Big Smoke On Honouring Their Late Frontman's Legacy On Record

"I can't be hanging around, on tomorrow's wind I'll blow," sings Adrian Slattery, on Big Smoke's Kiss Me Once, a song in which time is slipping away and romantic regrets hang heavy with mortality. Slattery wrote it after being diagnosed with terminal oesophageal cancer in 2015, having set himself the task of making Big Smoke's debut album in the time he had remaining. He died in May, just 30, less than a year after his diagnosis. But he leaves behind Time Is Golden, a golden-toned LP of Heartland rock swagger, alt-country warmth and heartfelt songwriting.

"The story is incredibly tragic, to lose a friend is the worst thing anyone can go through," says Big Smoke bassist Alex O'Gorman, "but I think the main reason why we are so happy [with the record] is that it so beautifully captures what Adrian had to leave behind. It's like his voice, and his ideas, have been so beautifully preserved and now we can share it with everyone."

"It's like his voice, and his ideas, have been so beautifully preserved and now we can share it with everyone."

"There's nothing we left short of achieving, in terms of making the record and gigging as much as we possibly could," offers drummer Luke Brennan. "The pride we feel in that is primary. But, there is a bittersweet quality to the album's release, a natural disappointment that we can't build on that; that we can't keep creating things... It's weird to talk about something when you feel like you're handling it on someone else's behalf. It's not a negative thing, it's wound up in feelings of pride, and joy, and accomplishment that the record's out there."

Slattery had been playing as Big Smoke since 2009, following the demise of his former outfit, garage-rockers Major Major. Slattery's songs were steeped in Heartland rock, and took off when O'Gorman and drummer Luke Brennan turned Big Smoke into a tight trio in 2014. They cut 2015's Lately EP, and afterwards were joined by guitarist Tim Baker and keyboardist Joe Cope. After Slattery's diagnosis in June of 2015, they threw themselves into gigging, and started planning the recording of their LP.

"[Everything] was all gearing towards going into the studio with this band, and making this record. The idea, and the trajectory, was set by Adrian a long time ago," says O'Gorman. As the record's "technical director", it was he who tended to Slattery's impulses, his intense artistic drive in his dying days. "He would have all these crazy ideas about instrumentation, about what would work and what wouldn't. I was just trying to keep up with him; he was moving so fast, was so incredibly creative, so incredibly driven to make this a great record."

The bulk of Time Is Golden was recorded in three days in November 2015, the band playing live at Soundpark Studios; finding the joy of creation even though there was a heaviness weighing on the session, and the unavoidable significance of making something that could serve as a legacy. O'Gorman calls the sessions "happy"; Brennan "fun and joyous". Even when engineer Shawn Everett (who won a Grammy for working with Alabama Shakes), who the band had recruited to mix the LP, had to push back his trip to Melbourne by a couple of months, it was Slattery who reassured the other members. "Adrian said to me," recounts Brennan, "as far as he was concerned, we'd done everything as best as we could, so we should apply that to the mixing and mastering phase. He wanted it to be the best record that it could be."

The album was eventually mixed after Slattery's death; the band, Everett, and Slattery's ex-wife, Paige Clark, working long days to capture "what was in Adrian's head, and in his heart; everything he wanted to put down" on record. Where the recording of the album was touched with joy, the mixing process — and Time Is Golden's eventual release — has been inextricably linked with the grieving process.

"After he'd passed away, all of this momentum and energy that was pushing us along all came to a halt. Adrian was this energy, this force, and then he wasn't there," offers O'Gorman. "We had our heads down, and we were working so hard, and we just had to be in the moment at that time. Then, [after] everything was finished, and Adrian had left us; it's only now that I've come to that realisation that nobody else really understands what we were going through, but they're all really interested in it, and they want me to talk about it. It was such a private thing when we were making it, but now that the album's out, it's such a public thing. I'm really happy to share things that we did, and moments that we shared, because it just means Adrian's voice can continue to be heard."