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 JAMES O’BRIEN of Aussie indie pop group THE BOAT PEOPLE tells ALASDAIR DUNCAN about the influences that shaped the band’s latest record, Dear Darkly, and some fast times in L.A.
Most any time when a band have a new release to promote, they will choose their most articulate member – usually it’s not the drummer – give them a shower and a shave, then sit them down in front of a journalist armed with a series of platitudes about how said release is the best or the most vital work the band have yet created. It is for this reason that I was a little cynical when reading the open letter, posted on The Boat People’s website ahead of their third album’s release, claiming that Dear Darkly was more truly ‘them’ than anything they’d recorded before. After sitting down with a copy of the album, though, my cynicism quickly disappeared.
The thing that’s most special about Dear Darkly, as singer James O’Brien tells me, is the fact that it represents the first time The Boat People have felt completely in their own skin as a band. “Making this record, we didn’t feel any obligation to do anything other than what we felt came naturally to us, and I think we made some great music as a result,” he says. “We managed to get everyone’s individual personalities onto the record,” he says, “whether through their contributions to the songwriting, the instruments they played, the parts that they sang, or whatever. Everyone really shines on this record – nobody’s doing massive, crazy solos or anything like that, but everyone contributed something unique.”
Dear Darkly retains the playful indie pop sound that has earned The Boat People so much play on Triple J, but it comes with an added sense of mystery. “There were certain elements that came up when we were recording this album that we felt we wanted to emphasise as we went along,” O’Brien continues, “and one of them was the idea of having a bit more space around the songs, letting them breathe a bit more, rather than doing pop song after pop song, which is something we’d done before and had a bit of a reputation for doing. That was something we wanted to bring in as a new element for our band, and something that tied the whole record together, a drifting sense of spaces within the pop songs we were writing.”
O’Brien shares songwriting duties in The Boat People with life-long friend and collaborator Robin Waters. Rather than clashing, their very different approaches to songwriting – Waters’ compositions are the more up-beat ones, while O’Brien’s tend towards reflective – give the band its eclectic appeal. “We’ve always had our differences, but the thing that makes it work is that we’re both massive fans of each other’s writing,” O’Brien tells me, “even if sometimes we’re too bashful to admit it to one another, even though we do always enjoy hearing the other person’s songs.” Does this bashfulness ever give way to moments of ‘I love you, man’-style bromance? “That totally happens,” O’Brien laughs, “and we have to do that because you also have to do the other thing and be honest when you think something’s not working as well as it could.”
Many young bands say that the more shows they play, the more the dynamics of performing live begin to shape their approach to writing and recording songs. For The Boat People, though, the opposite has proven true. “We tried that with our last record, Chandeliers,” O’Brien says, “we tried to make the arrangements very live-band focussed, and I think we restricted ourselves a bit too much in that sense. With this one, we took an anything-goes approach, with the idea that we’d figure out how to play them live later.
“Nobody’s doing massive, crazy solos or anything like that, but everyone contributed something unique.”
“That’s one of the challenges we’re coming up against now,” he continues, “and it is a very fun challenge, but we have to try and get that element of space into the songs as we play them live, to get a slightly different feel in our performance than we’ve had before. Where before, our gigs were very content-heavy and snappy, now we’re looking at ways to get things on a bit of a grander scale live, which I think will have an influence on the emotional impact of the set as well. We like making people happy, and we like that people often seem to associate our music with very positive feelings – we often have people in the front row of gigs smiling away, and we’re hoping we can do that as well as affecting people on a deeper level as well.”
Since the conversation has moved on to the live setting, I’m keen to ask O’Brien about some of the amazing bills his band have played on, supporting the likes of The Shins and, even more memorably, opening a show for David Byrne of Talking Heads on his last Australian tour. Did any of Byrne’s rock star wisdom rub off on the Boat People? “Someone like David Byrne has been around for a long time, he doesn’t have a lot of time in his schedule to be hanging around with the likes of us,” O’Brien laughs, “but when you play with someone like that, you’re an absolute idiot if you don’t stand by the side of the stage watching their set and taking mental notes.
“We were called in to support David Byrne at the last minute, when Architecture In Helsinki had to drop out of one of their slots,” he continues, “and I’m so glad we got to do it. From a technical perspective, the David Byrne show was the best live show I’ve ever been to – the production and everything was totally flawless, and there was an amazing mixture of humour and fun and seriousness and weightiness in the show. That’s where the wisdom came from – observing the show and taking what we could from it. Sometimes watching a show, you make mental notes of all the things that don’t work and that you would do differently, but that certainly wasn’t the case with David Byrne.”
On a recent trip to Los Angeles, The Boat People had a slightly more hands-on experience of with a music business heavy-hitter, one they won’t soon forget. “We were at a place called Blue Microphones, where they make and sell really good studio equipment,” O’Brien says, “and while we were there, we were mucking about in their studio, playing with the gear and recording a bit of stuff when an engineer who happened to be there came over to have a listen. He got chatting to us, and it turned out that he’d just finished Iggy Pop’s latest record, which is still to come out, and the Massive Attack record that came out recently.
“He took us out to his two hundred thousand dollar convertible BMW and played us some of the tracks he’d been doing with those bands that weren’t released at the time,” O’Brien continues. “He invited us to a few things actually – he was a really lovely guy. We went to one of his friends’ restaurants to have a meal, and went to his studio to listen to some of the stuff he’d been working on. It’s one of those things that sound a bit like a fairy tale, but in L.A., that’s just what people do – it’s run of the mill for the people you meet to be working with those kinds of artists. We doubtless couldn’t afford to actually make a record with this guy, but he liked our music and wanted to hang around with us and we just had a really amazing time.”
THE BOAT PEOPLE’s Dear Darkly Album Tour takes them to Toowoomba’s Bon Amici on Friday Jul 23, The Sound Lounge in Currumbin on Saturday Jul 24, The Troubadour in Brisbane on Sunday Jul 25, and The Great Northern in Byron Bay on Monday Jul 26. Dan Parsons supports at the Sound Lounge, with Skinny Jean supporting on the remaining dates. DEAR DARKLY is out now via MGM. www.theboatpeople.com.au
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