Across The Sonic Plains

The Laurels may only just be releasing their debut album, but to most locals they're known as stalwarts of the live scene. Playing shows for six or so years, the four-piece have garnered a reputation as being uncompromisingly loud and brilliant live. It's been a long time coming, but luckily, since the ears of record label Rice Is Nice pricked up when they caught wind of a record in the works, all the years of tireless touring have led finally to The Laurels' new release, the album, Plains, the gestation of which was much easier than last year's EP, Mesozoic.

“We recorded the album before Rice Is Nice was interested in us, before they decided to put it out,” guitarist and vocalist Piers Cornelius explains. “The EP was a bit of a struggle. It was delayed mainly due to lack of funds. It was a bit easier with this one because we saved a bit from playing lots of shows and we could pay for it outright – which is always handy – instead of it dragging on. So we just did it in ten days. Although it was such a long time coming, we hardly spent any time on it at all, which is pretty weird.”

The recording process saw some older tracks finally laid down, along with newbies, though there'll be plenty for fans to mull over once they get their hands on the record.

“There's about five of them [songs on the album] that we were playing live a lot – that everybody is probably really sick of – and then there's another five new ones which people will be sick of soon. We just thought it wouldn't be right to just put out an album of ten songs that everyone has been seeing us play live for the past four years or something like that, although lots of bands want to save up the best songs they've ever written for their first album. We just thought it would be better to do everything fresh and, if we keep it fresh, then we'll at least sound enthused on the record and maybe that'll rub off when people listen to it.”

Rather than the band trying to compress their phenomenal live sound onto record, they took a different approach that should shed light on another facet of The Laurels' music.

“We've always been interested in bands like Spacemen 3 and Joy Division, where – because of the production on their records – everything is given lots of space and it's kind of a transcendental sort of thing, whereas live they both sound full-on, blasting your ears like The Stooges or something like that. We've always been interested in the idea of the live sound of the band and the recorded output sort of making up the whole. We were trying to make a record that was something we would never sound like live and we used a lot of clean guitar tones and really light overdriven guitars, rather than the ones that give you tinnitus probably.”

Yet the melodic tinges heard through the reverb on songs like Tidal Wave and One Step Forward (Two Steps Back) seem to be almost subconsciously created.

“All of our favourite bands have been really '60s-sounding ones with lots of harmonies and sparkly guitar lines. I guess we wanted to make a record that sounded like lots of our favourite records. Because we get called shoegaze, because of how we sound live, lots of people think or assume that all we listen to is shoegaze, but we just wanted to show that if you take away all the live sound layers of feedback and mushed vocals, the songs stand out a bit more when there's not a wall of sound and there's some dynamics to them. We wanted to make a record that someone can put on on a Saturday or Sunday and it will actually sound good, rather than all of their housemates wandering out of their rooms and going, 'Shut up!'”

Whilst one can only hope that Plains doesn't inspire some sort of sharehouse warfare, one thing is for certain and that is that the years spent playing across town in venues of all sizes have only helped the band cultivate their sound.

“I think you have to play live for a few years before you can work out what sort of a sound you guys can pull off or what you want to go for. We were always wary of putting out an album straight away once we'd just started. You see all those bands that suddenly decide that their first album that they made when they were nineteen isn't the type of music they want to make and they switch it up but no one cares anymore, though the record they made is so much better than their first one. If you can work on your sound for a few years, it gives you confidence in your sound and confidence is the main thing you need to have.”

Working on their sound has seen The Laurels traverse the east coast and even take a little trip to Cornelius' home town of Perth with band-on-everyone's-lips Pond, where he got an interesting welcome.

“Last time I was there [Perth], I got heckled by the guys I went to school with. They just kept yelling out my name over and over again. It was a bit weird. There was a group of them. I think some were saying it out of pride and some were, 'I haven't seen this guy since pre-school, I'm going to yell out,' but it was really fun anyway.”

But it was undoubtedly the time spent in venues like The Hopetoun, performing residencies and playing alongside other local bands, that saw The Laurels develop as individuals and as a group. This writer first saw them perform at Candy's Apartment in 2006 and, looking back on it, Cornelius is assured of the band's unassuming transformation.

“Since then I suppose we've changed a little bit. Obviously it's been a long time and those bands we were playing with back then, unfortunately Ghosts [Of Television] and Warhorse and them have broken up, but I think maybe we've gotten into some more music and appreciated different styles of music, been a bit more open-minded towards other styles since that time. But we still have ultimate respect for Ghosts Of Television and all those guys and the way that they're just playing music because they have to play music, not because they want to show off in front of people. It's just that they have to do it. Seeing those bands has probably galvanised us a little bit in that we want to make really great records so we can have the opportunity to tell other people about the bands we really love and respect.”

Talking of the times spent in the various small band rooms, warehouses and lounge rooms of Sydney leads to a brief comparison between this writer's current residence of Berlin and thus, of course, Germany's fine history of experimental music, a genre The Laurels would love to explore further.

“I watched a doco on krautrock called Krautrock: The Rebirth Of Germany and it just makes me want that, where everyone is experimenting and playing in weird venues and doing weird stuff. Faust received some grant from the German government. They're all really old now, living in a farmhouse doing experiments with sound because that's the grant they've been given and they can all survive on that. There's footage in the documentary of a recording mic hooked up to a cement mixer out in a paddock and the guys wheeling around this huge mixer, recording all of these industrial metal-sliding-on-metal sounds. That'd be pretty cool.”

For now though, there's no sign of the band slowing down, with plans to increase their studio time, to make up for all the records that should've been.

“We've got all the songs written for the second album we want to do. We have to learn them I guess, so we have to rehearse a bit more. There's tentative plans to maybe go over to the US, but that's dependent on getting a grant and that sort of stuff… The thing we'd most like to do is to go and practice our next lot of songs and record them and put out a record really early next year. We need to get a move on, because the first six years were a bit of a waste.”

Trying to catch up to their live past means there'll be more records to come, hopefully at a steadier pace than The Laurels have previously been known for. Asked for specifics, Cornelius jokes, “Maybe four [albums] or something, then we'll go bald and quit.”

Maybe The Laurels could follow in the steps of Faust and take their sounds to the paddocks? “That would be a pretty cool thing to do, move out to the countryside and make random noise. Or just sit there in silence. That would also be pretty cool.”