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Epicure.
"We haven't been up to a great deal actually," Epicure guitarist Dan Houlihan says lethargically, "we've just been on a break. We've just been rehearsing, writing, relaxing... the three Rs. Not doing a lot but getting ready to get back into it at the end of this week. Back on the road."
Seeing as this interview foreshadows the return of Epicure to the Governor Hindmarsh, I'm quick to quiz Houlihan on their live show. For example, what does he see are the real differences between the band on stage and the band on record?
"The record itself is probably a little more delicate-sounding. We kind of sound a little bit... I wouldn't say rockier live, but the songs tend to be a bit more open and loose. They're the main differences I suppose. Something like Sunlight, live we don't put all the overdubs of guitars in there. But the general feel of the progressions is all the same, just our sound live is a little bit more loose, a bit more wild."
He doesn't sound terribly wild to me. In fact, one thing I remember about their last show was that, in contrast to many bands who speed up their material for the stage, Epicure seemed to be playing a lot of their music rather slowly.
"We definitely hear the songs a different way when we play them live," Houlihan explains. "They do tend to be, if they're not close to the pace on record they're usually a little bit slower, so they're a little bit more breezy. That can go up and down as well, some nights we play them too fast. That's something we've been working on in rehearsal over the last few weeks as well, anyway, getting a little bit more of our timing and delivery for the set a bit closer to the record. But it's just interpretation, in a way, you go away and listen to the record and think, 'shit, we're playing that way too slow!' So you try and make corrections. But we just play them the way they come out on the night."
In particular, their latest release, the 'Self Destruct In Five' EP (that song appears also on their album 'The Goodbye Girl'), contains a live version of old single Feet From Under Me that has lot a lot of its grunge rock sheen and has been replaced by - well, a completely different, slower, slide-guitar song with a roughly familiar vocal line.
"Well I wasn't in the band when they first recorded that. I think when we started doing it, we were about to go and do some shows and we thought, let's have a go at some old songs. And we started playing Feet From Under Me, and it's such a big, open, loose dirge all on the one chord, so we make it sound what the band is now, in a way. It sounds a lot more like this line-up than the previous line-up. I don't think it was a conscious decision, I think we just said, 'Oh, here's the chord,' we just jammed on it and that's the way it came out."
Ben Revi
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Epicure play at the Gov on Fri 15 Oct.
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