Today marks the release of Any Given Weekend, the debut album by Melbourne’s Northeast Party House (out via Inertia/ Stop Start). The record is an ode to partying – the good, the bad and the ugly – and the band members’ gloriously shambolic ride into adulthood.
In our record reviewer we said “the collective (that is Northeast Party House) personify the tens of thousands of Australians under the age of 25 – and their music is a beautiful, frenzied ode to being young and rebellious.” We asked the guys to give us a run down on their promising debut.
The Haunted
“This song came about from a jam in a friend’s family Toorak mansion overlooking the Yarra River as the sun was setting in mid 2012. We’d been listening to a lot of house music at the time and the simplicity of the bass lines had inspired us to strip our jams right back. Zach Hamilton-Reeves (vocals) had already written virtually all the lyrics separately to something else he was working on and started singing them over the jam. When we played the demo to our manager, we introduced it jokingly proclaiming ‘here’s our next single’.
The idea was to have a song that slowly builds and builds, much like a house/electro song would. We really liked the idea of repetition in the chorus to enhance the dance music influence and hopefully have a trancelike effect.”
Youth Allowance
“Youth Allowance came out of the same mid 2012-jam period as The Haunted. That grating
guitar riff that starts the song is the first thing we wrote and we built the rest of the song around that idea,
It just so happened that that guitar riff, which came from just messing around, was better than anything else we had made that day. The lyrics formed pretty quickly too. They stem from Zach’s feelings of frustration that he wasn’t eligible for the government funded youth allowance, whilst seemingly all his friends were receiving it and having a great time spending their extra cash on partying.”
You And I
“You and I is a very unique song on the record for us, and it is one of the oldest creations on the album. The song first originated in a home studio up in the Dandenong Ranges in late 2011. Sean Kenihan (Moog) and Zach were left to their own devices up there one day with some studio equipment and the whole first half of the tune came together really quickly, quirky synth solo and all.
Unlike the previous two songs on the album, this one was then progressed totally in the
studio, all programmed beats, synths and vocals. The song is clearly about a breakup or a lost love. I can’t recall if Zach was going through something similar at the time, but the spontaneous emotion in the lyrics really held the demo together from the start.
No matter what we did, even with all the pro recording gear we could source, we couldn’t
seem to catch the same conviction that vocal performance has.”
In The Water
“Originating at Malcolm Besley’s (drums) home studio in early 2013, this song went through so many changes that the original demo is not even remotely the same. Only one rhythmic element of the bass is all that remains.
Apart from the main chorus line, the lyrics came last, which are based around the Greek myth of The Siren and the comparison of The Siren’s luring techniques to that of prostitution.”
Sick Boy
“Sick Boy first came to life in early 2013 when Malcolm recorded Jack Schumacher (guitar, bass) and Mitch Ansell (guitar, bass) doing an improvised jam to a programmed drum beat. They played for about 25 minutes. Later on Malcolm went through and found bits and pieces from the jam, then chopped them up, rearranged and constructed totally new riffs into a near complete bed for the song. From there the song was layered with unique ideas from other members, which created the version you hear now.
There was only one rehearsal of this song before we recorded it. A lot of the final parts were ideas that we came up with in the studio once recording began. The film ‘Trainspotting’, which we had been watching whilst on a writing weekend in Daylesford, lyrically inspires the song.”
Any Given Weekend
“Jack and Zach got together one evening only a month before we were scheduled to record
the album in late 2013, and in the space of a few hours wrote the foundations of this tune and ‘Fake Friends’.
The original demo was very kooky and the most obnoxious music we had written to date. So strange and good were the original takes that they still make up the bulk of the final version. A lot of the guitar sounds in this were recorded with really cheap amps and plug-ins in an attempt to make the song as obnoxious as possible. They were also recorded a bit out of time and tune to really give the song an unstable edge, which we felt enhances that feeling of coming down.”
Fake Friends
“Jack had just purchased himself a recording software program, and in his beginner
ignorance found himself approaching this demo with total creative freedom. The synths in this song and some of the guitars are all from that original demo – and we would never have written them had he any clue what he was doing.
The original instrument takes were so out of time and out of tune that they gave the whole song a kind of drunken atmosphere, and it was really important to us that we maintained that NQR (not quite right) style of recording throughout the rest of the tracking process.”
Way
“Zach wrote the original elements of Way in his bedroom studio setup in early 2012. He’d
been inspired by a jam we’d just had, which in the end became The Haunted. You can hear noticeable similarities between the two tunes as a result of one inspiring the other.
Zach wrote most of the guitar, synth and bass elements using software synths, which were later replaced by real instruments. Lyrically, the song is inspired by Zach’s feelings of frustration towards the rapidly developing world, his metaphor for the world being that of a girl, who has lost her way.”
Valium
“This tune, out of all the songs on the album has probably had the most changes and edits
made to it. I think you can probably hear that in the final version, but we like the way that gives the song this sense of unpredictability.
It started as a studio jam with just Zach and Sean late one night in early 2013, lights off, headphones on and purely just synths and vocals.This song’s quite special to us as it goes to a lot of different places dynamically in the space of four minutes, all of which we think represents the NPH sound well. We’re really looking forward to playing this one live, the post chorus in Valium is probably the loudest the whole set will get.”
Embezzler
“Embezzler is the oldest track on Any Given Weekend. It was written and recorded at the
start of 2010 and was one of the first songs we uploaded to triple j unearthed. At first we weren’t sure about the idea of including old material on our debut album, but because this song has been a constant highlight of our live show over the past four years we thought we’d slip it in as a kind of homage to where the band came from.
The lyrics are inspired by an old nursery rhyme infused with some dark themes stemming from some of our personal experience with hallucinogens. It was a nice feeling to end our debut album on the same track that our debut EP began with, like neatly tying off the last knot on the last few years of work.”
Northeast Party House Any Given Weekend Tour Dates
Thu 19 Jun – Jive, Adelaide, SA
Fri 20 Jun – Karova Lounge, Ballarat, VIC
Sat 21 Jun – Corner Hotel, Melbourne, VIC
Wed 25 Jun – Beach Road Hotel, Bondi, NSW
Thu 26 Jun – Rad, Wollongong, NSW
Fri 27 Jun – Transit Bar, Canberra, ACT
Sat 28 Jun – Newtown Social Club, Sydney, NSW
Sun 29 Jun – The Lair, Sydney, NSW *All Ages
Wed 02 Jul – Small Ballroom, Newcastle, NSW
Thu 03 Jul – Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane, QLD
Fri 04 Jul – Sol Bar, Maroochydore, QLD
Sat 05 Jul – Spotted Cow, Toowoomba, QLD
