'There Was No Reason To Over-Think' New Album

“Just capturing something really quickly,” says guitarist John Patterson of their approach to recording that new album, Dream Team, “like capturing a performance and not trying to labour over a song, ‘cause everything was already sounding kind of good to us at home in our band room. We’d started more and more building songs and spending lots of time on details and stuff, but then once we were just jamming a couple of times a week and it was already sounding good, there was no reason to over-think it, so then there was no reason to spend heaps of time in the studio.”

So in a sense, in recording the new album, The Grates decided to go back to where they’d started, before they scored that label deal.

“In fact even back before the first album,” singer Patience Hodgson explains, “’cause the first album [2006’s Gravity Won’t Get You High] still took ages to make even though it’s probably the most rawest, stripped-back-sounding of all the records, but it still took a really long time. It’s probably back to like when we used to record on a four-track in John’s parents’ shed.

"There was no reason to spend heaps of time in the studio."

“This has been the best studio experience I reckon I’ve ever had. I’ve had moments where I loved recording with Brian Deck, who’s just such a great human being [and produced Gravity], and Peter Katis [who produced 2008’s Teeth Lost, Hearts Won], lots of good memories from the studio ‘cause you were hanging around with good humans. But, like, studio is not the funnest,” she chuckles.

“We didn’t know what to expect when we first started going into studios,” Patterson admits. “This time we could prepare for it.”

“I was at a Violent Soho show in Brisbane,” Patterson explains their choice of producer, “talking to my friend Dan Condon, who used to be used to be an editor for The Music online I think and I was saying we wanted to make an album really fast and not fuck around, and who would he recommend. He said, ‘How much do you care about getting played on radio?’” he laughs. “I said I don’t and he said you should hit up Owen’.”