Aussie’s Roaming Pastures Endow to Us, the North American Blogosphere, “Super Wild Horses!”
From left: Hayley McKee, Amy Franz
A profile of Super Wild Horses, the new leading band of the underground Australian lo-fi sector, who have reached acclaim amongst critical and musical circles in the US and elsewhere, signed to Chicago’s HoZac Records, and have the potential to win the hearts of any garage rock fan out there.
What about Australia? Sweden keeps churning out Dylan-esque ambient folk singers (The Tallest Man on Earth, Jose Gonzalez) and London has an aggressive district of their own sub-genre: hyperdub. But what about Australia? As black and white as you think an answer would be, it’s actually a pretty complex question. From a historical perspective, we find Australia to be an assimilation of British tradition; that aside from Steve Irwin and Australian Cattle Dogs that there isn’t much of a unique exhibition of culture in Australia. Sure, Britain isn’t below the equator, so natural conditions are distinct, and obviously there is a lot in aboriginal studies, however, when do we study Australian history? What significantly does Australia have to offer?
For Super Wild Horses, a two-piece Melbourne garage band, it’s a sprawling yet interconnected community of beach-bum type surf rock musicians. From the chill, psychedelic atmospherics of 70′s revival sounding Eddy Current Suppression Ring (hence: “Rush to Relax”) to post punk veterans The Scientists, there’s always been a music scene in Australia, however it seems unnoticed and subconsciously recognized elsewhere. However, just as California and other states are spurting with a recreated vision to the decades old aesthetics of artists such as Phil Spector and The Clean, Australia seems to be following along on their own parallel path to this wave, with bands pressing split 7”s, co-headlining tiny bars or hotel rooms, and maybe playing drums or doing some vocals for each other’s side projects. Australia have never been behind the curve, neither have they been sly, skillful and timely at copying the modern methods and practices of indie rock. “There’s a really tight knit group of people playing and those same people are going to watch gigs. The states seem to have that same sense of community”, says Amy Franz, one half of Super Wild Horses. “People in Australia (and seems to be the case here [US] too) are genuinely interested in the bands and projects that spring up, and most of us are recording pretty simply and quickly, there are always new releases coming out which keeps the community vibrant.”
I was convinced before my conversation with Super Wild Horses that the musical worlds between the US + Europe and Australia are isolated. I asked whether or not the band was exposed to exports during their musical growth and adolescence that may have influenced their voice. Could Australia’s musical offerings completely fuel the development of their sound? Franz says on her behalf “There are so many great and influential bands from Australia – The Stems, The Church, The Scientists, Radio Birdman, X, The Go Betweens, the list could go on and on. More recently bands like Eddy Current, The Twerps, Panel of Judges, The Straight Arrows, Deaf Wish have been putting out great stuff – I think there is definitely an Australian sound – not something you can put your finger on, more of a feeling perhaps.” This feeling that Franz conveys, as simplistic as it gets, regardless of nationality or origin, is terribly hard to define in concise and in depth terms. We retreat to shortcuts such as “lo-fi” that soon become no-no’s in a critic’s notebook. Even proprietors of the garage scene have a hard time putting their finger on what this paradox is that they are in. “It wasn’t until my early teens I properly discovered Australian music. Bands like ACDC, The Easybeats, Bad Seeds and The Scientists have historically led the way for Aussie music”, says Hayley McKee, the other half of the band. “The 90s were an ace time for Aussie bands too. Groups like You Am I, Tumbleweed, Smudge and Jebediah were some of my favourites and it felt good to have music heroes coming from your own backyard. The past few years have generated another wave of exciting new bands. Each state in Australia has a sligtly different scene and sound, but on a whole there are so many great rock and roll bands to dig into at the moment.”
The members of Super Wild Horses, Amy Franz and Hayley McKee, who share band roles as guitarists, drummers, and vocalists, met during high school in Perth, Australia (they are now based in Melbourne) at the age of Fifteen (a fitting suspicion for the naming of their debut album Fifteen) and have been making music since not long after getting together. Franz recalls, ”[We] got up to lots of mischief together in the hills of Perth (Western Australia). There wasn’t a whole lot to do there so we’d make our own fun. A lot of our good buddies ended up in music or the arts. It was a really creative place to grow up, and while we didn’t start the band till much much later, I think the seeds were sewn back then.” McKee adds, “We’ve been pals for ages and would always act like asses around each other. My car doesn’t have a radio so this was one place we would always end up singing stupid rhymes to each other. I think we both secretly wanted to start a band at some point in our lives, and neither of us were getting any younger so we just did it for our own enjoyment.”
That enjoyment expanded into a full-time project that has been regularly active since 2008. Their eponymous six song EP was released that year, and featured the single “Super Wild Horses” which they had written before the EP’s release, and before they had an official name. “It was the first song we wrote on our dodgy Multivox keyboard and it’s off our debut 7”. Amy’s partner booked our first show and knew we’d try to get out of it so he gave us a really short lead time to prepare”, says McKee. “We had to desperately think up a band name for the show…which we later realised stunk (we called ourselves Sexretary). So we reverted to Super Wild Horses after that.”
And Super Wild Horses they stuck with. I find it personally to be a metaphor for Australia’s openness physically and in terms of their limited and collectively shared media. Any Australian garage band, as connected as they may seem in their home, is wild in a fresh and unknown sense to us. Now based in Melbourne, Super Wild Horses are signed to Aarght Records (a premiere record label for the garage sound in Aus.) and in the US, to a similarly influential garage-distributer, Chicago’s own HoZac Records, which is one of my favorite labels out there currently, and the reason for how I discovered Super Wild Horses in the first place. In their current city, Super Wild Horses have been playing shows for a while now, along with releasing singles with friends such as UV Race and the Straight Arrows, and promoting the release of Fifteen, which has finally hit shelves in both LP, CD, and digital formats in the US and through HoZac’s online store. Extending the subject on their surroundings, McKee speaks about Melbourne specifically, “From what I can gather the Melbourne garage scene has similarities to the US DIY scene in the sense that we’re all just a bunch of bands who are friends with each other and have no real band ambitions other than playing music for kicks! We were lucky to find like minded bands in our town. Everyone is really supportive of each other and there’s a bunch of side-project bands (like Boomgates, Lower Plenty) that have come about because of this genuine enthusiasm for wanting to make music with each other.”
Super Wild Horses I was told about when I was attending this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival on my summer visit to Chicago. I stopped by the HoZac Records booth, and was greeted by a very friendly label associate there. I told him that I was from San Francisco and he mentioned that HoZac band Super Wild Horses would be playing a show at the Hemlock Tavern (he obviously thought I was over 21). He described them in a way that made me very curious. It was several weeks after I went to Pitchfork before I checked out the band. With desire to find hidden gems that were unbeknownst to Pitchfork Media’s spell, I looked up Super Wild Horses. After hearing “Golden Town” I was converted. A simple, 2:36 minute song, “Golden Town” is the first single from Fifteen. It’s a clattering and rushing mess of cymbals and scuzzy guitars, it’s climactic and aural power easily could win over cliched hard rock staples at a battle of the bands. It’s a heavier but still raw and gritty sounding side of the lo-fi music that I’ve heard recently. I hear mostly poppier songs that have a lot of sun and doo-wop in them, however, “Golden Town” could go grey, cloudy, dark, or even gleamingly bright. It’s pop in it’s structure, but it’s delivery is a ferocious howl. The vocals are muttered under a cacophony of percussion, guitar, bass and reverb. A slam dunk of repetition and understated ferocity, “Golden Town” is a short introduction to the musical brevity of Super Wild Horses, but it only covers one side. “Lock and Key” and “Love” are more minimalist, with the vocals focused and centered instead of being caked and layered under the stereophonics of scuzzy recording gear, along with a lot of instrumental passion. The alternating voices of both members of Super Wild Horses aren’t necessarily harmonic in ways other girl groups that employ similar styles are, however, their voices are fierce yet refined instruments. Each of them have a lilt in their voice that is sharp, growly and full in songs such as the dark and powerful “Fifteen” and the sloppily fun and chaotic anthem “Mess Around”, however, both of their voices can act as background material, in songs such as “Adrian” and “I Want You” which are less focused on the vocal shifts or tricks and more on the song’s progression and melody. They are also more evocative of British Invasion punk stylings, as well as the sharpness and spunk of early American rock and roll. McKee says, “My family and I were born in England so I grew up on my dad’s favourite British records like The Kinks, The Turtles, Beatles and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. My mum was a massive Motown fan and when she was a kid she would save her money up to buy US imports from The Temptations, The Supremes and Smoky Robinson.”
When asked about the recent outbreak of borrowed nostalgia syndrome for smoky soul, Ronettes’ pop, 70’s punk, and sun baked rock, both Hayley McKee and Amy Franz argue that these sounds, conveyed intentionally or not, have never officially died. “I think people will always reference their musical influences in their music to some degree. Not only the songs, but the recorded sound and sentiment as well. There are all kinds of music being referenced and ‘revived” – seems that the media are just paying a bit more attention to the garage and DIY scene at the moment.” says Franz. Super Wild Horses seemed to be accustomed to hearing this labeling trend, especially amongst their rock and roll peers, both in Australia and in the United States (they played at GonerFest in Memphis this September). Franz adds, “It’s probably interesting for people who’ve been part of the CD and download generations to see a movement happening that digs vinyl, doesn’t bother too much with over-production and embraces that sound. There was a certain immediacy in the music of those bands that feels honest and heartfelt. I think we feel the pull towards that sound for sure.” She reminds us that not only have breakthrough bands encouraged the use of more vintage sounding equipment (some of this is deliberate and some isn’t), but have also lead a more vintage centered lifestyle. McKee also comments, “I think this appreciation for a 60s aesthetic has always been around in music and isn’t necessarily a newly discovered sound that bands are turning on to. If anything, the music press have just picked up on the lo-fi tag and are running with it…which inherently pushes this style of music to the forefront for better or worse. We never set out to produce a particular sound. We certainly had clear ideas in terms of recording with old analogue equipment to try and relive the golden tones of the 60′s; but in terms of songwriting there isn’t any strategy. Like everyone else our songs just evolve intuitively. We both grew up listening to a wide range of music from a very early age so I’m sure our parent’s record collection have subliminally left a mark on us.”
The key difference now between vintage and contemporary mediums is that bands use the mechanism of the internet to share their work, whether they are dirt poor and purist by physicality standards. Through releasing vinyl, playing shows in warehouses, and producing written word and art through zine form, they form a case that music world seems to be encountering another revolution. The previous musical generations formed revolutionary ideas, one of them was indie rock. But now so many of these movements have repeated themselves, causing their statement to become less and less invigorated or fresh and bought in to a marketing niche that seems more and more conformist each day. One could argue that the lo fi and 60’s stylings of garage bands could be a conforming trend that has been bought out by popularity standards, however, it hasn’t expanded into a mass marketed or sold product that has contradicted it’s existence in ways that other forms of independent music have.
Aside from their standpoint on the media-based theory of the garage pop outpour, I also asked Super Wild Horses about how they view the music media directly, particularly independent juggernauts such as Pitchfork. Franz says, “The press is strange! We never expected that people would talk about the band or pay much attention to it. As Hayley mentioned earlier, we started the band for ourselves, with no plan and not sure how long we’d get away with it for! We’ve been really lucky and just feel quite humbled that people have picked up on our music.” Pitchfork and Stereogum seem to have a way of getting to underground sources, almost depicting independent music and lifestyle that is bigger and more generalized than it actually is. There are a lot of bands and smaller movements they can miss out on, however, they seem to have a knack for revealing an eclectic and encompassing list of indie music’s broad offerings. No band that I have talked to has ever glorified the press, as most musicians seem to have a neutral outlook on the existence of Pitchfork and other sites. They do a lot of promotion for their bands’ audiences, however they have a lot of power and influence in what less deeply rooted indie-leaning listeners tend to think about certain bands. McKee shares her opinion, “We thank our lucky stars in the liner notes on our album because we’ve received such awesome support and amazing opportunities. It feels great to hear people like the record because it’s such a personal little creation. The songs are about our lives and we learnt all the instruments on the go so we never imagined we’d even be listened to! Releasing through HoZac is a total buzz. I have stacks of their releases and have had a long term geeky love for the label. We were stoked they dug the record. A major high for us.” Super Wild Horses seem to have a more positive outlook on the influence of the press, however, their press has been limited and captioned. They have been mentioned on Pitchfork before, but Pitchfork can be choosy in who they tend to follow, and who gets the staying power amongst their avid readers. There’s an old saying (well, not really) that an 8.0 with a “best new music” tag can have a lot more advantage than just a solid, plain old 8.0. In the world of sophisticated and advanced music journalism with it’s contradictions and flaws—Super Wild Horses are just happy to be noticed with contributions by their friends, their label, and a purer, friendlier array of music media presses.
Reverting to the topic of the formation of Super Wild Horses unique and wholly sound, Franz talks about regular influences on her behalf, “I think our sound is a bit of a mash of all the things we’ve listened to and also what we’ve been able to express on our instruments (as we’ve been learning as we go). I listened to a lot of Ray Charles, Etta James, R&B and jazz growing up. Plus bands like the Lemonheads, Love, The Modern Lovers, The Stooges, Magnetic Fields, Guided By Voices, a bit of everything! There was a great all ages scene when we were growing up, so every weekend we’d be seeing local bands and soaking it all up.”
Aside from “Golden Town” my other favorite song on the album Fifteen is “Degrassi”, which I claimed in my question to the band to be the emotional center of the album. There’s something about the mood in the song that channels the feeling of nostalgia in my head. I once heard this phenomenon uttered so eloquently, that it’s “the type of nostalgia that you feel when you’re too young to feel nostalgia.” It has this emotional opaqueness that almost feels like a reflection or memory, and lyrically it’s this graceful and raw as well as in it’s instrumental tinges. I probably find this sentiment in it when I interpret the song because of it’s adolescent feel (hence the Canadian TV show also titled “Degrassi”) and because of the adolescent concept I mentioned earlier. “Breathing, without any feeling”, is the standout line, as the duo’s voices are used in a more breathy and mellow form. “Degrassi” has something in it that I find beautiful that not your everyday person would find significant or polished enough to be beautiful. It’s beauty in it’s freest form, it’s something that I can gravely connect to, a simple pop song that stirs me into a separate mindset each time I listen to it. Fifteen lyrically is very simple in a poetic sense, but that lyrical simplicity comes with an added layer of meaning and depth, with a lot of sincerity and universality. Their delivery shares every line with a different emotional octave, whether it’s putting the extra emphasis on “I’ve got a message for you, it goes ooh ooh ooh” in “Mess Around” or the “We don’t care” verse repeated in “We Don’t Believe It.” The songs contain a lot about love and betrayal, about standing up to authority and some subtextual political messages (“You and your pocket full of gold, you and your world turned to smoke”), as well as being trapped in an environment that doesn’t understand you. Super Wild Horses’s album is a study of young modern lovers and their emotions—about home, not feeling at home, wanting to break free, feeling weighed down by authority, feeling weighed down by love, break up, etc. The simplest lyrics in their songs seem to carry the most power, the verses can seem haunting almost; they have this much grit and effect in them.
When I asked the band about the emotional component or feelings that influenced the development of Fifteen they described it as a really direct and straightforward example of catharsis, and that through it’s musical tones and implied content it addresses solely the many sensations in life, abstractly as a whole. Franz notes, “The songs on the record are pretty honest and simple expressions of feelings and incidents happening in our lives, including our teenage years. We’ve never tried to push songwriting; to construct a story or theme, so the songs are reflections on real thoughts and feelings.” McKee also summarizes that the emotional territory of the album dates from their beginnings as a band, and looking back on their teenage years, “The songs on this record were the first songs we’ve ever written so it’s really hard to pin point exactly what has inspired us…it only seems natural that there are a range of expressions. In a way it’s a subconscious homage to the back catalogue of all our music loves… every great band we’ve seen live and any record we’ve adored have all contributed in some sense. The songs are all inspired by our day to day catastrophes or triumphs. The more “emotionally haunting” songs come from an honest and earnest place which we don’t know how to hide in recording.”
On the subject of future plans, Super Wild Horses seem very relaxed and noncommittal about anything grand. They just finished up a U.S. tour that brought them to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Memphis, Austin, San Francisco, and elsewhere, and the awe-inspiring wonders of Fifteen are still being discovered and reviewed by blogs and music sites on a day to day basis. McKee says, “We’re hanging out to write some new songs. We have a bunch of half written tunes we’d like to finish work on and we’re laying low until early next year in terms of local shows. Working on another SWH 7″, a split live tape with Woollen Kits and perhaps a split release with The Twerps is coming up too.” But there isn’t any worry that Super Wild Horses aren’t here to stay. McKee speaks of the band’s sustainability to continue to make music in the future, recalling what sparked their musical partnership in the beginning. “We know each other inside and out so there’s no fear of fucking up in rehearsal or singing a lame tune to each other. We’ve already seen each other at our best and worst so we’re on safe turf.”
“Fifteen” is out now on HoZac/Aarght, available especially at your local record store. This is a highly recommended buy—it’s an exhibition of the talent of one of my favorite and most proudly discovered bands of 2010.
