Goldenhorse: Flogging the Goldenhorse
Author: Mark Bell
"And we were short of tracks as well," adds Ben. "It was one of those albums where you add many, many tracks as you get more excited, and in the end you can have such a massive number you need to make some sense of them, and Pro Tools is a much more efficient way of doing it. But we all felt we wanted to be pretty modest with the use of Pro Tools."
Because of this you won't hear any of that carbon-copy perfection achieved by digitally pasting in whole chorus sections throughout a song. Although something of a hybrid, this is undeniably an organic record, and while polished, it is a polish that comes from great performances and, (courtesy of Nick Abbott) attention to engineering detail.
Despite some pretty startling chordal and tempo shifts ("Why use one chord when you can use three?" as Bannister noted), everything about this new record has a remarkable sense of flow and appropriateness. Nothing appears the least bit forced or tagged on, and there are gorgeous elliptical melodies everywhere. But you just know that this flow is something the band works extremely hard at, precisely because it appears so effortless.
"Yeah definitely," agrees Geoff. "I mean getting from one place to another in a way that doesn't simply go from that chord to that chord - passing through something to get there is something I find really magical. If there's a way to slip from one chord mysteriously to another, it's fantastic."
Some examples you may already have caught on radio, TV or film include American Wife (which also made it onto an NZ On Air Indie Hit Disc, the Stickmen soundtrack and took the then-unsigned Goldenhorse into APRA's 2001 Silver Scroll finals), Baby's Been Bad (Indie Hit Disc) and Golden Dawn which featured on the more mainstream radio-appealing Kiwi Hit Disc.
Having toured extensively through Orientation gigs and supporting Goodshirt nationwide in June/July, the band have obviously got their heads around the dilemna of translating their intricate sound into a live context. With the addition of guitarist Andrew Clark, Geoff describes the sound as a "... chunkier, more guitar oriented sort of sound. I mean if I had my way I'd have a bigger band, but the logistics of that are not very easy, and also we don't have any money. I love the idea of a big band, so that the richness of the music can come across more. As is, we just present a kind of rawer article, but it's good. We squeeze in a lot!"
Geoff freely admits they were "... running out of money left, right and centre" while recording, begging the question: What motivates them to go the extra mile in hand-crafting such gorgeous music in the face of so much frankly dumb shit on the radio?
"I like bold things," says Geoff. "I like things that try and do something else, that try and break out of the mould. I still like great short pop songs that adhere to time-honoured sort of formats, but if the melody seems to want to go some wild way then I think you should always let it, and if you happen to write a piece of music that needs an intro that ends up being a minute and a half long, well great."
"Personally I think that's just our influences," Kirsten chimes in. "I mean Geoff thinks like a conductor, that's how he thinks about music, and sometimes it gets really annoying! Then I kind of think 'folk', I think a lot about melody."
She also studies opera, which makes these largely self-taught musicians a heady musical mix, particularly when you add in drummer Joel's taste for Eastern and Afro-Cuban music. A short discussion follows in which Geoff ineffectually argues that he doesn't listen to THAT much classical music, and we're on to the next question: How did the deal with new label Siren come about? Kirsten: "We had all gone to the dole office so many times we were getting sick of it!"
"Well we still are going to the dole office..." grumbles Geoff as Kirsten continues: "We were certainly cautious, we didn't really want to sign with anyone, we just wanted to be able to carry on doing our work and remain independent for as long as possible, but I think it just became implausible for the kind of music that we're making and the amount of energy and work we're putting into it. Sure if you're just going to do some quick recordings, but we really do work intensely on it, so we needed the security really."
To that end Siren Records bought the almost-finished album off the band and thus shored up their fragile finances, in the short term at least. At the insistence of Siren Records two new upbeat tracks, Wake Up Brother and Maybe Tomorrow, were hastily recorded at York St in the weeks before mastering, with the latter attracting an NZ On Air single grant to help offset the additional cost. Geoff and engineer Nick Abbott share production credits while York St's Martyn Alexander handled the album mastering.
Label manager Tracy Magan says she looks for four crucial things in any band she signs, and it's not hard to see why Goldenhorse were the first on her shopping list. (See sidebox)
"The first obviously is the songs. The second, which I think is really important, is the singing. If you've got really great songs but the singer's not good, or not right, then it's hopeless. Then the other is that they get along well with each other and that they're good musicians - I've so often seen bands implode because they're the wrong personalities. The other one is whether they want it or not. I'll only work with bands who really, really want it, because there's so many talented people in this world and if they're not serious about what they're doing and they don't really have a passion and a hunger for it, then it can't succeed."
Four ticks then for the brilliant Goldenhorse, and should new partner Siren's aggressive overseas marketing strategy come to any sort of fruition, we might just have to admit that words like 'complex', 'unpredictable' and even 'clever' deserve reinstatement into the rock'n'roll vernacular.
