Sexy, cool, romantic and, you know, a little bit... fucked up

Neil Jones with Howling Bells at The Point

Yes I know it. The Howling Bells put a lot of Pop-orientated, fun people – hopefully the kind of people who enjoy reading this site – off. But since seeing the ‘Setting Sun’ video, all Eastern-tinged mystery and Juanita Stein’s dark and brooding (and, I’d always hoped, tyrannical) soulful allure, I’ve been converted.

I first came across them at the Huntingdon Secret Garden Party Festival last year, where their afternoon slot amongst abrupt press comparisons to PJ Harvey didn’t quite hit the mark. Maybe it was the sun. My brother though, who’s a little younger than me, probably in the “niche” market age of bands who’ve become modern-day industry commodities, persisted, and was there with the LP when I came around.

I mean, I’m all for developing eyes and ears and all types of senses in the back of my head to sniff out the industry bullshit, but the way that ‘Bell Hit’ jumps out of the gates and sprinkles contrary soul over the prosaic charade that is modern rock’n’roll, the way Stein wraps her vocals round verses in ‘Broken Bones’ and slowly stretches into bellowing chorus, the way tinges of blues float past with unselfconscious ease during ‘Night is Young’ and ‘I’m Not Afraid’, and the way ‘Low Happening’ slinks its way straight to the heart with shimmering, outsider soul, well for me it’s enough.

I also know the Bells are a little pretentious, but I like a bit of that now and again, especially when it’s tied to a certain allure and otherness, which they have, and in no-one’s dreams are they anything approaching U2. Retaining a sense of glamour and mystery in rock music seems to be a lost art, but the Bells for me do just that.

Usually I… erm… “don’t do interviews”. The fact is in a world of industry-honed, prosaic image over emotional spark they’re embarrassing. And also I very rarely get asked. But in this case I thought it’d be good before taking in the gig. There’s a lot of doors I thought could be opened to reveal a band within the industry who have true vision and passion, so I put myself through it. Here I am at 9pm around the Howling Bells’ tour bus outside Cardiff’s Point, kicking a ball with "Howling Bells" written on it about with guitarist/co-songwriter Brendan Picchio by way of warm up as the others do their pre-gig shtick. They’re due on in half an hour, and I’m delaying a round at the bar.

[Taking a cross street pass skilfully on the chest] The questions may be a little bland.

“It’s ok, we love bland questions.”

That’s good. What’s your favourite colour? I got that from the Book of Profound Conversation Openings by Garth Crooks.

[Showing some nifty footwork reminiscent of Waddle or maybe Kewell before the soap star got her grip - the Bells are Australian] “Wow… That’s what you ask the first girlfriend you ever meet.”

Really, I should have tried that!

"Yeah, it really works!”

[Going into the bus to begin the interview proper] Howling Bells… There’s a great musicality and hope to your album. It’s not just gloom-by-numbers… to sell to the kids. Are Howling Bells an optimistic band?

“Right.”

That’s a pretty profound question to start with I thought.

I think you’re right. Are we actually recording now?

Yep.

“Good ok. “We’re not just selling misery.” Yeah, right, erm…”

There’s something more to the band’s music, more than misery appealing to the lowest common denominator and niche audience.
“I think there’s hope, which, I think, is the undercurrent theme of our lives I guess as people, the four people in the band. We’ve done almost everything – every decision in the band has come and been made with a little bit of hope lying there. You know, when we waited for Ken Nelson [Gomez, Coldplay, others] to do the record we waited eight months, and were hoping and praying and surviving on faith, coz, you know, there was nothing else to really live for, or live … [doubtful] on. So I guess, yeah, the theme is that, you know, the world is not a perfect place and, that, you know, you should have hope, because there’s beauty in it as well. I think that’s the undercurrent of everything in the band.”

Ok. I wanted to talk about evocative strains of the blues that often float past when I hear the album. I can never locate them again in the same places after, but I know they’re there, or were there, conscious unconscious or whatever.
“Mmm… What’s the question though? …”
Have you a conscious empathy with blues music old or new, even classic rock‘n’roll, no?
“It’s a … I mean I don’t think you can be a rock band without being into some form of rock‘n’roll. That’s probably impossible. Or maybe not but… er, I don’t know… Blues? I think we listen to such a varied music. We all listen to, well… Glenn listens to a lot of country and pop music and Joel’s into electronic music and I’m into jazz, and we’re all into, like, classical music. Juanita’s into lots of, kind of 50s and, you know, Dolly Parton and Dusty Springfield. So we are quite… quite broad in our “music tastes”, so I don’t think we’re being directly influenced… but I guess there is, erm, some of the blues in there…”
Unconscious.
“Maybe. I think it might have to do with Joel and Juanita’s dad, who’s a blues guitarist and songwriter, so he might have influenced them in a way… I don’t know…”
A blues guitarist…
“Well in Australia, yep, he’s a musician. He wrote one of the songs on the record actually, the last song… well actually it was his song, and then we kind of took it from him.”
At gun point.
“Yeah, it’s um … I’m Not Afraid, that’s the song. I like Black Rebel as well, I think they’re a good band, but I don’t think that’s an influence, I don’t know what that is…”
Black Rebel… Motorcycle Club?
“That’s them.”

The soul of the Outsider and the Underground in your music. What are your individual backgrounds in Australia?
“Well, Australia’s quite a multi-cultural place. There’s probably very few Australians left… or, they’re mostly like convicts, which is Englishmen with … shackles. Um, Glenn’s from the country. He’s actually from way in-land where it’s, like… red dust. I’ve been to his house and you can’t breath coz it’s hot and dusty, and, you know… he grew up shooting things and riding horses and stuff… So he was from there, born in Sydney and then went to the country. Juanita and Joel are born in Melbourne. Their parents have a bit of an Eastern European kind of thing, and I’m Italian. I grew up in Rome… I speak two languages.”

Still fluently? You don’t forget a childhood language I suppose.
“Yep. It’s handy having two languages, I like it. You can make fun of people like that… Not that I do it…”

What extra edge does Juanita give the band as opposed to a male lead singer?
“Nice question. Personally I probably shouldn’t say this, but if I look at a band generally these days, um… usually I go for story, or like, not so much the image but I like to know what their… what the band’s deal is if I’m interested in them, or not, and I think Juanita provides an instant kind of a grab. She’s, you know, the girl in the band, so obviously people pay a different style of attention to the band. Um, edge? I don’t know if you mean maybe in songwriting… She definitely brings [affectionate laughter] … you know, songs like Low Happening, she wrote that… She wrote most of the songs on the record. The band started pretty much with her having songs, and then… the band formed around these songs and stuff, so um… Edge? I don’t know… it’s a harder question to answer. It’s … the feminine quality she brings to the group, which ultimately balances the boys out, because we’d probably be a lot worse without her in the band, a little bit more debaucherous and… I don’t know… It’s a good balance. I like it. It’s not so male, and male driven, it’s not so egotistical, so macho, and there’s no kind of … none of that crap…

Are there more obscure roots that drive your music?
“Erm… We… [Searching] Erm… Scenery… Um… Our environment affects us a lot… When we were doing the demos for this record, you know, and we were arranging songs, demoing them ourselves, we were out in a cabin in the mountains and woods in the real snowy part of Melbourne, outside of Melbourne, like two hours out, and we were basically locked away in this beautiful house and we were just recording, and I think the snow and the darkness and the woods had a quite a heavy inspiration on the band… So we need that kinda space and that desolation to make music. Erm… the other thing is film… we’re all very filmic and I think the songs have a close relation… like I always think that the songs, when you listen to them, you can almost see the visual along … you know when you pick up a book and you’re reading it and the character does this and that, and you watch… you imagine what the character looks like … the way the person bends down to pick up a cup off a table or just the way, you know, he or she… hits someone in the face… You picture that and imagine that and that’s how I think the music is … our music is, like… you play the music and then there’s visual accompaniment almost going on in your head and you can feel the imagination kind of coming through it… So they’re probably the things that move the band…”
Interested in the cinema reference. What kind of films?
“Again it’s varied, you know we can watch Anchor Man, laugh our arses off and then go and watch Le doulos by Melville and, you know, still find that enthralling. I bought some great films the other day… I still haven’t watched them all… I watched a film called Johnny Guitar…”
Superb, the film that inspired Godard and the new wave… nouvelle vague, the unmatched era of cinema...
“…yep… by Nicholas Ray… all the French films… and so, you know, we can go abroad… I mean I love… possibly my favourite film of all time is Rumblefish, by Copolla, because of the way it looks… an adaptation of an S.E. Hinton novel, who did The Outsiders, and then he did this Rumblefish and… it’s just a very surprising film… So, you know, anything kind of sexy and cool and romantic and, you know, maybe a little bit fucked up, you know…”

What’s your typical Howling Bells fan, if there’s such a thing.
“I don’t think there is one.”
No? What about really committed individuals that follow the band.
“They’re casually committed! They’re like… I see people, and I’ve met a few people that come to the same shows, and guys that live in London and come to the London show and then you see them in Inverness, Scotland, and you go… wow, that is, you know, dedication … but not in a psychotic, fanatical way… just in a way… I don’t even like to use the word “fan”… “Fan” is just such a shitty word. Audience is people that, you know, participate in listening to our music, so the “fanaticals”, I don’t think there are many, if any, and it’s quite a … quite a broad range because you’ve got, you know, you’ve got young kids like you know, even… there’s like a fifteen year-old girl standing in the front row, but then there’s like a fifty year old man sitting in the far back watching the band, and so… so it’s quite a… I think it’s just… there’s not a typical… We’re not The Kooks or something. We’re not a band that has a market, or a particular… demographic that you know applies to… The music is what it is, and I think that a teenage girl might listen to Low Happening or Blessed Night or something and get something from that, and, you know, start learning something about her life through the music and… listen to that song when she falls in love for the first time and breaks up for the first time… And then there are guys that, you know, have listened to bands in the 80s that we might remind them of, and you know they’re all there in their late 30s, and they’re coming to watch us and, you know… so it applies to everything… I hope it does anyway.”

Any deeper relation with Eastern philosophy amidst the band? I’m thinking of the video to Setting Sun and certain verses and song structures.
“Yeah… Yeah, erm… It was Juanita’s idea… I’m pretty sure it was actually, and I know Juanita has a very… I think that’s probably... it’s… how shall I say? It’s probably from her mind… she obviously has an affinity for that kind of culture… I think her and Joel both have a really love for the Indian culture and that’s where that came from… I can’t really remember the idea, but…”

Setting Sun’s pretty philosophical in the verse structure, really evocative and eloquent in use of Eastern imagery…
“Actually I wrote that song with Juanita… I’m just trying to think how it happened… I can’t remember how… why… I think maybe she was watching Bollywood somewhere, like a Bollywood thing, and then she just came up with it and said hey it’d be really great if we use some, you know, Bollywood type dancer girls while we’re playing and then we set it up like that…”

This is for the kids, and I’m interested in all the band’s passions. Old music.
“Erm… how many do you want!? Songs … artists… albums… There are so many, but definitely… definitely at the top of the list is Charles Mingus. Charlie Mingus at the top… Stuff like, erm… my favourite album of his is The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady… Brilliant… Just four tracks… each track goes like twelve minutes, that’s the most intense music I’ve ever heard. Not even jazz… just intense music… so symphonic in the writing, the way he writes, just brilliant… Old…? I’ve been getting into Love, Arthur Lee… absolutely fell in love with that album Forever Changes, it’s psychotic, that’s like from the 60s when San Francisco was kicking, they were from LA and… and… just psychotic and really, really good… and … what else…? I don’t listen to any modern music actually. Everything I listen to is old…”

Obscure.

“I don’t know if I have that much, erm I mean I like old … as in old-timey and bluesy, relating to the blues reference… One is Big Bill Broonzy, and he’s really good, just really… just interesting chords and really strange… erm… I don’t know… I don’t listen to that much obscure stuff really. I listen to a lot of jazz like Sonny Rollins and … Duke Ellington! He’s mental! He’s got the most unbelievable sounds… Erm… Cannonball Adderley, Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Ornette Coleman… he does this really fast kind of [impression of jazzy guitar scale] … and yeah… symphonic music, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev… Mental… I know Joel and I are particularly into the symphonic stuff… It’s so, you know…”

Does that manifest itself in the band’s sound? The serenity of classical music is certainly what I’ve been into, as a base for a broader sound. What it can give the so-called “lower” art forms in terms of structure, scope etc, maybe the approach and mind set, which broader melodies can develop from. Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky both have that knack of letting blindingly melody erupt with ease.

“Yeah… a lot of the melodies and lines are played in the band… whether it’s on piano or whatever instrument it is… it all kind of has… some kind of relation to a symphonic kind of… or maybe not, I don’t know if we succeeded or not but there’s definitely a want to make it… When you hear someone like, you know, John Williams come up with these beautiful symphonic lines and it’s like, yeah, that’s where real strong melody… interesting, you know, the melody comes from it…”

Maybe it’s this classical fascination I should have been aligning with the blues instead of classic rock’n’roll. Time’s going by, future plans, new records…
“Well, it’ll be in the late half of this year. We’re going to lock away for a bit. Er… somewhere in Norfolk maybe…”
North Wales is the place to go they say. The land of the “giants” where Herman Dune made their recent LP, named after the local legend. I’m not the tourist board by the way…
“Well maybe! We’ll think about it…We’re thinking, I don’t know, we’re gonna go somewhere and just… sit down and get all these ideas that are jumping out at the moment, put them down… we’ve got a lot, we’ve been really, really creative in the last couple of moths. We just need to really sit down and record it all, so… and you know a little more touring and stuff as well…”

Well I’ll leave you scuttle off.
“Cool. I think I need to do some stretching, I ate too much [laughter]”
That’s true rock’n’roll, stretching before gigs!
“I have to coz sitting in a van all day! Man… it’s difficult.”

PICTURE BY DAN BOUD

I don’t know if I’ve got all I wanted to extract from Brendan, but I certainly leave for the gig having realised more of what I thought was lurking beneath the surface. Mic off and into the venue, where the band close a mammoth UK tour with an epic show of the kind of pretension I’m happy to pin my colours to, melodic, soulful, and absolutely enthralling. Howling Bells are rock kids with a rare passion for the music, its element of discovery, its epiphanous magic, its redeeming qualities. It’s a passion that should see them safe on the thankless, imminent journey through industry waters, where the questions won’t always be hard. Mingus not the Kooks, an audience rather than fans, stretching before the gig… This is the kind of stuff that’ll give rock’n’roll a bad name. Good on them.

© 2007 Neil Jones

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