Sydney psych duo Spirit Valley have just released their brand new LP titled Give Trance A Chance. Drawing influence from their own early experiences in rave culture, a love for chanting, sidechained bass lines and a thirst for playing to a sweaty dancefloor, the band headed in to Linear Studios with Wade Keighran (The Scare, Wolf & Cub) and smashed out the record in just four days.
Out now independently (via the band’s Bandcamp page), Give Trance a Chance is Spirit Valley’s debut full length album; a casual nine rowdy dance floor shanties sitting on the worlds first 49 minutes of Doomshine Boogie. To celebrate its release, the guys Chris Stabback and Dave Tomlinson gave us a track by track run down of the LP, check it out below and visit their Bandcamp page for more info. They’ll also be touring in support of the LP release, tour dates below.
Too Hot For Heaven
Chris Stabback: “We’re so humble. The title of this tune doesn’t really relate in any way to the actual subject matter of the lyrics, I just heard “Well it’s a little too hot for heaven ain’t it…” said in one of the episodes of the hit TV series LOST about a million years ago and have wanted to have a song called that ever since. I’ve also always wanted to howl for almost the entirety of a song, so we threw that in too.
2H4H is generally about how obsessive some people get in their romantic relationships and how making someone your ‘everything’ may not actually be the key to happiness. I wouldn’t know anything about that though. I was listening to a lot of Nightbeats when we initially wrote this track.”
Dave Tomlinson: “I like the breakdown, really brings the creepy drunkle to the dinner table.”
Moonrocks
Dave: “Definitely the bastard-child-turned-out-good of the album. We didn’t have anything written when we got to the studio, just a riff and a beat we figured we’d work out during recording which miraculously worked. Almost like were actual musicians.
Stabs had wanted to name a song after a Joshua Tree ‘experience’ we had whilst touring in the states which suited the psychy, trippy vibe of the song, which was fun to indulged ourselves with the theme a bit, the lighter side of our music n that. Wade ran up the road and grabbed a 12 string from his buddy for the intro, slapped a round robin vocal on the outro and bam, you got aSpirit Valley ‘psych’ track, easy.”
Chris: “Have you ever seen your band mate do snow angels in the sand for 3 hours in the Californian desert while you’re supposed to be looking for shows in Texas? I guess the theme of this track is the feeling of freewheelin’ around the countryside with little consciousness or regard for reality.
We wanted to see what happened if we brought 10% of a song into the studio (where time is money) and see what we could come up with in the heat of the moment. After delving deep into the caffeine/whiskey vortex and wrangling poor Wade Keighran into our tangled song writing web, lady luck decided to give us this one.”
Victory
Dave: “We’ve been playing this song forever, pretty sure it was the first song we ever wrote so its nice to get it all wrapped up n put in its place. The main guitar riff came from playing around with a super popular song that shall not be named, no one seems to have noticed yet.
Always a banger to play live, the ending with Stabs ridiculous drumming gets me in mood every time. Classic feel good fist pumper innit.”
Chris: “This is one of those songs where a drummer like me with terrible technique and big ideas has to concentrate on their breathing like a professional kayak rower in order to get past the second chorus. It has to be put last in any live set as there’s no way I’m doing anything after it. Which works coz it’s always been a bit of a hum-dinger in a live scenario.
I guess if you had to give this song a meaning, it wouldn’t to too much apart from throwing everything you have at something, going all in, balls to the wall. Win or Loose. Aye.”
Rattlesnake
Chris: Another golden oldy. A lil bit of the old rock n roll and a lil bit of psych, delivered in a groovy lil 4 minute dance floor sweat mongerer. We’ve only written about 7 versions of this song over the years. We’ve played it on and off live since about 2012, each time the track coming back a bit different than the last. Here it is in it’s final state.
I guess hedonism is the general theme. A dash of excessiveness in the romance department never hurt anyone, till you meet a rattlesnake. Waa.
Dave: Yeah lyrically its pretty fetish-y. In my mind it visually swaps between a black magic leatherman orgy and a red lit roman bathhouse when I’m singing it. Like a horrible histories starring James Spader.
Give Trance A Chance
Dave: “I think Stabs wrote on the whiteboard ‘chanting’ and ‘side-chain everything’.”
Chris: “The big boy. The main course. Bon appétit. If there was ever a time to go all out on production, we said as we first sat down to mix this Trance-inspired jangle-stomper, it’d probably be now. The track finishes in a completely different ball park than where it starts, and what you could call the body of the track in the middle, different again. But the ballparks are all in the same suburb. Or perhaps a small metropolis maybe where there’s always parking available.
This is one of those songs where you had absolutely no vision of how you wanted it to turn out, it just started with a beat I vomited out of my brain, then I heard a guitar being played, a few weeks later we had a song. The name Give Trance A Chance, like the album title, pays homage to the *not so cool anymore* genre of Trance music that sculpted a few of my teenage years, and that all types of music are related in more ways than are apparent on the surface.
I’ve never really been in many bands that lend themselves to playing weird percussion instruments. So I used every piece of percussion I’ve ever owned in the intro out of principal.”
Abyss
Dave: “Contrary to the lyrics in this song I’m not super depressed. Just a song about how its awesome being sad sometimes cos you can do things like drink a bottle of whisky before lunchtime by yourself and its socially acceptable.”
Chris: “One of the most recent songs we’ve written. This song came about pretty naturally and was written accordingly. Not much talking happened, just playing it over and over till it was done. In that particular writing process, I we made a conscious effort not to over-complicate it and have it go for a reasonable length of time, as apposed to most of the other songs on the album. We find it challenging to end songs in a sensible time-frame.”
Nightsharks
Chris:“Had a super light-hearted dream where I found myself miles out at sea in pitch black not knowing if I was swimming in the right direction while sharks were trying to get at my feet. It wasn’t in the slightest bit scary, I’m fine, I swear.”
Dave: “I love the ooohs. The organ ooohs, the space ooohs, the big ooohs. All of em. Love you guys.”
Honeybones
Dave: “This one wrote itself in one rehearsal as i remember and someone asked me once if it was about Myles, cos he had dread bun thing going on.
Always feel a bit awkward listening to it in front of people cos i sound like such a jilted lover. Its really just a montage of fictitious and real events mashed together into a cradle to the grave story about relationships cos I’m so deep. Like a navy seal.”
Chris: “All of the feels. Emotional ones. I like the singing in this one.”
Forever
Chris: “Some songs write themselves in half an hour, some take months and months. So far, FOREVER is 5 years in the making and will never be finished. This recording just captures it in it’s state at this point in time.”
Dave: “Definitely a turning point in figuring out how to write songs together. When we first started it was just a couple of buildings joined by a big ol skybridge. After that was secured we installed floors in the buildings, put some rooms on the floors and decorated all the rooms using stuff from the other rooms to go with the new stuff.
After a little while you start thinking about putting a couple of smaller buildings in and maybe chucking a slide halfway down the skybridge with a ball pit at the end, before you know it you’ve got a small CBD on your hands. Non stop maintenance innit.”
Album Launch Tour Dates
Thu 5 March – Rad Bar, Wollongong NSW
Fri 6 March – The Sly Fox, Sydney NSW
Thu 12 March – Phoenix Bar, Canberra ACT
Sat 21 March – Old Bar, Fitzroy VIC
Thu 26 March – Tio’s, Sydney NSW
For tickets and info visit the band’s Facebook page.
