On Smoking, Gangster Films And Hangovers

As we settle onto stools inside Grace Darling Hotel, Lurch & Chief’s Hayden Somerville (Chief) is all hair – long dark tresses and manly beard – and black hooded anorak. A couple of recent posts on the band’s Facebook page request help from ‘friends’ in finding “a pair of twins, of any age and any gender” as well as a black German Shepherd for a music video they’re filming for EP track Echo tomorrow. It turns out “this huge, black, fluffy thing” the clip’s director cast “just cancelled”. When asked whether a bit of CGI could be incorporated during post-production, Somerville cracks up, barely containing a mouthful of beer, then offers, “Nah, I don’t think we’re quite at that level.”

“Something we purposefully did was isolate everybody to a remote location, because six different people have a hundred different things each going on at all times."

Somerville’s all-time favourite TV series being The Sopranos, the frontman admits, “Ever since I was a kid [I’ve been] obsessed with gangster films. I think it’s the suits and the cigarettes.” Does he smoke? “Oh, I used to. I quit now. But I miss them every day,” he laments. When asked why he quit, Somerville refers to “a bit of a meltdown”. “I get chronic tonsillitis and I’d be out for weeks, and then you just get run down and you have to cancel shows.

“I get really anxious if I’m sick or feeling rundown before a gig, because I feel like people have come to see [us] and I really wanna be at my best. And if I’d been out the night before – and this still happens, like, you’re away and somebody’s like, ‘No, fuck off! Don’t go to sleep,’ and then the next minute it’s six o’clock and you’ve got a gig the next day, and you don’t get enough sleep ‘cause you’ve gotta drive and all this stuff. And you feel guilty because you’re like, ‘I could be better if I didn’t go out’.”

Not yet feeling “ready to tackle an album”, the band focused on another EP. The material for Breathe was “written in two weeks” and Somerville acknowledges, “We got so much done because we just put our phones and computers and all our lives away”. “Something we purposefully did was isolate everybody to a remote location, because six different people have a hundred different things each going on at all times. So we just banged out multiple tracks, picked out our favourites and put ‘em on an EP. It’s my favourite work to date from the band.”

So does Somerville always have final say given that he’s the “Chief” part of his band’s moniker (to guitarist Alex Trevisan’s “Lurch”)? The frontman chuckles, “I’m probably the most vocal, but we’ve never had a three-three split, ever, in the band… It’s always been, like: if four people are saying ‘yes’, you’ve gotta roll with it. And it goes against me SO much, with what I wanna do sometimes.” Majority rules? “Majority has to rule or there will be utter chaos.”