| Rave Magazine issue #416, December 1st - December 7th, 1999 |  |
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The Ice Men And Women Cometh
"We spent a little over two months overseas in the European summer, which is actually a real summer because of the weather compared to the year before, and we also went over in the winter, which is also the first time we had toured in the winter months.
"So we went over at the end of January and spent seven weeks over there just doing indoor pub gigs. "So we've done those two trips and if you put that on the back of the last summer trip, it seems like we really have been working hard in the last 12 months.
"It's very hard to put down roots, both personally but also in relation to music.
"You try to keep in touch with things, but once you're back, it takes a month or two to find your feet and establish a few venue contacts that you need to establish, and it seems that by the time you do that, you're going away."
Oh, and in between all that, they managed to find time to record and release a new album, simply titled Popproperly - an album that by necessity was largely written "on the road", explains Phil with weary sigh.
"I think that's the way we packaged it as well (the cover shot features the band freezing their extremities off somewhere in Germany).
"A lot of those songs were written at soundcheck and constructed that way.
"A percentage of it wasn't. A percentage of it we did when we came back. But even those ones, a lot of them were written in the downtime overseas.
"When you've got that distance from your everyday life, I quite like it as an opportunity to write. "(There's) a bit more time to sit down with your guitar and just lose yourself."
One possible effect of writing on the road is the wistful, reflective nature of much of the album.
"I think so," concurs Phil. "It must mean you're a little less in touch with what's going on around you, in the place you live, I guess. "And you're more into that abstract, reflective world."
There's also a strong sens of the much-maligned classic "Brisbane" acoustic sound, a pop sensibility filtered of the genre's more extreme inanities, with a focus on effecting lyrics. I wonder whether Phil was feeling home-sick...
"That's interesting. Someone else said that, too," he ponders of the "Brisbane" sound comparison (not the homesick bit).
"I'm not sure where that sort of sound and feel comes from, 'cause we play so much live, and I think that tends to change the way you record, because the songs are constructed with an urgency about them, responding to a live audience.
"So often that's a thing that is frustrating when you record, that the things that worked with that live audience don't necessarily work in the studio.
"But overall, I'm quite happy with the flavour of this. I think it's quite a cohesive listen.
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| "And the feedback - which once again is mostly from overseas, we
get quite a lot of e-mails now from overseas people responding to
CDs and stuff - has been pretty good." Are you consciously working towards a specific goal or sound? "I guess... I think we would comfortably slot into fairly mainstream production values if we ever had the opportunity to in terms of..." I can't see Popproperly ever losing that live edge... "Yeah, well, sometimes I'd like that edge to be scrubbed off," laughs Phil. "It's about popular music, I guess. "I mean, you write the songs that you write, and you perform them the way you perform them, and if that works with an audience, that's good, but there always is a pressure to try and make something that appeals to... Which once again is the interesting thing about the band; even though it's moved from more sort of traditional folk roots, it still works in most of those environments because the music is quite accessible." That accessibility is partly highlighted by the inclusion of a cover of the late '60s protest song, One Tin Soldier. Initially it would seem an odd choice, at odds with the rest of the album and much more in keeping with the Popproperly of old. "I really wanted to do that song because I thought it was thematically relevant to the end of the century and all the things that are happening," explains Phil. "It's a song about hating people who are different or wanting something from other people who maybe don't have anything anyway. And that's a climate that you can sense ... That's a climate that's not just in Australia, those phobias about foreigners and other people coming in and taking the little we have and taking things that belong to … us, whoever 'us' is. "So I thought it was an interesting song to reuse to show that perhaps things haven't really changed, because it's 30 years old now that song. "Maybe it's just me, but I think maybe the world's got a lot smaller, and being in Australia doesn't stop your sense of what's going on - wherever it is." That's Popproperly then - truly global thinkers and local activists. Well, for at least half the year, before they reverse the process.
Popproperly play the Press Club at the Empire Hotel next Wednesday (Dec 8) and Dicey Riley's next Saturday (Dec 11) |
