Factory Girls
Dallas Crane
For fans of straight-ahead rock and roll, the new Dallas Crane album, Factory Girls really delivers. In the tradition of great Aussie rock, the band’s unpretentious sound and cheeky swagger are an endearing experience. In person band members Pete Satchell and Shan Vanderwert were as direct and enthusiastic as their music and our conversation revealed a couple of guys who are enjoying themselves and the band’s music.
The band got together over ten years ago and started out of friendships formed in school, so you know each other more as friends than professional acquaintances?
“Yean definitely, we know when to give each other space and when someone is having an off day.”
The band did the road warrior thing, piling into vans to drive way too far to gigs?
“We spent a lot of time on the road, things like driving from Melbourne to Sydney for one gig, arriving at the venue, getting dressed by the side of the car, going in, doing the gig and then piling back in the car and driving home.”
Hopefully things have changed a bit since then?
“Our manger one day just said you’re not doing it anymore, he didn’t want to have to worry about getting that phone call, so now we just work out air travel in the budget of shows.”
The first single off the new album, Curiosity is very infectious and features a sound pared down from previous efforts.
“It was all about the dynamic, bass and drums with guitar on top. That one featured no overdubs, it was just go for it. That’s the kind of energy we try to take into the studio. The initial thing is let’s try to do what we do live.”
Live stuff is hard to capture because a desk mix almost always sounds like just that a, desk mix.
“You’re exactly right and the one thing we worked really hard on is getting great guitar tones and drum sounds, that’s the most important thing.”
I love the Devo reference at the end of Curiosity, how did that come about?
“When I was growing up one of my friend’s sister, who was older, had the album Freedom Of Choice and I just liked the whole album but to tell you the truth I was just looking for something sick at the time when I was writing the words and was just like, well that will do and it turned out not bad. Mark Mothersbaugh is a very intelligent guy, the whole concept of devolution is great.”
You also have to admire anyone brave enough to go on stage wearing a flowerpot.
“Exactly.”
The band has had almost four years between the last album and the new one, was this so the band could actually live enough life to have something to write about?
“It was basically because we were doing so much touring but we also did our day jobs and all that. We reached a bit of a quandary, we needed to start work on our new album and then we got offered studio time so the finances were not a problem, this one was meant to be a bit quicker, ideally we would like to do an album a year.”
Do you have enough material up your sleeves?
“We’re starting to, writing is coming a lot more easier now, it seems everything is harder except the writing.”
What do you attribute that to?
“To tell you the truth I think it’s from not trying too hard.”
Get out of the way of the process?
“Yeah, you work your ass off on the idea that you are writing a song of artistic genius statement and you just get bogged down and you lose perspective. I try to work off the theory if I write five songs, two of them will be good, if three are just OK, so be it.”
So you’re not so precious that if you brought 15 songs in and the producer told you to go back and write more you wouldn’t be offended?
“It depends on how much you believe in them, you have to fight for certain things, if everyone had the same taste if would be fucking boring.”
Did you try to road test most of the new material?
“With the Dallas Crane record, the one before this one we were playing that one live for a year before we recorded it but for this one we just got into the studio and banged it out.”
That energy and immediacy comes across loud and clear on Factory Girls, which is in the stores now.
Rob Hudson
www.dallascrane.com