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ON THE COUCH WITH: Wolfmother

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

AccessAllAreas.net.au: You’re currently on tour opening for AC/DC. How are you finding the shows so far?
Ian: Very chaotic, for lack of a better word, I think. Sydney and Melbourne were just insane, I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life. Playing to crowds of 50,000 a night is not something I’ve been able to prepare for.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: How’ve you been checking out AC/DC’s sets? Have you been watching from side of stage or venturing out into the crowd and enjoying it from there?
Ian: I’ve been doing a bit of everything. The crowds are just madness, it’s just deafening. DEAFENING. I go to front of house usually to watch the shows cause that’s where it sounds the best. I think you get the best view from there, too. And from the side of stage, you’ve got the screens and everything – it’s intense. Just pure intensity.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: What were the band’s thoughts when you were told you were going to be opening for such a legendary rock act?
Ian: We found about that last year in March when we were in LA recording the album and, for me, because I was still new to everything and I had just got into Wolfmother and this was happening, it was a little bit too much to take in for a few weeks. I was coming to terms with it and telling my parents about it and telling my friends and they couldn’t believe it, and it didn’t register to me properly and I spent the whole year with it at the back of my mind assuming, ‘Okay, okay. I’ve got time to prepare for it. It’s okay.’ And still, when the time came, I was a little nervous before that first show. But now I’m just having a ball! Chuck back a red wine or two before hitting the stage, getting up there and it’s just fun now.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: Are there any rock star backstage shenanigans that you can tell us about?
Ian: Well… not exactly. I’d like to, I’d like to say that it’s chaos but behind the scenes there has to be clockwork because it’s a pretty huge setup and everything needs to be running in order, there can’t be any muckups. So everyone behaves themselves backstage in order to keep the shows going.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: Following the AC/DC tour you will be touring with KISS in Europe in May; two big rock names. How does Wolfmother see itself as a band – an intimate rock band or a stadium rock act?
Ian: I think at the moment we’re sort of blurring the lines between the two. We’ve had a lot of success with the smaller shows but we’re also really getting into the swing of playing these bigger stadiums, and Andrew [Stockdale] is pretty good at working the crowd. At this stage the stadium gigs are a new experience and its something we’re working towards, I could see us doing it regularly in the future. It’s just something we’re aspiring to right now.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: The band’s new line-up has been performing live together for just over a year. Does it feel like it’s a brand new band or is there a different dynamic because Wolfmother existed prior to this new line-up?
Ian: I think it’s definitely taken a new shape, a new sound. Of course Andrew is still the front man, his voice commands the music, but we’re all different players, especially Dave [Atkins] with his style of drumming – it’s just pure power. Very mountain man style drumming. I think he’s definitely played a huge part in shaping the sound of the band. It kind of makes me think that the more intense sound would work better for stadium gigs, so I think we’re headed in the right direction.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: You have a track on the ‘music inspired by’ soundtrack for Alice in Wonderland – Almost Alice. How did you go about writing this song – did you see the film before writing it?
Ian: No, no we didn’t see the film. Andrew was just told the wonderland theme and to sort of go with that, and when we were touring America last year he had these riffs that he’d just muck about with while we were sound-checking and we just developed that. A couple of days before we headed to Europe in January we went to his house and set up a little studio there and kicked around on those riffs and a song just came out of it. It was a very spontaneous process.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: Have you seen the film yet?
Ian: I haven’t seen it yet. I’m going to see it with my family when I get back home from touring. My parents bought the soundtrack and they liked it!

AccessAllAreas.net.au: Who decided the set lists for the shows? Is it just one person or group collaboration?
Ian: I think the vibe for the night sort of sets the tone for the set list. We just have a look at the crowd and gauge their reaction and Andrew and Dave decide what could be the heavier ones, what could be the lighter ones, what they think will work with the crowd. On stage, if the vibe changes, Andrew will whisper in my ear, ‘We’ll do this one instead.’ We’ll do 10,000 Feet instead, or do Colossal instead and it just adapts to the night.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: If you could pick one standout show or moment from the past year being in Wolfmother as being your favourite, what would it be?
Ian: Probably playing Neil Young’s piano… in Neil Young’s house! We played his charity festival, the Bridge School Benefit that he hosts every year, and has all the bands come to his house the night before the festival started and we were all just sitting there talking and chatting and we’re in the living room and there’s this beautiful old grand piano sitting there and his wife sees me looking at it and she’s like, ‘Why don’t you go an play something!’ And I’m full of fear and I’m like, ‘No way, are you kidding! Thank you, but no, I couldn’t possibly.’ And she said, ‘No, no. Go on, it’s fine. He’ll be okay with it.’ So I go up and I sit down there and I look at the piano and there’s this notebook on the music stand with lyrics – he’s still writing songs on it. And I was just playing some soft, mellow chords while everyone was talking and my heart was in my mouth, along with a lot of other organs. I’ll take that with me to the grave; it was a very special moment for me.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: What does the rest of 2010 hold in store for Wolfmother?
Ian: We’re going to blitz Europe. In January we did a lot of European shows and I found, to my surprise, that there’s a huge fan base there for us. Like, lots and lots of love. So I think for the rest of the year we’re going to hit up Europe and enjoy all the support we’re getting from there at the moment.

AccessAllAreas.net.au: Is there a possibility of more Australian headline shows later in the year?
Ian: Nothing at this stage. But expect the unexpected!

Interview by Marcus Roberts

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Brothers and sisters sound the siren, a new moon is rising and the return of Wolfmother is well and truly upon us.

After the whirlwind journey the band went on with the Wolfmother album, a voyage that resulted in over one million sales, sold out riots disguised as shows the world over, multiple ARIA Awards and a Grammy, the time has arrived to break the self-imposed silence.

Wolfmother has emerged from the Sunset Boulevard studio it called home for the first half of 2009 into the blinding sunlight of a brand new day with a thundering 2nd record, Cosmic Egg.

This regal cacophony is a record that’s at once a darker shade of night at one end of the sonic spectrum and a euphoric light of day at the other. Every colour in between is a vivid tone on the kaleidoscopic palette that Wolfmother have drawn from on this, their sophomore broadcast.

Cosmic Egg bolts the gamut from New Moon Rising to the open road riffing of California Queen, from the thumping groove of Fields to the heaving sludge of 10,000 Feet and back via the Rhodes-led lament of Far Away. The title track sounds like the kind of carefree goodtime you’d have hoped for from Wolfmother II, while Phoenix too echoes of the debut record whilst sounding wonderfully reinvigorated.

The title Cosmic Egg relates to the age-old black hole theory of optimism, wherein the implosion of a star doesn’t instigate a disappearance or destruction, rather a new beginning of a new universe.

The seeds for Cosmic Egg were sown when the touring cycle for the triumphant debut record came to a close, and frontman and guitarist Andrew Stockdale sat down to start from scratch at his home studio in Brisbane. The songs themselves that comprise the record came together from different times and places, geographically, mentally - “some of the songs were written rather spontaneously during the last 2 weeks of tracking, some have been floating around in one form or another for 2 years.”

Following this extensive gestation period and the enlistment of new band members, Stockdale and co, with producer Alan Moulder, travelled to Byron Bay, Australia, to begin pre-production. Byron served as a makeshift spiritual home for Cosmic Egg, and according to Stockdale, “served well for creative purposes, for the writing and rewriting the songs it was the perfect place to be.”

Moulder meanwhile brought a giant hessian sack of worldly producer experience to the table, filled of milestone works from the likes of My Bloody Valentine, The Smashing Pumpkins, Ride and Nine Inch Nails. Stockdale laments “he was, and is, one of the factors I’m most excited about when it comes to this record. I guess we connected creatively, and he’s just made the album sound fantastic, incredible, warm, heavy, tasteful, formidable. If nothing else, whatever happens at least I can say…….this record sounds superb. And he’s got a way of doing that.”

From there the process transplanted to Los Angeles for recording proper to commence, a location that added another dimension of rich experience to Cosmic Egg, and the perfect place to make magic from one’s own mind, a fact concisely reinforced in the resultant 50-odd minute suite.

Cosmic Egg is, in short, the sound of the Wolfmother world being rethunk and cracked wide open, with a sprawling, jubilant galaxy of musical and metaphysical harmony spilling forth. Expedition is welcome to all.

“Wolfmother was never like this huge plan to take over the world or anything, ‘let’s write the hugest songs in the world’ and that kind of thing, but it was definitely like ‘ok let’s try and impress 12 people, now let’s try and impress 50 people, then 100 people, then 200 people and so on’. Now, with Cosmic Egg, I’ve done my job to an extent, it’s in the hands of the listener.”

www.wolfmother.com

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MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE

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Your most memorable Festival moment or experience?
Playing Big Day Out and doing shots with Lily Allen while she sun-bathed beside our portacom.

Favourite Artist you’ve seen at a Music Festival?
Neil Young – a true masterclass.

What’s your ideal Festival line-up?
In no particular order: Radiohead, Oasis, Elbow, Ryan Adams, The Verve, Wilco, The Killers, Coldplay, Blur, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, The Strokes, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Arcade Fire, Ben Harper, The Black Keys, BRMC, Dave Matthews Band, Doves, Paul Simon, The Stone Roses.

What are your tips for attending Music Festivals?
Take the best of friends, because the greatest things are best when shared with the greatest of people.