|
|
 |
Tender Jealousies.
 "I'm recovering from the flu," warns Adelaide music-maker Ben deHoedt, before the usual interview festivities begin. "I think I'm okay, though. It's going around, I think I've managed to watch everyone else with it, and somehow they've conspired and put together this really wicked version of it to give to me when they got better."
If you've never heard the name Ben deHoedt, you may be better acquainted with any one of his alter-egos. Perhaps you've seen him as the frontman of The American Public. Or perhaps you know him better under the acoustic-indie pseudonym of the Tender Jealousies. Maybe you know him better as electronic producer Delorean? If not, then you may even know him from his day job.
"Social work," he declares. "It's my last year [of the degree] and that's kinda why I'm leaving the country: I'm doing my field placement over in Canada. After that's finished, I'll either be working over there for a while, or else I'll go over to Europe. I've been doing the same thing for too long here. I want to work in the international community and I want to work in a multicultural setting... On one hand it's good for me to leave the country, and I haven't been anywhere before, so I need to change things for my own life, but it's also good because it's going to be good experience for the field I want to get into."
Which is?
"Working with people from different countries, people who are struggling to navigate the systems that are in place in their new countries. I'll be experiencing life from a minority perspective for the first time, which will be quite refreshing."
In the meantime, de Hoedt has two records he needs to release. Exhibit A: The Tender Jealousies' 'Burn Yr Bridges'. Exhibit B: Delorean vs. The American Public's '2001'. "Well people can expect to be exposed to two very different beasts, because one of them is a bona fide Tender Jealousies project, and one of them is not, and yet somehow they're both born from Ben deHoedt. For The Tender Jealousies EP, they can expect some of the sparseness and melancholia which they would have heard on the first record, which was called 'Goodbye', but there are a couple of band tracks as well, so it's a little more rock'n'roll. It's a little more upbeat, it's not so 'woe is me'... I've grown up a bit more since the last record. 'Goodbye' really was a break-up record, that's why it was called 'Goodbye', whereas I like the idea of calling it 'Burn Yr Bridges', because it's another way of saying, 'Fuck all that. I'm moving on.' I think that only just occurred to me just now. And I do like that idea, because I'm not interested so much in writing about post-breakup misery, as much as I was when I was writing 'Goodbye'. And with the Delorean vs. American Public EP, for a long time I've been wanting to re-explore these American Public tracks and finish off a couple of them. For years, I've been wanting to do this, but I've been too slack, but before I made plans to go away I decided that I had the motivation to finish these little projects."
Not only that, it seems like some of these little projects are really coming together. "I really liked the electronic aspects of the early American Public material. We were going to release a record, before we started trying to get on Triple J by hiring producers and the like, we were going to release a record which was all bedroom stuff which was primarily beats based. So it's not really a remix record, it's more of a re-working record. I've wanted to go back to the bedroomy kind of vibe and polish up and reconfigure some of those early elements of the American Public, which were really very endearing for all of us, but which somehow got lost."
Could this have been the reason for the demise of the American Public? "Things weren't fun anymore. It's not fun to be supporting You Am I when you've got your manager ringing up before the show asking if you'd been schmoozing with Tim Rogers yet. We were thinking 'well, why would Tim Rogers want to talk to us? We're just the support band!' And our manager was saying, 'Man, you've got to start networking...'"
Ben Revi
 | Ben deHoedt launches 'Burn Yr Bridges' and '2001' at the Grace Emily on Thurs 14 July with Andrew P Street. |
|
|
The latest issue
available now!
|
