Chemical Melodies

Blackchords have made a stir over the past few years crafting a swirling miasma of emotive sounds that has led them all over the continent with the odd foray to European soil. However they have been somewhat quiet of late as they feverishly etch out a new direction, eager to expand their horizons in the process. The first taste of their new chapter came in the form of Dance Dance Dance back in May, and yet it is only now that we see the trio launching into a fully-fledged tour. Bassist and vocalist Nick Milwright admits it was a strategised move.

“I think that [Dance Dance Dance] is like a crossover, a bit of a bridge from our old material, so the majority of what's on the new album is to the left of all that,” Milwright explains. “There is a lot more synth, a cinematic feel to the rest of the tracks. The original plan was to be out releasing the record, and we were discussing different ways of releasing it. We have spent time working out how things finish for us, because it is quite different for us musically than anything we have done before. We have been doing the artwork and booking the tour ourselves, so there has been some business side of things to contend with too. We are so pleased with how it all turned out and want to give this album the best chance possible, so we booked the tour so that we can get the songs out there, and the album will follow suit straight after.”

The album that Milwright speaks of is A Thin Line, the follow up to their self-titled 2009 debut. The record embodies a paradigm shift which saw Blackchords coming together as an organic unit within the creative process.

“There is a definite shift in the sound, which comes from there being much more collaboration between the boys, on the songs and the composition of them,” Milwright asserts. “Blackchords was very much written on an acoustic guitar or the piano, and we would kind of paint around that. This time around it is very much a band-oriented sound, where the writing was done as a collective. By doing it this way it's really pushed my songwriting, my lyrics, my vocals to different reaches, and with Damian [Cazaly – guitar] and Tristan [Courtney – bass] coming into their own, it feels like their sound coming through, not mine, and not our influences. To us it sounds like Blackchords shining through.”

Such a relinquishing of control may have seemed daunting at first, yet it is something that Milwright had contemplated for a long time without finding the right people with which to let go.

“It can be really hard, and I often find it quite challenging,” he admits. “Yet it's something I really wanted to try ever since I started playing with Damian. It's been a dream of mine of finding the right kind of musicians who believe in me, but also who I believe in, their songwriting abilities and the influence that that may have on me. The music I listened to when growing up was very much band-oriented, and they shift from album to album; people like Radiohead, it's never one sound that is tired, they continue to push outwards. I feel that if left on my own I would only have a certain amount that I could grow from, but having that constant influence provides something that helps push and challenge me. I never wanted to be a ringleader.”

Whilst the songs evident on A Thin Line evoke certain moods, the constant is the foundation of their songwriting in incessant grooves and melodies, pushing the songs along rather than building the atmosphere at a languid pace. This insistent energy inherent in Blackchords' music springs from an organic viewpoint whereby it is the last thing to come to fruition, and not even the band cannot assuage where the process will lead them.

“It's taken time, because when we started writing all we wanted to do was create a certain level of atmosphere,” Milwright attests. “We look at lots of layering, and it often takes a while before we feel what a song might be about. The ideas develop, and the melodies after that, after chord progressions are in place and have been worked over and over. It will appear in the bass line or the guitar line or the vocals – it's always different. We wait for that hook that pulls people in; if it was just atmospheric, whilst I find that personally pleasant to listen to, the music shrinks by comparison, there is nothing to return to. That sense of a strong melody is very important to us, and nothing moves off the ground until we can find it and put it in there.”

That said, the initial songwriting sessions for A Thin Line were fraught with difficulties.

“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves knowing that not only fans but critics and radio would sample these songs, and it really got us stuck,” Milwright states. “We were writing songs that were somewhat contrived, and it was incredibly frustrating. It wasn't until we took ourselves out of that and wrote for ourselves, without thinking of the next album, that the melodies and the weight of these songs came out and became clear to us. It was scary but a pleasant realisation that when we focused on ourselves and writing things for us, for what we believed in, we could develop something that we could be really proud of.”

Blackchords sequestered themselves away to an isolated barn/improvised studio in rural Victoria for two weeks to work on A Thin Line. Produced by former The Frames guitarist David Odlum (Gemma Hayes, Josh Ritter, Tinawiren), Milwright discloses that his fingerprints are all over the final product.

“What amazes us about the album is how he could put down the sounds that we could only talk about,” he marvels. “We had these ideas and knew where we wanted to go, but technically speaking we had no idea how to go about achieving that. Talking to David just before he came out (from Ireland) he was able to articulate what I was only able to stumble around, and he would say, 'Right, what you need is this drum machine' and it would be exactly what I was thinking of. It became clear that we needed someone like him on board to be really supportive with us in what became relative science experiments, where Tristan could play with his synth, or Damian with an amazing layer of pedals that we had never used before.”