Growing Paeans

13 March 2013 | 7:00 am | Steve Bell

“It was heaps of fun to make, and listening to it now – we got the test pressing back yesterday – reminds me of recording it, because that was heaps of fun."

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Melbourne indie quartet Dick Diver have possibly flown under the radar to a degree outside of their home ground in the Victorian capital. They don't tour all that often – their debut album launch show with Royal Headache at Woodland in November of 2011 was their last Brisbane foray – and they're a relatively unassuming bunch. What they do deliver in spades, however, is cruisy and distinctive music – an intoxicating amalgam of '90s indie sounds and punk ideals, all with a distinctly Australian edge to proceedings. It's laidback but clearly intelligent, somehow seeming edgy despite there being nothing manifestly challenging in either content or delivery. It's a unique and at times peculiar aesthetic but one which works incredibly well for the burgeoning band, and which has quickly found them a growing following abroad as well as in their own backyard.

And that global acclaim is only going to get louder and more unrelenting with the impending release of their second long-player, Calendar Days. A consummate and beguiling album, it builds on the undeniable promise of 2011 debut New Start Again and shows a real growth in both songwriting and musicianship, as well as an expansion on the group dynamics so integral to the Dick Diver charm. To record the album they decamped to the nearby retreat of Phillip Island – the Victorian hamlet usually better known for its penguins and penchant for motorsport – and under the watchful eye of long-time cohort Mikey Young (of Eddy Current Suppression Ring fame and current 'go-to producer' for the Australian rock underground) went to work on their newest opus.

“We're really happy with it,” offers guitarist/vocalist Rupert Edwards of Calendar Days. “It was heaps of fun to make, and listening to it now – we got the test pressing back yesterday – reminds me of recording it, because that was heaps of fun.

“We kind of enjoy leaving Melbourne to be able to relax for a few days while we record, so that was nice. One of [bassist] Al Montfort's bandmates from Straitjacket Nation, her parents have a house down there, and Mikey Young who recorded it just took down his laptop and microphones that he uses and set up there. It wasn't a house that you'd look at and think that it was going to be good for recording, but somehow we made it work, I don't know how. I think that's down to Mikey – he's pretty amazing these days. I don't know how he got it to sound that good. I couldn't tell the difference between this and if it was done in a studio, so it sounds good to me.”

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Young has worked on everything that Dick Diver have ever released – from 2009 EP Arks Up to the new album – so it's hardly surprising that everyone was on the same page this time around.

“Yeah, pretty much everything we've recorded has been done with him, so it's been a good relationship,” Edwards continues. “I was talking to [fellow guitarist/vocalist] Al McKay last night about it and we were talking about when we recorded with [Mikey] for the first time, and Al Montfort had already known him for a few years and I think Steph [Hughes – drums] had known him, but me and Al were really nervous because we're fans of Eddy Current and everything, and the band didn't really know each other that well back then. But now I guess we're used to having Mikey around and he's more of a friend now, so it's really easy to record with him and he's really good at what he does.”

Surprisingly, given the critical acclaim afforded New Start Again, Edwards claims that he didn't feel any additional weight of expectation when time came to construct album number two.

“Funnily enough not, and I would have thought that I'd definitely be feeling some pressure,” he muses. “But at the same time it's not like the first record sold millions of copies or anything – it did well in its own way, which is really nice, but I didn't really think about it at all and I'm a pretty self-conscious person. I don't know how I pulled that off. Maybe we were just drunk the whole time.”

Dick Diver began as just a joint project between Edwards and McKay. Since being joined by Montfort and Hughes, the undeniable chemistry amongst the foursome has been one of the band's biggest assets, and this is even more to the fore throughout Calendar Days, which finds all four members writing tracks and even laying vocals on songs they didn't write.

“Yeah, definitely,” Edwards agrees. “I guess we've got to know each other more over the years, and recording the album itself was heaps of fun – we have a lot of fun together. It's sort of just developed very naturally, and I think that probably comes through in the recording. I can't be objective about it obviously, but I imagine it comes out in some way. I think it's just a happy accident – it's really nice – and we're kind of all on the same page. We don't really argue much about what we're doing, we just all do it and usually talk about something else altogether.”

Calendar Days comes across entirely like the result of a shared vision – did the band articulate what they wanted it to sound like before the recording session?

“A little bit,” Edwards ponders. “I had this idea about six months before we recorded it of making a pretty sad record – I think everyone in the band likes sad records. So we talked a bit about that, and I think to me we achieved that. I understand that other people think that it sounds like party rock or something, but it sounds kind of sad to me, and I'm happy with that. I like that we made a sad record. I don't mean wrist-slashing or anything, but a bit more... I don't want to say 'adult contemporary', but just a bit more reflective and a bit more grown up maybe than New Start Again. Songs which are a bit melancholy and sad are usually my favourite type of songs.”

Edwards believes that this feel is best attained through a combination of music and lyrics (rather than one specifically), although it seems that the words have more import at the end of the day.

“For me, all of my songs I concentrate on the music first and I try really hard to get that to something that I'm really happy with, and then I spend ages and ages trying to figure out some lyrics that will go with that and won't be shithouse,” he smiles. “I guess I think about the lyrics a lot, because it's one of the few things that I'm really happy to do something different with – our music itself isn't super groundbreaking or anything, but I think if I put some time into the lyrics I can make the music different somehow. Lots of bands just write shitty lyrics, and I try not to be one of those bands.”

Dick Diver have been getting a lot of traction overseas – blogs have picked them up voraciously, and they're soon releasing a track as part of the new Singles Club by esteemed US indie Matador Records – but overseas kudos aren't a big focus for the band themselves.

“It's nice, but it's not something that I aim for at all,” Edwards admits. “I'm kind of surprised. I thought maybe sometimes we'd sound perhaps a bit too exotic or something to American ears. It's definitely not something that we're that ambitious about at all, we just try to please ourselves.”

As are a lot of Australian bands in the thriving indie underground at the moment. Dick Diver share a label with Twerps and stages with bands like Royal Headache, Bitch Prefect and Boomgates (of whom Hughes is also a member) – do they feel part of a new Aussie scene in that regard?

“Yes and no,” Edwards muses. “These things only exist in so far as they're written about enough to make people conscious of it. There are a few records that have come out with similar sensibilities, so I guess I feel a little bit like we're a part of it, but at the same time I almost feel like an imposter or that we have nothing to do with it – it's weird. It's not something that I think about a lot, although in the last few years it's pretty ridiculous how many good records have come out of Australia.

“But we definitely don't feel isolated at all [from any scene] which is nice. Maybe we're a bit spoilt because it's been this way since I've been playing music really so I don't know much different at all. Maybe when it's all gone we'll feel really nostalgic and be sitting at the pub being assholes about how good it was in the old days.”

AUSTRALIAN DRAWL

A lot was made when New Start Again came out about how 'Australian sounding' Dick Diver are, and that perception will continue with Calendar Days, primarily due to a combination of their distinct Australian accents and tendency to use Aussie jargon and casually namecheck local institutions.

“I'm conscious of it because it doesn't have to be in there, but it's not anything as contrived as trying to mimic conversations or conversation styles that any of us have, but at the same time that's just the kinds of terms of reference that we'd use anyway in a conversation or whatever, and I don't see why we should obscure that or cover that up by not mentioning any of those things,” Edwards reflects. “It's kind of funny, if it was any other country – like if we were American – it wouldn't even raise an eyelid if we mentioned Hollywood Boulevard in a song, that's just very natural for an American. But it seems like you're forced to be more conscious of it if you're Australian, which is interesting. It is thought about and I'm very self-aware of it, but it's just there. I do question it.”

Some Australian bands seem overtly keen to sound like they're from anywhere but here, which is why you can associate with acts like The Drones or Paul Kelly when they drop Australian references into their powerful songs.
“I guess it can be a bit dangerous as well – there are a few assumptions about the whole thing that I try to dig out and not have in the music, like assuming that singing about a desert is automatically a pathway to singing about Australiana or something,” Edwards continues. “Again, years ago when me and Al McKay were about 20, and we'd be jamming on some horrible American song and it's just really easy and natural to start singing in an American accent and you kind of wonder why that is. There are a lot of strange assumptions that go into that as well, which I try to dig out and look at sometimes.”

Calendar Days is out now.