Feature: Opshop: Opportunity Knocks

Sitting at a picnic table in the courtyard of his Ponsonby abode, Opshop singer, principle songwriter and self-confessed bad guitarist Jason Kerrison is poring over the recently arrived cover mock-ups for the Auckland-via-Christchurch five piece's debut album 'You Are Here'.

It's not too long before he spots the first booboo. Bobby Kennedy has been erroneously bestowed the mantle 'Bobby Drums', as indeed he does. For me though it's the striking, geometrically rendered nautilus shell on the cover that catches the eye and gives a subtle clue as to what makes this rather enigmatic band tick.

"That's the golden spiral," says Kerrison, pointing to the nautilus which seems to be disgorging some sort of dark galaxy into space "and that's created by referencing the last place that it was at."

He's referring to the ever-expanding spiral chambers of this mysterious navigator of the deep, but he's also alluding to the fact that 'You Are Here' marks the first important waypoint on their musical journey. Formed in mid-2002, Opshop as a band may be shaping up nicely, but it hasn't finished growing yet.

Kerrison is an articulate and engaging interview subject, probably a reflection of his background in broadcasting which brought him to Auckland nearly a decade ago. Having completed a degree at the NZ Broadcasting School in Christchurch, a position at Mai FM as promotions co-coordinator provided the impetus to make the move north.

The Opshoppers all share a Canterbury connection, with the exception of English-born bass player Ian Munro, who Kerrison met during a course at Auckland University.

Kerrison and guitarists Tim Skedden and Matt Treacy first met at the Catholic boys school St Bedes in the late '80s, where they formed their first band. Now, all these years later, through chance - and a little trans-Tasman cajoling in the case of Skedden - the three lads who used to break into the school hall with an illegally cloned key to rehearse on Sundays, are faced with the tantalizing prospect of releasing an album produced by US producer Brady Blade, the man behind the recent success of Brooke Fraser and Dean Chandler.

Talent has a way of making its own luck, and Opshop have an abundance of the former. Kerrison possesses a great voice that sits comfortably somewhere between James Dean Bradfield of The Manic Street Preachers and U2's Bono, not a bad place to be when you're pitching a new song to radio, while Skedden will be familiar as the clip-on live guitarist with the feelers. The band plays with power and precision and managed to come up with a bunch of 8-track demos that got some important heads turning. The first were Adrian de Croy and Tracy Magan of Siren Records, who promptly added Opshop to their small but classy roster of artists (Goldenhorse, Ben King).

The Blade connection came about through one of those un-planned 'right time, right place' scenarios that can have a huge impact on a band's trajectory.

"That was through Jeremy McPike at York St (where 'You Are Here' was eventually recorded). He had a whole bunch of our demos, and Brady was working on Dean Chandler's record. Jeremy was driving him around, looking after him, and just happened to be playing the demos. He took an interest and one conversation led to the next, and before we knew it we were hanging out talking about the prospects of doing an album. And lo and behold, he turns up and we're into it straight away.

"He stretched us beyond what we'd previously known ourselves to be, because although we've known each other for a long time and were in our first band together and all that, it's been a long time between drinks. So to find an identity again as a band - it was quite a mission. I think he brought out aspects that we probably wouldn't have thought of, we would have played the safe card."

A fine example of this is their second radio single Secrets, which began life as a wistful Coldplay-esque ballad. By the time Blade had finished with it, the tempo had been doubled to 240 bpm and the ballad had become a propulsive and majestic rocker.

Their latest radio release, Saturated, also came in for some Blade shock treatment, as Kerrison explains.

"That was literally just a few chords that I was playing along to a groove that I'd built (programmed) on Reason. We were jamming on it at pre-production and Brady just hooked into it and says; 'My god, that's the next song!', and we're going; 'But there's no structure, we've got two chords, it's just this and that, and there are no lyrics AND we're recording next week AND there's so many other songs to get through. Are you mad?'"

History of course has proved the producer right, and Saturated has found its place alongside a very impressive collection of songs. We don't know, and probably don't need to know what torments and doubts went into creating that song as the red recording light went on. It's enough to know that pressure, if it doesn't get to you, can sometimes be a wonderful creative tool.

"I'm no guitarist at the best of times," Kerrison says of the Secrets session, "and trying to play something at that speed, although it was only four chords, I had an absolute nightmare with it. But I think what he really liked was the struggle in hearing me play that, because I guess there's a certain element that comes out when you hear people pushed to their limits - other than the screaming that accompanies it!"

Fortunately for the perhaps overly-modest Kerrison, he's flanked by two very able axemen in the form of Skedden and Treacy. "Which is unfortunate," he disagrees, "because it makes me kind of slack, because I know that net's there if I need it."

The album mixing was carried out in LA by Danny Saber and his mentor 'Pope' John X. Saber recently worked on the Living Color comeback album 'Collideoscope'. The irony, other than the Blade and Saber thing, is that Kerrison, Skedden and Treacy once played in a band called Vivid - a Living Color tribute band. Nice bit of symmetry there.

Kerrison does, however, express some regrets about this pan-Pacific mixing exercise.

"If there's one thing I could do differently, it would be to have whoever's mixing the album in the studio with us, either here in New Zealand or wherever in the world. We spent a lot of time - almost six or seven months sending mp3s back and forth across the Pacific."

With a great deal of the mystery surrounding these bolters from left-field removed, it's still perhaps the Opshop name itself that tells the most about how these five individuals go about creating their ever-evolving sound.

"In an opshop" explains Kerrison, "you try on different clothes. You try on a different shirt - this matches, that may not - and inside of the band, that's entirely what we do. Everyone will bring their different influences and throw them in the mix, and either the suit's going work or it's going to be completely terrible and a fashion disaster, you know? And sometimes it is a walking fashion disaster, but at least I guess we're close enough and bold enough as humans and mates to be able to throw that stuff out there and not be too precious about it.

"Don't get me wrong, sometimes we do, sometimes we'll throw our toys out of the cot. I guess that's the freedom of being allowed to do that."