chemistry. I'll leave it hanging there.They've been singing together for years and their father's a musician.

He wrote a song on the album didn't he?
Yeah, the last one. It's probably one of my favourites.

There seem to be a lot of Australian bands doing well over here. Is that a sign of the state of the Australian music scene at the moment, or just that we're hearing more of them?
Australia's never been short of talent. It's probably a little bit of both – where a year or two ago the English music scene was ready to hang any Australian band that dared touch foot on your soil, that's probably changed a bit. There's so much more of an industry here; this is the Mecca of good music. Logically, for any Australian band that's sitting there and wondering why people aren't responding to their music, finding that every record in the shop is by an English band, it kinds of makes sense to move here.

So you moved here with the specific aim of establishing yourselves in that scene?
Juanita will swear it was like that, but it was also that we just had to get out of Australia. It's very stifling and we all met up with the same mind: we really have to get out of here.

An Australian in our office has asked me ask you whether you've heard of the 'Heathrow Injection'.
[Laughs] Oh wow. Yeah, we've heard of it. It's true. My sister's out on the road with us at the moment. She's 18 and she's doing merchandise. We've been scaring the shit out of her for two weeks saying: "You're gonna get huge. The Heathrow Injection's gonna get you. You're basically gonna double in size."

[The 'Heathrow Injection' being, of course, a lovely slang term that implies that once you pass through customs at Heathrow Airport and enter into the London lifestyle, you'll start to get a bit 'plump'.]

Tell me how the sound's worked out – it's almost melancholy, isn't it?
This record was predominantly written by Juanita, so the songs were semi-formed but lacked structure and so on. The band's quite diverse. [Drummer] Glenn listens to a lot of country music, Joel pretty much listens to rock music and I listen to a lot of jazz, so we all have our own thing to what we bring to the band. Soundscape-wise, it was half and half – we translated Juanita's songs in a way that came out melancholic. We had to bring structure to the songs and create the mood, that's what the three boys in the band do. Music happens by accident – it's 50:50 choreographed and just floating around in our heads.

As a band you get likened to PJ Harvey a lot. Is that something you agree with?
I don't think it's annoying, but it can be frustrating. I don't think Juanita sounds anything like her. The only correlation is that they both play guitar and they're brunettes. In all seriousness, I don't think I actually own a PJ Harvey record or that anyone in this band does. Juanita might have one, but we don't cite her as a musical influence.

Where did the band name come from?
It was imagery I think. Juanita and I went on holiday and in Italy every hour the bells struck. I think 'howling' was taken from the book Howling At The Moon. We liked that name and the image of wolves. We're a very filmic band and we love imagery.

Do you attribute your success to anything in particular? Has there been a key moment?
I think the first time that I realised that people were actually there to see us was when we sold out a show in Wolverhampton. That was the first we ever sold out. Wolverhampton's such a funny place – it's got so much music history and the accent is so fucked up, it's hard to understand anyone. Before then we were playing to about five people and then suddenly it's a hundred people. I think it's mainly to do with the band. I can't deny that we have the songs and we're out there playing every single night, but it was probably the press and NME that really changed things. I personally had no idea how influential press can be, I was really surprised. They really took to the album. But we work hard. There's not a day when we're not on tour.

We sent a reviewer to your ICA show at the back-end of July and he really complained about how hot it was in there...
We were sick – I was pretty close to vomiting. We got them to open the back doors and the second we walked off I pulled all my clothes off and put a pair of dry pants on. They were soaked. Everything was just drenched, wet right through.

Do you notice much difference between the crowds in different countries?
In Europe, they're happy to see something new. They seem happy to be there. English audiences have this awful reputation for being really hard-arse but I don't really see that at all. England's been really good to us, but they are really friendly in Europe and the food's good. Going to Europe is like leaving your job as a janitor and going to work as a CEO.

Joel doesn't drink, is that right? Does that apply to the rest of the band too?
None of us really drink. None of us really do anything like that, you can't afford to have pitfalls. To be honest, I think record labels take all the drugs now. The bands usually have to watch their careers. Maybe not our record label, but I have heard some terrible stories.

What happens from here? Are you working on new material?
We have a lot of things on the back-burner. We're in the process of driving our manager mad trying to get some new instruments. We probably want to take a month off to work on new songs, maybe demo a few things. We still have a long way to go before we start a new record.

And the long-term goal?
As Zen as it sounds, it's about finding happiness in what we do.

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