| | | |  | Faith & science. Some would have you believe they’re mutually exclusive ideas. Some would say the two are inextricably entwined, coiled around each other’s lengths in an eternally tightening knot. Shane Nicholson simply sees them as two ends of a remarkable...
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| Interview | Access All Areas.net.au: Thanks for joining us Shane, you must be pretty excited to be getting back out there and releasing new material after all this time?
Shane Nicholson: I am really looking forward to it. It's been a while since I've done anything in Australia so I am really excited with the new album, and I've got a new band to take on the road... it's all new and it's all exciting!
Access All Areas.net.au: You're about to release your second album titled 'Faith & science'. How do you think the Australian audiences will take to this new album in comparison to your debut four years ago?
Shane Nicholson: I'm not sure… this is definitely a progression on the last album; it's definately a progression for me. But it's been a long time between records so I am not really sure but fingers crossed.
Access All Areas.net.au: You've been spending a lot of time in the US in between albums, how have American audiences taken to your music?
Shane Nicholson: Really good! I'm really happy with the kind of way my album’s gone. With this new one I took four years to make and release and in between that time I spent going back and forth and it was more enjoyable each time I went there. It was a great experience and I wrote a lot of good songs out of it. I write when ever I can, in hotel rooms at airports… anywhere.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your first single off the album is ‘I Know What You Need’, can you tell us about the single?
Shane Nicholson: I wrote that song in a hotel! A hotel in Melbourne actually just before a gig, it was after sound check and I was waiting to go back to play and it was one of those songs that come so easily. I seriously wrote that song in about fifteen or twenty minutes, It just fell from the sky and into my lap. Some songs can be like that and there’s others where you have to wrestle them to the ground and they take a few days but this was an easy song that wrote itself.
Access All Areas.net.au: How does this album differ do you think from your first?
Shane Nicholson: I think I’m more proud of this record than any other I’ve made because it says more than any other record I’ve done. It’s spans over four years and documents a wide time frame in my life. I h ad a lot of changes in my personal life and the songs reflect someone changing over time – it’s wider in scope than anything I’ve done before. It’s a grown up kind of album, more of a pre album to the point where I let go a lot more on this album and not too in control of this album like usual, it organically evolved with musicians. It made itself in a way and we just took our time and let it grow slowly and naturally.
Access All Areas.net.au: What’s the plan from here in terms of touring the album in Australia?
Shane Nicholson: It’s definitely my main focus at the moment… touring, I did spend lots of time in the US last album so it’s been so long and I don’t feel that I’ve dug my heals here at home. It’s been nearly over three years so my focus now is on the future to be touring here and reminding people about the record.
Access All Areas.net.au: And are there plans for another US release with this album?
Shane Nicholson: I’m excited about that and building work I did there on the last album but it’s definitely something down the track sometime next year after I get time to do Australia.
Access All Areas.net.au: With this record you enlisted in the help of Jim Moginie from Midnight Oil and Diesel to “roughen” up the album a bit, how did that go?
Shane Nicholson: I talked to both guys over the last few years about doing some stuff in the studio. I got a lot of the songs nearly finished before I had called them and I had one track in mind for Diesel to come in and sing on and play guitar and I just let him do that song, let him have free reign and just go nuts. I gave him the recording studio for the day and he ended up playing on half the album and through in a lot of curve balls. I didn’t want the record to be one dimensional, I wanted more ideas on it and that was Jim’s job, to mess things up a bit and take away from what I’d normally do and was really inspiring. Just really amazing stuff and he was quite inspiring to work with.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve recently been married to country singer, Kasey Chambers, are there any opportunities to collaborate between the two of you either with this album or possibly in the future?
Shane Nicholson: Maybe in the future, from a creative sense I wrote a single for her to sing with me on but we don’t collaborate creatively together. Music is a big part of our lives and we play lot’s of music at home but we don’t work a lot together being that we like to leave work outside. But there’s always a chance to do something but it’s not something we’re planning at the moment.
Access All Areas.net.au: So as far as the future goes for Shane Nicholson, what’s in store?
Shane Nicholson: I am always writing so hopefully it wont be four years again for the next album… there will be plenty more albums to come and I am quite excited with the ideas I have to change things up again. I’m looking forward to making more music! |
| Biography | Faith & science. Some would have you believe they’re mutually exclusive ideas. Some would say the two are inextricably entwined, coiled around each other’s lengths in an eternally tightening knot. Shane Nicholson simply sees them as two ends of a remarkable album.
Faith &Science is Shane’s long awaited second album (a wait that, it must be said, owed a lot to the heavy attention and touring Shane gave his debut in the US). A confident, diverse and finely crafted collection of tunes that were given the time to grow up and find their own feet.
Nine years ago Shane was introduced to the world via his hard working, Brisbane-based rock outfit Pretty Violet Stain. They scored a load of airplay, released a couple of EPs and an album (despite frustrating record label delays) and toured Australia incessantly. After their debut (and final) album, Parachutes & Gravity, was delayed for the third time running, Shane began to consider other avenues for his music. “We just felt like we were fighting a battle all the time and couldn’t really move on because we were stuck trying to get this record out,” remembers Shane. His much-dreamed-about solo side project suddenly beckoned him with a seductive finger and a flash of creamy thigh.
“I think it was a real knee jerk reaction from being in PVS for so long,” Shane considers. “I was enjoying the freedom of being out on my own for a while and not being in the confines of a band as such.” The result was It’s A Movie, a beautifully sparse and simple collection of classic singer-songwriter tunes. As a solo offering, it did everything good solo albums should – it was intimate, confessional and dripped with honesty so raw it almost needed disinfecting. “It’s A Movie for me was about taking a step back for a while, and doing things really organically and slowly,” admits Shane. “Now, I understand that record was really melancholy but that’s what I wanted to make at the time. I knew it would give me the platform to make the kind of record I have now with Faith & Science, which I think is more dynamic. I think of it as It’s A Movie on steroids!”
From the opening strength of Safe And Sound, you can hear exactly what he means. That incredibly emotional voice is still there, but solidly backed by the music you know is driving his heart. It’s not surprising when you consider that Australian luminaries such as Diesel and Jim Moginie (Midnight Oil), perform on the album. “I called Jim and said, ‘I’d just really like you to come in and mess my record up a bit, it sounds very Shane at the moment. I just want you to play with it.’ He said, “That’s what I do best!’” recalls Shane with a laugh. What is surprising is that Shane, a notorious control freak in the studio (in previous recordings he would perform most of the instruments himself), was able to relinquish some direction to others.
“I realised that by letting go a little bit and by trusting some other people’s judgment, especially Nash’s [Chambers, producer], you can be pleasantly surprised by where your songs can go. I did make a conscious decision that I wanted that to happen on this record That’s most of the reason that I really like this album – there are parts of it that I’m still discovering that other people did that I’m liking more all the time.”
Admittedly, letting go of what Shane considers his aural “journals” can be a difficult prospect. Sure, some of the songs on Faith & Science are much more hopeful and uplifting than his previous work, but conversely, the lows are equally more magnified. As Shane’s personal life has transformed incredibly over the past two years, so has his body of work.
“There are such extremes, lyrically, in where I was at with this record,” Shane offers. “It amazes me how much my life has changed since then. Writing songs like Acrobat Ache and Home, which are really unhappy, to writing songs like Everybody Loves You Now and All The Time In The World, they’re just so different. It was a really cool thing to listen to this record all finished and see how much my life has changed in the time. That’s what’s important. For me, that’s where my songs come from, it’s what I’m doing or where I’m at, so it’s important for me to document my life as I go. It’s kind of why this record for me is much wider in scope than anything else I’ve done before, it documents that for me.”
And the best thing is you don’t need to sneak into his bedroom when he’s out to read it for yourself – Shane has opened his heart once again and whether it be pain, joy or plain philosophical questioning, it’s there for all to see. Faith and science – we all need a bit of both when it comes down to it. |
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