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Human Nature.
Some things are inevitable on an annual basis: a long hot summer, a rise in taxes, Collingwood losing an AFL Grand Final... add a new Human Nature album to that list and you'd be pretty spot on. Hence the growing agitation amongst the legion of fans over the last couple of years with the band at its most inactive ever. No news, no album - enough to get even the most level-headed teenage girl sweating.
Rest assured, ladies: the band is back. Phil Burton, one quarter of the group and all-round nice guy, explains the band's long absence: "We've really just been having a break for a while," he begins. "I guess we felt we'd been doing a lot. We released two albums back to back and we just felt it was time for us to take a break - and we thought that maybe people were also hoping we'd take off for a while, we were so about the place so much," he chuckles. "We did different things. Toby [Allen] took a role in a production of 'Cabaret' that toured the country, and he won a few awards for that. Eventually we started thinking about the next record, and what it would be like for us and the kind of album we'd like to make. There was never any doubt that we would make another album together, it was just working out what style of a record we wanted. Andrew [Tierney] and I started writing and looking for songs, and it all came together."
Often bands get jaded if they are constantly in the cycle of touring/recording/touring recording, so it is of little surprise that the gang came back eager to make music again after having some time off. Burton agrees. "We all feel really refreshed coming back now. Performing together again feels really good, really fun."
A cursory listen to new album 'Walking The Tightrope' reveals one of the sources of that fun: The Bee Gees. "We've always looked up to them because they were a fine group," Burton insists, "and they lasted so long, reinventing themselves on a regular basis. We also love that up-tempo stuff, the disco vibe with the falsetto. Andrew has a really strong falsetto so we wanted to use that a bit more on this album. We wrote a couple of more disco-type songs and the other guys were really into it.
"We wanted an album of just really great songs. We were lucky
to find the Darren Hayes song [When You Say You Love Me]:
he hadn't decided whether he would record it or not. We did
a demo of it and sent it over to Darren. He generally doesn't
like to give away songs, but he loved it and said we could use
it."
Another interesting track on the new album is the old Mr Big
song, To Be With You. "Andrew came up with the idea for
that. It ended up working really well with our voices, and it's
a real group song. We got together with our guitarist and just
built up some bits around it, and it sounded great so we kept
it. Not often with covers do you get that feeling that this
song is yours, but we did with that one."
As such a successful "boy band, " Human Nature have weathered their share of critical attacks. "There are people out there who like you, and some who don't. That's part of the making music process. You simply can't please everybody," Burton shrugs. "We just do the kind of music we really love; we know we aren't going to appeal to people who like heavy rock or heavy metal or anything. We've always made pop music, and we think there is always room for pop music, providing it's really good. With this album we felt we haven't tried to slot into any particular sound, or tried following any trends. Hopefully the music will speak for itself."
Chris Niehus
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'Walking The Tightrope' is out through Sony. See Prize Frenzy(tm) for giveaways.
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