Whatever Doesn't Kill You

Back in 2010 Brisbane rockers HITS introduced themselves to the world with their debut album Living With You Is Killing Me, an opening gambit of epic proportions. All of the band's trademark strengths were already present – propulsive and catchy songs, powerhouse musicianship, the charismatic 'Evil Dick' Richards out front spewing his self-flagellating diatribes, the brilliant female vocal accompaniment from kickass guitarists Stacey Coleman and Tamara Bell; it all somehow amounted to more than the sum of these considerable parts.
Now, four years later, the band returns with follow-up Hikikomori, which not only improves on their debut but drags every aspect of the band kicking and screaming to an entirely new level. Years of relentless touring and gigging – both here and overseas – have undoubtedly helped, as has a re-jigged engine room, but mainly it's the calibre of the songs which make this one of the great Australian rock albums in recent memory.
“I think it's a progression, but it's a natural progression – it wasn't thought about at all,” Richards ponders over a beer. “When we went to Europe [in 2012] probably half the songs on Hikikomori were in our set already, and the promoter in Europe said to us, 'What the fuck are you playing these new songs for? You should be playing your record and trying to sell your record!' And we were, like, 'No, we want to smash these new songs because we're trying to write a new record!' So you play 22 shows in a fucking row and all of a sudden there's six songs up and running that you know are important to your next album, and then that dictates how the rest of the album is going to go – what's missing from these six songs, what flavours aren't there?
“All of us have been in bands for a long time – not just HITS – and most of us still play in other bands, and as you get older it becomes really instinctual. We've toured a lot and had good gigs and bad gigs, and it all comes together to the point where nobody has to think about it anymore – it's just the way it is.”
Having Oz rock legend Rob Younger (Radio Birdman, New Christs) haranguing you to produce your album probably doesn't hurt the band's collective confidence either.
“We played a lot of shows with the New Christs and he got really pissed off when he found out we'd already recorded the first album,” Richards recalls. “When he found we already had an album he said, 'Here I am thinking I could do something with these guys, and you've already done it!' and we were, like, 'Well do the next one!'
“Then we went on tour with them a lot and he watched us a lot and talked to us a lot, both as a band and individuals. He really got inside us in a lot of ways. The guy's worked on some of the best Australian stuff ever – as a Died Pretty fan and a Stems fan and a Radio Birdman fan and a New Christs fan, when Rob Younger says, 'I want to make your record,' you don't go, 'No Rob, that's a bad idea!' It was a no brainer.”
Now HITS find themselves firmly ensconced in that rich lineage of underground Aussie rock, hardly surprising given their recent collective experiences.
“Obviously we're still Stooge-ified, there's a bit of Detroit-inspired rock in there,” Richards offers, “but we've had the luck and good fortune and honour to play with The Scientists a few times, and The Stems and The Lime Spiders and The Psychotic Turnbuckles and X and all these great bands – I think you get something off all of them. I definitely grew up as a fan of Australian music, more than I was of English and American music, and it's that amalgamation.
“But if I had to say one band that I used to say to Rob [in the studio] it was Died Pretty, and I don't even know if you can hear it. Oz rock is such a wide, all-encompassing field now – it's not just Rose Tattoo and The Angels or The Birthday Party. It's not just the angry and aggressive but it's the beautiful as well, even if it's still going to blow your head off. I saw Died Pretty a lot growing up, and they influenced me as a performer – they made me like keyboards in songs, they made me like long, atmospheric songs – so I guess we try to meld that with AC/DC and The Stooges,” he laughs. “Somehow. And then we add girl backing vocals and it's HITS.”
Richards' scathing lyrics add further biting resonance to Hikikomori, a creative process he attests was both confronting and cathartic.
“It was just my state of mind at the time,” he tells. “I know that I agonise over these things – I find recording a record a really tedious process, and it boils down to the fact that what I do in the vocal booth that day lives with me forever – I can't just make it up on the spot anymore, I can't rewrite it anymore, it has to be the best version. I was in a troubled state of mind, and the theme that's running through it is just my thoughts and feelings and emotions coming out – things that were making me anxious. Love, girls – universal themes of doubt and growing old. Are you wasting your life? I think it's the human condition to worry about these things sometimes. The first album was very negative as well – I think it's just the way that I sort myself out, on pieces of paper.”