Breaking The Drought

_{For a decade now Fremantle outfit The Kill Devil Hills have been peddling a dark and emotive brand of country rock, their songs covering the full gamut of the human emotional spectrum from tumult to tenderness with consummate ease. While their records have been increasingly strong, it's in the live realm where they've become renowned for their intense and occasionally confronting aural assaults, and now they have a tangible representation of this power in the form of new live album, Past And Future Ghosts. Picking tracks from their three LPs plus some new material too, the record finds the band in typically fierce form, although it's original} raison d'être never panned out.

_{"We're coming out of a bit of a dormant patch – it's like a frog hopping across a highway kind of environment, we've been really busy," smiles frontman Brendon Humphries. "The original idea this year had been that – Australia Council grant pending – we were going to go over to Europe again, we had a whole bloody tour booked but we didn't get the grant so we couldn't go. But we knew before we found that out that we needed to have something new to take over there and sell at shows, and we decided to do a live record. We'd tried to record gigs in the past and had not been happy with the recording or the performance, so we set aside this time and recorded this special show down at Fremantle Arts Centre, this beautiful big gothic ex-asylum building.}

_{"So we went to some effort and we got good takes – we were happy with every song we played. Then when we realised that we weren't going to Europe we just thought, 'Fuck it, let's just put it out anyway'. We've been really quiet this year when it comes to playing and touring and everything, primarily because we're trying to work on another record. It's been cool though, after ten years of having a relatively heavy foot on the accelerator it's been nice to have a sabbatical period, and for myself just working on writing and not charging around playing the same old shit, it's been really peaceful.}

_{"Out of those decisions we were happy with the recording, and [a live album] is something that I've been wanting to get together for a while. It's kind of a way of updating – or bringing into the present – some of the older material. Songs like Gunslinger [from 2004 debut Heathen Songs] for example, we don't play that – and haven't played it for many years – the way that it is on the original album recording. I think that generally the band sound these days is bigger and broader and heavier than a lot of the recordings that we've done – it's like a way of correcting past mistakes in a way, I guess. I think it sounds good."}

_{Past And Future Ghosts captures both the intensity and intricacy inherent in The Kill Devil Hills onstage, a fine precursor to the impending fourth album.}

_{"That's the energy where the band seems to thrive best," Humphries ponders of his band's onstage impact. "That being said, we're recording another album now so I hope we put that to rest. I've never been completely happy as a whole entity with any of the albums we've done; nothing has ever seemed perfect or how it's even supposed to be. It's almost like recording is sometimes a way of working out the band's sound and then going out and playing it for a couple of years then coming back and trying to channel it again. I do think that a lot of what we do is worked out live as a band."}

_{And in the short term the newly-reconfigured band are looking forward to once again hitting the well-beaten path around Australia, getting back amongst the thick of the live action.}

_{"It's a quick-fire run of shows so it will be a bit of a tiring week, but we're really looking forward to it," Humphries enthuses. "We've actually got a new member in the band now too, a new keys player called Timothy Nelson who basically joined us for the show that we recorded live [for the album]. This is the first tour with him and what I feel is our tightest line-up. I think the band sounds great with the instrumentation that we've got at the moment, so in that respect I'm thirsty to get out there and see how we play."}