Southampton alternative rock trio Band Of Skulls are a group indebted to years of polishing, perfecting and honing their craft leading them to their third record Himalayan.
Entering the studio with renowned producer Nick Launay (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nick Cave, Arcade Fire) the finished product is heavier and darker previous efforts, but contrasts a positive vibrancy of a band that’s mixing it up and trying something different. The English heavyweights are touring the East Coast with their boisterous blues driven riffs and raw vocal assets throughout June.
We spoke with bass player and vocalist Emma Richardson who took us through track-by-track of Himalayan, giving us insights on how each track came to be, “we went in with a very clear idea of what we wanted to do; we were trying to get rid of the choice of what would be the single and make 12 pop songs.’’ The album is out now via Mushroom.
Asleep At The Wheel
“The title track and it came really naturally. When we were doing the record this track really just stood out as the perfect opening track to bridge the gap from our last album Sweet Sour. It was one of the first songs we recorded and yeah it was just the perfect track to put up first to close the chapter on Sweet Sour and open the doors for Himalayan.’’
Himalayan
“I trying to pull some moves on the dance floor and [laughs] it didn’t quite end up as a song from that. Matt had this great beat, sort of, Stevie Wonder sort of funk beat and we just started jamming it and yeah, it just took its form from there. We tried a new idea with the artwork this time and we used the soundwaves from Himalayan, to create the visual image on the front there, the gold and silver object, so that was cool to try a new idea.’’
Hoochie Coochie
“This one was kind of like a description of all the nights out you’ve ever had, good and bad, and it feels like it’s all summed up in two and a half minutes with this kinda big riff and a kind of unusual chorus for us with a bit of delay and effect on the vocals which is great fun to play live as well. We’ve been playing it out recently and it gets people going. It’s great, heavy and up-tempo, that’s how we like ‘em at the moment.’’
Cold Sweat
“We’ve had this song for a while but we didn’t really know how to approach it and so we finally found its place. We have this other side to us as a band and it’s great to be able to put a different style on a record and have it stand up alongside the kind of heavier stuff. It’s not quiet all the way through, it does get kind of loud and intense and there’s backwards drums and all sorts going on in there. Primarily it’s a song about longing and obsession but then musically it’s quite epic and free.”
Nightmares
“A great song from Russell actually… he had this idea about having a fear of everything, you know, which seems kind of an apt topic for culture today and anxiousness in general with people being anxious about the state of the world and what’s happening. It’s got a different atmosphere to a lot of the songs we’ve written before, we were writing it and rehearsing it and it puts you in a certain mood when you play it you know.’’
Brothers And Sisters
“The most technical song to play and work out because of the time signatures in it and the way the drums work and it took ages to kind of figure out how to play it. It sounds really easy and immediate and we wanted to keep that freshness to it but yeah, it’s a fun song. We’ve kind of got the grips of it now, it’s a bit easier so we can pull it off live and it’s sounding really good live as well, it’s got this great chorus and people seem to really you know, sing along. It’s got that moment where it really makes people join you in the song.’’
I Guess I Know You Fairly Well
“One of the first tracks we recorded with [producer] Nick Launay, we recorded that at Seedy Underbelly actually in LA. It was kind of one of the first ones along with Asleep At The Wheel to be written and recorded and it just felt like a natural groove again.’’
You Are All That I’m Not
“Yeah this was sort of a similar vain as ‘Cold Sweat’ I suppose, a big, beautiful, expansive song that gets bigger and bigger. We put on Purple Rain [laughs] in the studio to give us a marker of what to aim for, something that’s that epic and that bold and really not shying away from it. We were seeing how far we could take it like you know, it sort of needs to step up and up and up and its gets to a point where you think it can’t get any bigger and it sort of goes somewhere else and it becomes this epic track. We had the song towards the end of the last session for Sweet Sour and it wasn’t quite ready and hadn’t sort of found its place yet and I think it really benefited from working with Nick Launay on it with the structure, pushing our skills to the limit and seeing how far we could take it’’.
I Feel Like 10 Ten Men, Nine Dead And One Dying
“Russell’s granddad, this was his sort of saying when he just felt awful, like, it was his way of describing if he was feeling not to good so, we had to put it in there, it’s one of those titles that you can’t leave, its got to continue on somehow, it’s a great saying. It’s one of the heaviest riffs on the record apart from ‘Heavens Key’ and it was great fun to record, you know we could turn everything up to full volume and use loads of pedals and you know, it has this really great feeling, a bit like The Cramps, that kinda seedy, loud, heavy feel to it and it’s just a cool sounding song.’’
Toreador
“I read a book by Ernest Hemingway called The Sun Also Rises and it just really got me, it’s only a short novel but it’s got a real atmosphere too it, it really transports you to Spain and that scene in the 20s you know, of people with a lot of money, just wondering around and you know just having an amazing social life basically. They go to this bullfight in the book and the way he describes it is brilliant and it made me really wanna go and see one for myself just to see what it actually felt like so, I guess it’s kinda loosely based on that experience but it has that Spanish feel too it I think.’’
Heavens Key
“This started out as quite a upbeat, up tempo kinda track and it completely changed in the studio, we kind of re-looked at it, because it wasn’t quite working, and it was like ‘right, let’s just turn it around and make it into something else’ and we were just sitting there jamming and just started playing this long, kind of heavy, it’s kind of hypnotic and it gradually got heavier and heavier and you know, it ended up with lots of guitars, lots of pedals and turning everything up again. It’s what the song wanted to do, it just felt natural to go there with it, the more we worked on it, the heavier it got.’’
Get Yourself Together
“This is an interesting one, Matt’s actually playing guitar on this one. I think Matt and Russell made a pact that Russell would play drums on a track if Matt would play guitar and I don’t think the drums part happened [laughs]. It’s a different kind of sound for us and I think we were experimenting a bit and we do have this other side as a group and it’s great to be able to put it on the record. It’s this bold, uplifting track and it’s going to be a pleasure to play live when people know it and hopefully we get the crowd singing along with that one – that would be good!’’
Band Of Skulls 2014 Australian Tour
Thursday 17th June – HiFi, Melbourne
Friday 20th June – HiFi, Sydney
Sunday 21st June – HiFI, Brisbane
Tickets via secretsounds.oztix.com.au
