|
 CEC CONDON, drummer for THE MESS HALL, tells YUMI SED about the writing of their latest album, and living from AMP to AMP.
Sydney garage-blues duo The Mess Hall have bettered their AMP-winning album of 2007, Devil’s Elbow, with their stunning 2009 release, For The Birds. It has seen them move into far more melodic, brooding and rhythmically challenging territory – oh, and this latest release has garnered them another AMP nomination too.
Cec Condon is at home in Sydney catching up on some modern history when we chat. “I’ve been watching a documentary by Ken Burns about the Americans in World War II,” Condon informs me. “I’ve never seen a film from this perspective, it’s really interesting.”
With it being only days since the AMP announcement, I ask how he and singer Jed Kurzel are feeling about being nominated a second time. “We feel really privileged again,” he says. “It was a real shock, we didn’t expect to be nominated, particularly with the other people that are up for it too.”
For The Birds is quite a musical digression from their earlier work, one which will see new fans joining the flock, (how could I avoid that pun?), and has garnered nothing but praise from old fans. I ask Condon whether this new direction was a deliberate choice or an organic evolution. “It did come out organically because we spent the first half of last year just playing in a warehouse we had hired – not writing songs, just playing,” he explains. “When we were playing we realised we had something different coming out and we took those ideas into the studio when we made the record. I mean, it was somewhat of a conscious decision but it was also quite organic.”
It’s interesting that a lot of songwriters feel that they have to write a song everytime they pick up their instrument. I ask Condon to explain exactly how he approaches the idea of playing differently to writing?
“You have no constraints,” he says. “You’re not telling yourself there needs to be, like, a chorus here or anything. You’re also working without a time limit. We were working in a warehouse with lots of different instruments, percussion and things like that, and we would just go in there and play for hours without worrying about the time.”
I ask how the warehouse came about and I realise what an interesting circle it has been for the boys since winning the AMP in 2007.
“Some friends of ours were rehearsing in there and they were about to give up the lease and they asked us if we wanted to take it over,” he says. “Fortunately that was just after we’d won the AMP so we had some cash to be able to spend on it, that’s what we mostly did with the prize money … and now we have this album.”
THE MESS HALL will be at The Zoo on Saturday Mar 13, supported by Bridezilla and Cabins. FOR THE BIRDS is out now through Ivy League Records. www.themesshall.com.au
|
| Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged. |
|
Be first to comment on this article
