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Bluebottle Kiss.
 Jamie
Hutchings is the lead singer/guitarist of one of Australia's
premier (yet seemingly unpopular) live bands. Bluebottle Kiss
have been around for years, having just released their fifth
album, and are constantly touring to increasingly large audiences
- yet on the flipside, they have been starved of success both
in record sales and radio airplay. So it shouldn't surprise
me that Hutchings talked to me just after completing a shift
at his day job: selling wine for a mail-order company.
"Most people in bands have to do something, because you can't make a living out of it," he sighs. "Oh, it depends, like over these next few weeks I won't be doing much. I just move it around, it's a good job that way, most of the workers there are actors or musicians. You talk on the phone and stuff.
"I've done all types of things, you know, whatever gets you through. Most people who paint or write or play in bands have two-bit jobs, and that's what they do all their lives to have the flexibility to do what they want to do. I'm not really willing to sacrifice music to have a more secure job. I don't think I'd get much satisfaction out of it."
The band are going to be back on tour shortly along with another group of Australian indie stalwarts, Big Heavy Stuff. Although the two bands know each other quite well, this will be their first tour together. "We've played in Sydney a few times over the years. I think the first time we met them was years and years ago when we opened for them at the Punters' Club in Melbourne. We've never done a tour together - I mean we were just halfway through booking this tour and we were trying to put a bill together. And they were bringing out a new record and they hadn't toured for a while, so we thought we'd make it a kind of double bill. We're going to play last, but yeah we're publicising it as a double thing. I'd say because we're sharing a lot of gear there won't be such a rush to set everything up, so they'll probably play a decent sized set I assume."
The Bluebottle Kiss live show is somewhat of a true rock spectacle, in contrast to their latest album, which shows the slower, more mellow side of Hutchings' personality. But this time we might see a different kind of show. "You know, I've gotten to like the idea recently of trying to represent the records a little more, I don't like the idea of people having the expectation that we're going to be putting on this rock show every time, because that's not everything we do, so I do like the idea of writing a setlist where you can show everything the band does. And that's a real artform, because if you play too many slow songs it's hard for people to stay tuned in but if everything's flat out the whole time then that becomes monotonous as well. With the records, it's true they've mellowed out, but I feel there's still a lot of intensity there, it's just projected in a different way."
Another topic on which Hutchings is an expert is the craft of songwriting; however, Hutchings has no winning method of going about his work. "I don't really have any set way of doing it..." He hesitates. "I mean you can't really, otherwise it would be like making a table or something. Sometimes I'll have ideas before a song, other times I'll make a song out of an instrument, but generally there'll be some sort of idea either musical or lyrical that I'll base the song around. I might be one line, it might be an idea, a concept, a musical passage, and then it's a matter of building and arranging a song around that... The most important thing really is for it to be a combination of a really well-crafted song but also for it to have its own voice, for it to be a totally original piece of music rather than it being a poor imitation of something else. In songwriting I'm generally trying to approach things in a different way to what I've done before, either rhythmically, or the way it's been recorded, or lyrically. It's important for me to be progressive, I don't think I'd be happy being like a Ramones-type thing where you have a formula and you stick to it for twenty, thirty years.He pauses again. "I mean, it's a great idea [writing in the same style], it's like going to your favourite pizza place, you know what you're going to get, and there's nothing wrong with that but for me personally, the kind of music we make is different from that, I guess. We're a little more ambitious, so we kind of have to raise the bar each time."
Ben Revi
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Bluebottle Kiss play at Fowlers Live on Sat 6 March with Big Heavy Stuff and Centipede.
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