The Mad Ones

If there was ever a writer prime for acting as a muse to young artists, it was and always will be Jack Kerouac, the Benzedrine-toting, booze-guzzling beatnik king, whose prose hurtled off the page, crashing into you like some kind of wild freight train. It was this ragtag expression of the world around him that infected Glass Towers' affable and breathtakingly nice (like, who knew rock'n'roll could be so damn polite?) lead singer Ben Hannam, inspiring him to revisit his youth through music.

“Kerouac was my inspiration, his halcyon days… my halcyon days,” says Hannam.

Aptly titled Halcyon Days, the album is the band's first, following on from their EPs What We Were, When We Were (2011) and Collarbone Jungle (2012), and according to Hannam, provides a much more “lush and layered” visceral experience. “Yeah,” he begins, “that was definitely a conscious decision… definitely something I wanted to do. I've always liked records that were lush and layered, you know? I guess that's just part of my thinking. I mean, why record a lo-fi record in the studio? Why, when you can make it sound so much better?”

Hannam, however, credits 24-year-old wunderkind/producer Jean-Paul Fung (Bluejuice, Birds Of Tokyo, Silverchair) as being the mastermind behind Halcyon Days' dream-pop, '80s sound. “Most of the songs we took into the studio were already so old,” laughs Hannam. “They were like our babies. It was really hard having to work on them when you already love them so much. We worked with Wayne Connelly on our first EP and he was more concerned with making the EP sound beautiful, while JP [Jean-Paul Fung] took a more hands-on role. We'd be in the studio and JP would tell us, 'You can make this sound so much better by doing this.' He's a genius.”

Hannam adds that Fung wasn't scared to bring out the axe and chop, chop, chop and change away at will. “Yeah, I mean… the songs were already written and they didn't change too much from the demos, but certain changes were made,” he laughs. “Like, Halcyon was originally seven minutes, but JP cut it down to three.”

However, despite receiving the Fung's magic touch, Hannam still felt the album's closer, Foreign Time, which Hannam also admitted as being his favourite track because, “it sounds different to the rest of the album”, required a little marginal tweaking, leading him to – where else? – but the backyard of producer John Castle's parent's place. “That's where his studio is!” Hannam laughs again.

“Foreign Time is a lot more of a piano ballady-type song and the funny thing was, I just wasn't happy with the way the piano was sounding. So, I went down to Melbourne to John's studio and his way of working is just really cool. We bought, like, two bottles of rum and he smokes like a chimney. Anyway, we ended up getting the sound we wanted – but again, JP really was the genius behind even that… He put thumb tacks on the piano and ended up getting this really earthy Matt And Kim-like sound.”

The creative basis for Halcyon Days was born out of those “peaceful, happy, free and lush” memories of being a teenager, Hannam revealing that he's grateful to have the added benefit of hindsight when writing and revising his recollections of a time long passed. “Basically it's an invitation back to our teenage years – my own halcyon days – when everything was idyllic and peaceful,” explains Hannam, who at 21, is only a few whiskers short of carrying the title of a 'teen' himself.

“Most of the album is about the age bracket when nothing matters and life revolved around going to school and going to dinner parties and being free. I want people to feel they are invited back.”

Listen to the full stream of Halcyon Days here.

As it turned out, the trip down memory lane proved to be not only a creative juggernaut for the band, but also something of a bonding session. “I think that now, as a band, we're closer. I mean, we've been friends since primary school. We started writing our first demos back then as well – I was in music classes with the guys [Sam Speck – guitar, Cameron Holdstock – bass, Daniel Muszynski – drums], so it made sense really to start a band.”

And in 2008 they did just that, mainly thanks to Hannam's drive. The next year, after having only played a handful of gigs, the group was parachuted into the festival sphere, performing at Splendour In The Grass, before becoming triple j stalwarts and cementing their steady rise.

Along the way, they managed to hone their live wares, playing second fiddle to the likes of Dappled Cities, Neil Finn's Pajama Club and most recently The Kooks. “They were really nice guys, really down to earth,” gushes Hannam of the latter. “At the first show we did with them in Melbourne, we were packing our stuff and Luke [Pritchard, Kooks lead singer] invited us to hang out. He saw us there and was just, like, 'Hey guys, come have some drinks.' Then, when we went to the UK to play at The Great Escape [earlier this year] they called us up, just out of the blue – like they weren't even performing there – and asked if we wanted to hang out. You meet so many big industry names, so it's nice to know that there are some regular guys around.”

Hamman adds that the transition from carefree teen into adulthood has single-handedly provided him with enough inspiration and material to keep churning out songs for some time to come. “I mean, the funny thing is now that I'm twenty-one, there are certain things that I look back at and think I maybe would've changed and made better, but if I do that in my songs then I would be changing what I experienced and I don't wanna do that.”

The honest commitment to experience was borne out of Hannam's love for author Jack Kerouac, whom he says helped weave a kind of creative curiosity in him. “Basically that's where the album title came from. Kerouac was talking about his halcyon days – especially in On The Road – and when I was sixteen or seventeen that's who I read; that's who I was into. Every time I went out to house parties I would come home and scrawl down things that happened there, you know, just meeting people and the event. Like, for instance, say I was at a house party and met a real character – someone random and cool – I'd come home and write stuff about them. I would always just scrawl down every tale I knew. So all the songs are based on people I know.”