Jamie Hutchings: Bottled Up.

Jamie Hutchings launches The Golden Coach at Ric’s Café on Friday and plays the China Town Mall Rotunda on Sunday.

Those familiar with the all out bombast of a the Bluebottle Kiss live experience should be quite surprised with the directions taken on frontman Jamie Hutchings debut solo album The Golden Coach. Recorded on the South coast of New South Wales over an extended period, The Golden Coach finds Hutchings in a more reflective mood, surrounded by simple acoustic meanderings rather than Bluebottle’s angular tones.

“Most of it was recorded before the last Bluebottle record (Revenge Is Slow) came out. There was a few failed attempts, I started about three years ago. There’s a guy who lives in this old house, that’s condemned now, but it was an old nunnery. He was like the caretaker. He has this great analogue machine, and he’s done some records for different people. In between other things I would go down there and sort of potter away on it.”

“It’s a really beautiful way to make a record, and I’ve formed a friendship with this guy. We’d record some music then go down the beach for a swim. Crack open a bottle of red and then go do a vocal take.”

I have to enquire about haunted old nunnery stories. Was there a household ghost?

“It’s supposed to be haunted, and other bands have claimed to have scary experiences there. I slept there once, and my friend Justin is really scared of that kind of thing and wouldn’t go upstairs, so we ended up sleeping on beanbags in the lounge. Once you go inside it’s the strangest house you’ll ever see. There’s a huge hallway with big rooms on each side, and it’s really windy because it’s by the sea. All these gutted rooms with wind blowing through them. It’s very spooky. It was a great place to make a record.”

Do you thing some of the atmosphere of your location comes across in the recording?

“I think that stuff just makes it’s way onto tape. Songs are often a result of where you are and what you’re experiencing at the time. It’s great to do something in a place with a unique atmosphere, because it comes through with is something that doesn’t really happen in a studio. The whole approach is totally different. Recording in a studio is like being in a bunker. I think this is more open sounding. Most of the time there was just two of us there in this big house.”

While there are a couple of tracks on the album that got the once over in the Bluebottle jam room, the album is by no means a collection of band cast-aways.

“I had a couple of songs that I thought would suit a singer songwriter with an acoustic guitar kind of thing. They were not as dissonant, more narrative sort of things, and I thought I should write a bunch of songs, and I worked them up that way. I started basically with a vocal and acoustic guitar and take it from there. The last song was one Bluebottle Kiss rehearsed, but I thought it was a strong song, and it meant a lot to me. It could have gone either way.”

The Golden Couch also features members of Hutchings family providing extra instruments and voices to the tracks. When Will It Make Sense To You tops out with five members of the Hutchings clan.

“I had a lot of different members of my family down. I got about half way through it and got my brother involved for some drums and things. My sister does all the piano. We’ve always talked about music and listened to music together, so it was good to get them in to play as well.”