William Lebihan: Bass-ic Instinct.

William Lebihan launches Coconut Milk at The Healer on Saturday.

“I’m actually heading over to London for about four weeks in July. I’ve got a couple of meetings with some small labels and some people over there,” William Lebihan explains. The reason, of course, is the release of his solo debut Coconut Milk.

“I try to send a lot of my music to different people whenever I have something done. I’ve kind of got the opinion that it’s kind of pointless letting it sit under the bed or something, so I just keep getting back to people to see what they think. I’ve got some friends working in the music industry over there, and they’ve set things up for me. So wether it just means we’re going to sit around and drink pints I don’t yet know, but it’s worth a trip just to see, just to put some faces to the email.”

The said debut finds William a very different musician than the one who fronted local metal act Pharaoh’s Playground in the mid nineties. The thirteen tracks it contains are passionate compositions that will undoubtedly encourage comparisons with artists like David Gray, or closer to home perhaps Alex Lloyd.

“I’m really happy with things,” he explains. “I hope it’s a good jump. Like all albums it’s kind of a snap shot of a period in time. It was put together at the end of last year, and it’s where we were at, at the time. There’s a couple of tracks on there that were really last minute that we just kind of wrote and got happening. It took longer than I thought. When you hear about bands taking two years to do an album, I used to think that was just a load of crap. Having been through it and paying for it myself I can see how much more difficult it would be with extra parties like record companies and publishers getting involved. It’ the biggest recording I’ve ever done.”

Is it difficult to be a songwriter in this kind of genre using the bass as your primary instrument?

“Not really. I really like to make the bass work for the song. I find it kind of difficult to write a song on the guitar and then branch off into the bass and get the right feel for it. I’ve had problems doing that in the past; I’ve got songs sitting there that I can’t pick up the right feel for. A lot of people have commented that the reason some of the songs work how they do is because of the bass lines. Plus I’m not a very goods guitar player,” he laughs. “I don’t play guitar live if I can help it. I’ve done a bit of solo stuff, but I just bang away and hopefully my voice can get me through.”

“I just try to get people that are really good at what they do to come in and help me. I can’t do everything myself. I’m not Lenny Kravitz, unfortunately.”

Vocally the album has offered up it’s share of challenges, with arrangements often soaring into the realm of four part harmonies.

“We did a lot of demos to get prepared when we went into the studio. It took a lot of time to do the vocal arrangements more than anything. The new stuff we’re writing now we’re pulling apart even more to get the arrangements right,” he explains. “There’s things I’ve learned that will go into the next one, but that’s all part of the process, I think.