Controlled Chaos

As we settle into a booth in an old man's pub while beer is distributed, British India's frontman Declan Melia shares, “It almost feels like we've got a real job!” He's referring to the band signing with Liberation Records and jokes, “It's a selling-out thing.” Drummer Matt O'Gorman places a basketball next to him on the bench (he has a game later on tonight) and we all clink glasses. “Also, with Shock [Records] going into receivership we were without a label and we needed one,” Melia elaborates. “Bands need label, right? It's not 2015 yet.” Melia's long-sleeved paisley shirt is thrift shop chic and that barely perceptible lisp, which you never hear when he sings, is endearing.  

“It's so good having people outside the bubble,” O'Gorman adds. “I mean, Avalanche was, you know, Glenn [Goldsmith, manager/producer] and us pretty much, and Shock. But it's good to have this kinda big brother figure helping us and guiding us along the way.” Melia pipes up: “You did get the feeling with Shock as well, and this is also how great we are, but they never said, 'This album could be different'. They always just loved everything that we did for them. I mean, maybe it just happened that those records were so damned good that they didn't have anything to change about them, but they wanted us to be ourselves, you know? Whereas these guys, they saw what we could be and that's what Controller is.”

I Can Make You Love Me – the lead single from British India's fourth album (and third consecutive ARIA Top Ten), Controller – was released last July, received widespread radioplay and landed the number 41 spot on triple j's Hottest 100. Plaintive in tone, the song is a deviation from the band's fist-pumping festival favourites (“It's not a snappy Avalanche or Tie Up My Hands,” Melia allows). “It was kinda weird releasing a song like that,” O'Gorman acknowledges. “You really don't know how it's gonna go, 'cause it's so different from a song like [Beneath The] Satellites or Avalanche or something like that and then the response kind of blew us away a little bit. It was only after a couple of weeks – we'd start playing it at gigs, you know, as a new song, and the response was better than any [other] song in the set.” 

Is I Can Make You Love Me a particularly personal song to Melia, lyrically? “No, not really,” the frontman answers immediately. “I think I was reaching for something. It's just like I needed lyrics to suit the song and express the meaning of the song rather than the other way around, you know? The song's always there before the lyrics, so it kinda dictates what you gotta do and that forces you to get into a mood to write the lyrics so, yeah! It was a matter of finding the right fit, and if you get too personal with that you limit yourself.” Fans are often misguided when thinking a singer's lyrics are autobiographical. “I'm talking about them, really,” Melia explains. “I'm trying to find situations that they've been in. So that's gotta be even better, doesn't it? Than hearing what's on someone's mind.” The song is a British India benchmark. “It kinda got us the [Liberation] deal,” Melia extols. “It's the song that saved British India and then it got us back on track, 'cause we were fucked for a while.” 

After the band's longtime rehearsal space “back in the 'burbs” flooded and was then demolished, writer's block set in. “We'd been upended and we moved and then we couldn't write,” Melia recalls. “There was the feeling that that had contributed to the writer's block. And we started to get in our own heads and we were like, 'Is it the new place? Can we only write songs in the old place?' [Laughs] 'Cause, I mean, we're logical people, but with songwriting it's so easy to get into this fuckin' 'black cat, under ladders' headspace.”

In between labels, without a deadline and having relocated to a new rehearsal space, British India struggled to write the songs. “We kinda prided ourselves that we were like a Tin Pan Alley situation where we could just write and songs would come out,” Melia imparts, “but then that thinking really came under threat when we had no fucking idea what we were writing for, what's the point of writing a song? But then we looked at each other and we're like, 'Are we gonna do this? Then let's fuckin' do it full-ON! Let's get it done,' and then we looked back at the songs we'd written and fuckin' finished them all, wrote new songs and just got the album together. And We Don't Need Anyone, which is probably gonna be the next single, is the sound of that triumph and it was a fuckin' sweet triumph. It was a good feeling, you know.

 “We didn't realise how much we loved British India until we almost didn't have it. It was pretty much just like a symptom of – the Avalanche tour had been, like, a fuckin' 12-month party and then we came off the tour and decided to take a break, which we thought'd be the best thing for us, and it was the fucking worst thing for us! Because it was like a hangover of the morning after and the girl – you know, being the label – had fucked off and we were just kinda looking at each other. And it took a few months for us to say, 'Fuck, we really wanna do this,' and I mean I don't think anyone ever was contemplating breaking up the band, but there was the idea that the album was never gonna get released or we'd have to release it ourselves and there was a real uncertainty.” 

“It's kind of weird because the same thing happened for our first album,” O'Gorman remembers. “We were set to maybe sign a deal with a label, that fell through and then there was this whole period of switching management and finding Shock! It's funny how similar [the situations are].” Melia nods, “It really is.” Then Melia has a sudden realisation: “But, I mean, we're probably blaming [writer's block] on outside circumstances where it was just us as well. Avalanche kinda kicked so much fuckin' arse we were just taking it all for granted. Like, I was in this arrogant fuckin' mindset, you were off in fuckin' Hong Kong with a model, Will [Drummond, bass] was dating another model...” Maybe they should blame the models, then. “Oh we do, every day!” O'Gorman laughs. “You have NO idea.” A couple of Yoko Onos? “Absolutely,” the drummer chuckles. 

“Yeah, so that was another thing,” Melia continues. “It was coming from us as well. We needed to be reminded how much we fuckin' love British India and how much we love writing new songs.” Such re-evaluation is crucial when a band's been together for – how many years exactly? They reply in unison: “ten”. O'Gorman opines, “It's crazy. But we're so enthusiastic now; it's like when we first started in the band.”   

“British India must have naked pictures of god or something, because the way we keep coming back – it's a trip,” Melia concedes.