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Jebediah.
Jebediah fans, breathe a sigh of relief: their much anticipated album 'Braxton Hicks' has just been released and a sleepy-sounding Kevin Mitchell was keen to tell me all about the band's new sound, new-found enthusiasm and releasing independently for the (ahem) First Time.
The majority of 2003 was spent writing tracks before the album was recorded in January. A few weeks ago fans were given a taste of what to expect when the Jebs toured briefly behind the single First Time "It was great," Mitchell enthuses. "We played a lot of new songs, which is always kind of risky. Sometimes people only want to hear the older stuff but it seemed to go down well. It was just great to be on the road again on our own tour. We haven't done it for so long."
'Braxton Hicks' came about after some big changes in the life of Jebs. Sony cut the group loose in 2002 and the band took the opportunity to spread their wings. "It's been a really good thing especially at this point in time" says Mitchell. "As we have been together for a long time you can become formulaic or get into a routine of how you do things, and making music shouldn't be like that. It's been really timely for us to go independent.
"When we split with Sony we did look around at other labels but after thinking hard about it, heading to the independent thing was the best and most satisfying option that we were going to have." he explains "It forced us to challenge ourselves and make things fresh and new. If our fourth record was done through Sony we would have run the risk of making a really tired album so I'm really glad things worked out the way they did."
Mitchell sounds happy about how things turned out. "For me personally, it's rejuvenated me heaps. After the last record I was really questioning where the band was heading and my inspiration for the band. A part of that I dealt with by doing the Bob Evans album [Mitchell's solo nom-de-plume]. All those things put us in a position where we were reinspired and we discovered new ways of doing things and new ways we could push the band forward. It's been a good kick in the pants."
It's only natural that the album reflected this new found freedom. "I think it still sounds like Jebediah. It's a little bit more melodically diverse and progressive, a bit more pop, has a wider range of melodies and it just a bit more out there."
Creating a new sound may risk changing the dynamic of the fan base, though. "When you're talking about the real die hard Jebediah fans, they'll dig it," he insists. "The people who stayed with us on the last three records will stay with us on this one, but it will be interesting to see if we win more people back with this record who didn't get into the last one. I think there's every chance this record could alienate certain fans who wanted a certain thing from our band. There are still some rock'n'roll songs on there but it's not as rock'n'roll as the previous ones. It's the first time where I personally was really focused on making a record that was going to satisfy me creatively and not worry about how it was going to be accepted by people. That sort of took a backseat this time round. It was really important that we went in to this record and really pushed ourselves."
Not having anyone to answer to let Jebs creative juices flow freely, it would seem. "We've never really been given guidelines but with the last record we had to keep going back in to the studio to demo and the record company wanted to hear radio singles. There's rules like the vocals have to come in within the first thirty seconds so the intro can't go for to long. All those stupid rules take you away from the point and reason from writing in the first place. None of that stuff existed this time around and we could totally please ourselves. It's was nice to be back there again.
"It was really important to us to be happy with the end result in ourselves and as long as we felt that we could deal with whatever commercial success the record had, either way, whether it was good or bad. I think you can get in to danger when you try to hard to please other people and it doesn't go too well then you're kind of left with nothing."
The title of the album happened purely by chance. "Last year I was reading a human body book and I just discovered the term and I'd never heard it before" he states. "First of all I liked the sound of the words, then I read about what it meant ["Braxton Hicks contractions" are phantom contractions experienced by some expectant mothers mid-term] and I started to think of the metaphor in relation to song writing - the contractions in labour and how you think of your songs as children. Writing a song is like giving birth to life and the contractions are like the songwriting process."
Speaking of which, if you caught Jebs in an Adelaide concert a couple of years back you may remember Mitchell announcing that he and bassist Vanessa Thornton we going to have a baby. "There's absolutely no truth in that whatsoever!" he laughs. However, he doesn't deny that he said it. "That's the sort of thing I would say. I'm probably the most guilty of saying stupid things like that. I'm always making stupid comments. For some reason I find myself telling people that we have group sex and that kind of thing. Maybe it's some kind of fantasy. That's part of my psyche that I don't want to delve too deeply into!"
Kelly Parish
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'Braxton Hicks' is out now through Redline/Shock.
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