The Delta RiggsHex.Lover.Killer could be called one of the most pure rock albums you'll hear all year. But Elliott Hammond admits he doesn't see The Delta Riggs as a rock'n'roll band. Looking more towards Fugees and N.E.R.D than The Black Keys and AC/DC, the Melbourne-based quintet made a big, shaking debut, but came at their music from a far different place than tracks like Stars and Scratch Flower would suggest.
The Delta Riggs don't want to be directed by description, and although they wheel out some serious guitar licks they counterbalance that with funky organ and tight-grooved rhythms. Playing with the likes of Primal Scream and Divine Fits over the last 12 months has only encouraged their chameleon tendencies further and showed them sonic possibilities without having to be “the biggest band in the world”.
“Before that we were like, 'When we get to a certain level we can afford to have this production and do this live,'” says Hammond. “[Divine Fits] are a well known band but they're not a huge band; they were just a standard-sized crew and they were pulling this stuff off live, and we were like, 'If they can do it, we can do it.' So we went back to the drawing board and started fucking shit up.”
Full of inspiration and creativity, the April release of Hex.Lover.Killer wasn't enough to slow down Hammond's ever-ticking mind, and the multi-instrumentalist was back in the studio before the record was even released, knocking out the foundations for a second full-length with Resin Dogs' backbone Dave Atkins, who Hammond met through their stints in Wolfmother.
“The new record is pretty drastically different, it's like a fully fledged hip hop record; not Aussie hip hop at all, it's like this punk, MC5/Beastie Boys/De La Soul – it's legit! [Dave's] got a pretty good head around that whole [thing], and we specifically said, 'We're not interested in what's happening now, we're interested in channelling this primitive [style].' And he just got it, we sent him some stuff and he's all over it, so we're spending some more time with him in the studio in a week-and-a-half to continue on with it.”
So, will this single tour for America already mark the end of the timeline for Hex.Lover.Killer? Hammond is quick to shoot down that assumption. “Like I said, I just had this creative urge and needed to get into this now, but as a band we're ahead of the album cycle because we're halfway through our next one, but we've only just released our second single and we probably think there's another two singles on Hex.”
