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Darren Hanlon.
"If you want an angle for your story, I can finish watching Dr Who while we're chatting," says Darren Hanlon after it's revealed our interview time overlaps one of his favourite television series. "They're up to Jon Pertwee: 'Invasion Of The Dinosaurs.' We've got about eight or nine weeks until Tom Baker, but the Brigadier's in full swing at the moment, with his pants pulled up nice and high."
When we get around to discussing Hanlon's latest album, 'Little Chills' he explains what he perceives to be the main changes in his recordings since his 'Hello Stranger' debut.
"I definitely like the songs better on the new one," he enthuses. "I think the main change has been in the song writing, but I don't know if that's because I've played the old ones so much that I'm a little bit sick of them by now."
Hanlon speaks so candidly about becoming tired of his older material and I wonder what his reaction is to hearing his own albums played back in full.
"Can't do it. Can't go there," Hanlon admits. "If you hear it on the radio it's kind of a buzz and it's interesting to see how it fits amongst other songs on the radio, but as far as putting the album on and dancing nude around the lounge room, that's not going to happen. You know you kind of listen to it so much when you're mixing anyway, and after that it just numbs you or something, but I haven't heard it for a while. Still, if someone puts 'Hello Stranger' on, I definitely have to run away. That does happen at parties. People do it because they know what will happen."
Hanlon recorded at the studio of producer Craig Schumacher (Calexico) in Tuscon, Arizona, but admits he took few preconceived ideas with him on what to expect from the session or what kind of record he wanted to make.
"I didn't really think about it too much," he concedes. "As far as the mood goes, I was kind of just trying to attack each song on its own. I knew I didn't want it to be over-produced at all and I always wanted the lyrics to shine and for the messages to get through. Bree Van Reyk [drums] came over to Tuscon as well, and I kind of let her take the reins a little bit as well as far as production goes. I was trying to see what other people could bring to it and not be such a control freak, and I think that paid off."
"[Schumacher] is a very interesting guy. He's like a mad scientist, it takes a while to get his attention, but when you've got it he goes into this Zen-like state and just starts plugging guitars into weird effects pedals and he doesn't even tell you what he's doing until he hands you a guitar and says 'play!' There was no editing at all. He was very anti-computers. Pretty much everything you hear happened in the first or second take...
"There's a little bit in Ends Of The City where he wanted some kind of air sound, like wind, and he plugged this chromatic harmoniser pedal into this seventies foot-activated drum machine, and it just started making this bizarre noise. I mean, I don't even think he could do that again if he tried." Hanlon sighs. "The effects he plugged into that thing..."
One of my favourite 'Little Chills' songs is the quirky (There's Not Enough Songs About) Squash, and I was curious to see if there were many other things Darren Hanlon feels there just aren't enough songs about.
"Um, Crosswords! No, really, there should be more songs about anything people feel passionate about."
'Dr Who' for example?
"'Dr Who', well there's a few songs about 'Dr Who' actually." As if on cue, the Dr Who theme music blares out from Hanlon's telly. "Ooh, there it goes, can you hear it? He's not going to last another episode. It just surprises me every day how he gets out of these predicaments. How does he do it? But yeah, there was that Dr Who song, the techno one..."
And Doctorin' The Tardis by The Timelords.
"Yeah, there's that one too," Hanlon concurs, and then a sudden revelation strikes him. "Cate Blanchett! There's not enough songs about Cate Blanchett!"
Perhaps that's a challenge for the next album.
Steven Hocking
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'Little Chills' is out now through Candle Records and Darren Hanlon plays the Jade Monkey on Fri 15 Oct.
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