Killing Heidi: Sister Act.

Killing Heidi play the Quad Park at Kawana Waters, Sunshine Coast on Saturday.

It’s been quite a few months now since Victorian four piece Killing Heidi have been seen in these parts, but prior to that you couldn’t keep them away. What’s the cliché about raining and pouring? Anyway, the frantic touring schedule that followed their massive Reflector debut has drawn to a close, and after a couple of months off to work on their second record, the band are itching to get back on the stage.

Guitarist Jesse Hooper is messing around in putting together some new songs when my call is connected.

“We’re doing some B-sides for the next single,” he explains. “Ella’s in the studio doing vocals still for the main tracks on the record, but we’re just trying to get some other stuff together.”

    Since being Unearthed by Triple J a couple of years back, Killing Heidi have gone on to become one of the most recognisable forces in Australian music. The dynamic song writing of Jesse and sister Ella, not to mention her distinctive vocal delivery, has found favour with a generation of Aussie record buyers. So the obvious question is… When are we going to see the new album?

“Good question… we’re all asking the same thing,” he laughs. “We’re hoping it’s going to be out in the next, ooh, twenty years… Nah, we’re hoping for sometime in the next two months. It’s still got to be mixed and mastered, so we’re hoping optimistically for about eight weeks.”

“It’s similar, but the songs have grown quite a bit more. The first record was the first time we’d done it, this time around we’ve had a few more years experience, we’ve got a lot more of our own ideas as to what we’d like to hear.”

Obviously you’re all a couple of years older as well, is your song writing reflecting those changes?

“It seems so. I’m not a huge one for listening to every world Ella says, I have to listen to her all the time anyway... But the lyrics she’s writing now are about a lot of different things, whereas the lyrics she was writing when we were writing Reflector we’re all about where she was when she was 15. There’s a lot of stuff about our last couple of years. Not so much touring, but things about some of the places we’ve been and growing up in an accelerated way.”

Did you get much of a chance to get out of the limelight and just be yourselves, or has that been an issue?

“The last six months or so we have in a way. Each of us, as we’re done our parts in the studio has had a bit of downtime. I did most of my guitar parts in November, and since them we’ve done bits and pieces to do, but nothing flat out.”

Did you take time off to write the record, or was it done while the band was on the road?

“I think we wrote about half the record while we were away, and the other half it was good it sit back and think about. We’re amping to get back on the road. We’ve had other stuff on that we’ve had to do, and some of it has taken longer than we would have liked, but now we’re gearing up for a run of shows. After that, when the album comes out, we want to do another full national tour, and hopefully that will take a long time. We just want to get out and do some shows.”

Are you testing out some of the new material in the live arena?

“Yeah. We got to do a show in Hobart on the weekend, at a festival called Go South. There was like 10 000 people down there. It was really cool. We had to fill in for Silverchair at late notice because they couldn’t make it. We road tested five new tracks, and it all went down well, which is good considering they haven’t heard the tracks we were playing. We mixed it up with the stuff from Reflector, so there were some familiar tracks there as well. We’re just trying to sneak things in and see what the reaction is.”

And back in the studio for adjustments afterwards?

“We hope not,” he laughs. “Otherwise it could be another year before the album comes out. We’ve just been playing the Reflector tracks for so long we wanted to hear some new stuff.”

You must be well into the hundred for live shows on the back of the reflector album by now.

“If you include all the radio and press things,” he muses. “It’s probably thousands.”