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The Sleepy Jackson.
Twelve days after the Big Day Out and eleven before the next Sleepy Jackson show in Adelaide, it was somewhat surprising to learn that my interview with the band’s drummer would take place via telephone from London. Malcolm Clark was carrying a heavy cold and most probably a mild dose of jetlag when I asked why his band had escaped our slow-burning summer for a dose of the chills in the old country.
"We’re here to play one gig: a headline show tonight at the Astoria which is already sold-out. Then we go to the NME Awards show on Thursday and fly home on Friday," he explained, with a casual air that belied the rapid rise of a band many regard as the brightest new star on the Australian musical horizon. " It’s a really different scene. Especially coming from Perth where we’re used to just being in a band and playing in the local venues every week. Now, we come over to London and you look at a magazine in your hotel room and there’s a picture of your band. It’s pretty overwhelming."
After their London jaunt, The Sleepy Jackson will do a quick lap of Australia before jumping on a plane again for a two-month tour of the United States, including a spot on Conan O’Brien. For the uninitiated fan, it can be difficult to reconcile the Sleepies’ live show with their wonderfully eclectic and superbly produced debut alum, ‘Lovers’. On stage, the band splice familiar, golden nuggets of guitar pop with waves of noisy instrumental mayhem. For Clark, it’s a vital element of live performance, as he explains: "Some people like to hear exactly what’s on the album and I just wonder what the point is. You might as well just turn your album up to ten and listen to it. For us, every live show can go off on a tangent and I kind of like that: sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It gives you a bit of adrenaline. It makes it really exciting for the band and also for the audience."
It’s an admirable way to approach live performance, granted,
but having created songs as infectious and affecting as This
Day or Come To This it seems a pity to obscure them
with bursts of white noise, flailing limbs and, in the case
of their new guitarist at the Big Day Out, Noiseworks-esque
air punching (I only forgave him after some sublime slide guitar
on Good Dancers).
The strength of The Sleepy Jackson lies, purely and simply,
in their songwriting. They’re operating on a whole different
level to most of their peers. It’s a difficult question, but
I ask it anyway: how? "Luke always instigates the songwriting
process. We went to the studio a few times when the producer
was doing some touch-ups, so we just sat out in the corridor
- there was a piano there - and came up with a couple of songs.
We ran in to the studio to get some microphones set up so we
could get it down. Then we just worked on things from there.
That was how we did Rain Falls For Wind and Acid In
My Heart."
That’s two brilliant songs born out of impromptu jam sessions, and brought to life under the guidance of the enigmatic Luke Steele, described variously in the press as a ‘dictator’ and a ‘control freak.’ Before I even have a chance to ask about the band’s main songwriter, Clark leaps to his defence: "The rest of the band has got really angry about how he’s been written about. He’s a really cool guy that writes some cool songs. It was getting to the stage where he was sick of talking about the album. Like anything, if you get over something you tend to get fed up talking about it and you can come across as, um..."
Disinterested and arrogant?
"Yeah, and Luke’s not that kind of character but sometimes in interviews he’s portrayed that way. That’s why we’ve started to spread the interviews around a bit more.
"Luke’s incredible in the studio. He just has a different way of approaching the recording of music. In a live show you can play things naturally but in a studio you can make something that sounds perfect and can be heard forever. He had such a strong idea of what he wanted and what kind of sound he wanted...If it’s working he’s like, ‘Do what you want’: he’ll say ‘Try doing this’ or ‘Try doing that’ but he’ll never say ‘Don’t do that.’ It seems to be working."
Working indeed! Clark is the master of understatement - and
in a coughing, wheezing, jetlagged way, he’s a philosopher too:
"We’re probably not taking off as quickly as other bands who’ve
shot up all of a sudden. But if you go up fast you’re going
to come down really fast. The fact that the Sleepies have had
a really slow progression has meant that we’re always going
on an incline - is that going up? - so it means we’re more likely
to have a long lifespan. It doesn’t matter what band you play
in, you always want to move up to a higher level and usually
it’s something you dream about forever but every now and then
a band gets lucky."
In the case of The Sleepy Jackson, I’d argue that luck has nothing
to do with it.
Mark Scruby
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