Why He Isolated Himself To Write A Collection Of Love Songs

16 June 2015 | 1:00 pm | Roshan Clerke

"I decided once again to reinvent myself and relocate to introduce a new challenge into my life — one of isolation."

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"I was really young when I started playing guitar,” Oh Mercy’s Alexander Gow begins. “Dad had been gifted a guitar for his 21st birthday that sat gathering dust in the cupboard, and I discovered it when I was 12 or so. Mum and dad noticed as I started fiddling around with it. They also noticed I was playing it left-handed, so dad restrung it for me and showed me how to play a couple of chords. I bought a chord book after that and figured the rest out for myself. Over the next three years I played a lot, but I probably haven’t become any better at playing the guitar since the age of 16. While my friends in high school were charging off ahead of me, playing Metallica and Guns N’ Roses solos at a million miles per hour, I plateaued once I had the basics for songwriting.”

Things didn’t immediately fall into place. “At that point they were nonsense syllables put together, because I didn’t really have a grasp on what songwriting meant, or how to do it in a compelling way. Even the most basic form of songwriting was elusive to me. I was still learning to juggle the melody and the words with playing the guitar. Then the angsty teenage years kicked in and I had things to write about. I wrote poorly for a few years and got those songs out of the way before I was 18, when my friend from school, Tom Savage, and I began writing songs. Those songs ended up being my first album, which is called Privileged Woes.”

"I got pigeonholed as an earnest, white, melancholy, middle-class male with an acoustic guitar."

It was his next album, Great Barrier Grief, however, that attracted attention. “A few people heard Privileged Woes and liked it, and one of those people was a producer from Los Angeles who I really admire, Mitchell Froom. I wrote this very simple, understated acoustic pop record, and I went out to Santa Monica and made my second record with him, Great Barrier Grief. In hindsight it sounds like an exercise in restraint. Perhaps this was due to time constraints, but it was also somewhat a stylish decision we made at the time.”

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However, the attention from that album wasn’t what he expected. “After that record I got pigeonholed as an earnest, white, melancholy, middle-class male with an acoustic guitar flying the flag for that slightly-annoying passé tradition. Even though it was fairly accurate, that still bothered me. I thought there was more to my creative output than some of the groups I was being lumped in with, and I felt I was doing myself a disservice by not spreading myself out musically. I didn’t see myself making multiple versions of Great Barrier Grief. It was a record that took a very comfortable and melancholy 21-year-old to make, written in my bedroom while living in my parents’ house. It wasn’t a fair representation of what I loved about music. I’m very proud of that record, but it was just a time and a place. It was then really important for me to challenge myself, my fans and anyone else who thought they had me figured out. I think everyone that I admire has done that to a certain extent.”

Following in the footsteps of musicians like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, Gow decided to change things up. “I pulled the rug out from beneath myself, musically, to make my third album, Deep Heat. It was something that I really needed to do, and I may do again if I ever feel too comfortable. The album was much more colourful, and lyrically it was all fictional, written from the third person. It was a challenge and something that I really enjoyed. However, by the time I finished touring that album I found myself being almost 25 years old, and I decided once again to reinvent myself and relocate to introduce a new challenge into my life — one of isolation. That encouraged me to write personal songs again, after some serious self-introspection. I moved to the States for 15 months and wrote 45 songs, 12 of which I picked and recorded for this new record.”

"I moved to the States for 15 months and wrote 45 songs."

The resulting album combines his strengths as a songwriter with a grasp on perspective, bringing together the sweeping ambition of Deep Heat and the sincerity of his first albums. “Musically, When We Talk About Love is much more along the lines of the second record, but without that element of restraint. I wanted to make it really expansive and beautiful to encourage a passive listen, creating a sound that would wash over the listener in the ways that some of my favourite albums by The Triffids, The Church, and Echo & The Bunnymen do.”

Gow is quick to point out his influence from the ‘60s orchestral pop arrangements of Hal David and Burt Bacharach. “I adored the strings arrangements on them. The first musical memory I have is of listening to Dionne Warwick singing the Bacharach catalogue at home with my mum looking after my brother and I. It was one of my first favourite records, and I listen to it fortnightly still.”

While in America, he spent time reading the work of Raymond Carver, which inspired the album title. “I was in contact with someone back home and we would talk about his stories. It was a nice way of keeping in touch with my Australian friends and family, and just a really good touchstone. His writings about relationships in domestic environments, extraordinary things happening to ordinary people — arguably, ordinary things happening to ordinary people — and the way he writes about those events have such weight and are very moving to me. His books were a real companion to me throughout my travels. By the time it came for selecting a title for the record, I felt it was apt to take the second half of one of his short stories. It felt right for a few different reasons, the most obvious being that I’d written a collection of love songs.”

During this time, he would listen to Australian artists to remind himself of his identity. “Mostly, I would put on The Triffids and The Go-Betweens, who are my two favourite Australian bands. I loved listening to their music while I was away. It was really comforting to me, but also inspiring. I used them as a point of reference, and as a reminder of where I’d come from and where I belong in terms of the school of songwriting and geographically. Perhaps there’s links to be made to our landscape and that particular sound, which The Triffids are a particular great example of, with their artwork for albums like Born Sandy Devotional.”

"I don’t expect to sell millions of copies, or to double or triple my fans."

He was living in Nashville, where he wrote the majority of the album, when he found the artwork for When We Talk About Love. “I would frequent a Mexican restaurant, and at the counter there were some postcards of Harry Underwood’s up on display. I wrote them off as the work some long-gone ‘60s pop artist. But I was drawn to them so much that one day I picked them up and had a look at the back and saw that they were recent. I ended up befriending some other visual artists in Nashville, and they knew him personally. I went out to his house in Springfield one day and we got to know one another. By the end of it he was happy to let me use one of his paintings. I’d seen the painting that’s now the album cover and thought it would be perfect for the record I was making, being a series of love songs. I thought that particular image put a really optimistic spin on the whole record, a bit of sweet sentiment.”

Reflecting on his journey so far, he realises his career has been unpredictable at best. “I know my curveball record, Deep Heat, confused a lot of people. Perhaps this new record will be a return for some fans. All I know is that I think I’ve written the best songs that I have yet, I’m singing better than I have before and I gave everything I had to this record. I hope that people can hear that when they listen to it. I don’t expect to sell millions of copies, or to double or triple my fans. I have no idea what’s going to happen. My one hope is that people will listen to it and understand that a lot of integrity has gone into it, and that I really care about the process.”