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Bluebottle Kiss.
 "Bluebottle Kiss has always been a figment of my imagination. You kind of ruminate on ideas and arrangements and it's just a matter of finding like-minded people who can help flesh those ideas out and bring them to life... It's not a dictatorship or anything, but it's not a band like Fugazi or REM where all four members write the songs together equally."
It came as a pleasant surprise to me that new single A Little Bit of Light sounds distinctly Bluebottle Kiss, despite the departure of guitarist Ben Fletcher and other movements occurring within the band. On congratulating Jamie Hutchings on another fine effort, I asked him how such a feat was possible considering Bluebottle Kiss now have a remarkably different line-up. "Generally, ever since the band started, the music came from me four-tracking at home and then bringing ideas to whoever was in the band at the time and us working on them from there. With the line-up right now - [Ben] Groundsy's been in the band for quite a while, but the other two guys - they've been seeing our band and listening to us for years. So in a way they're more indoctrinated than previous members because they've been fans and they've got the knowledge. It's really hard work when you're working the old songs up, but it feels fresh once things start going on new material."
He pauses when I ask whether there was any acrimony with ex-drummer Richard Coneliano or guitarist Ben Fletcher, who left to concentrate on his own band The Devoted Few? "There wasn't any with Richard. He was always such a gentleman; he was one of the politest people we'd ever met. He gave us so much notice and offered to tour until we found someone else. I felt really upset when he was leaving because he was such a fantastic drummer. I couldn't get upset, however, because he was so good about it!"
He sighs. "With Fletcher it was really poorly orchestrated. We were halfway through booking a tour to America and suddenly I found out through someone else that he didn't want to go. It was a bit messy at first, but it's not like that now. I don't have anything against him leaving - it was just a bad way to go, the way things worked out. You don't hold these things against people."
Moving onto the music, there's been a noticeable inclusion of Biblical references and allusions in Bluebottle Kiss' lyrics. Hutchings explained that he read the Bible back to front when he was 22. I was amazed to hear this, since time-wise the Old Testament would've taken ages! "That's the biggest part, and in some ways that's the part that I like the most. Well no, I really like the gospels, but I like a lot of the imagery in the desert, and the old Jewish poetry through Psalms and Proverbs. I find it such an imagistic book that I don't necessarily use it in a religious sense - I use it more in finding powerful imagery. A lot of my favourite turn-of-the-century authors would do the same thing: use parallels because they're stories that everybody knows. I find that it's something that I've used more in song writing. I guess people don't know so much about it these days, as it's not as big a part of Australian culture as it was."
Bluebottle Kiss songs have a way of captivating an audience. The vibe is amazing and the lyrics are inspirational, yet I have to confess that I can never find any definitive meaning. Hutchings chuckles.
"I've always had the theory that great music is a marriage between noise and words, and you really can't pull one away from the other. What makes it so fantastic is that a lyric will come alive even if you don't know what it means; it will immediately transport you somewhere. You might stand on the edge of a cliff and see a huge storm coming, and what do you say about it? Music should provide the same thing. Even if it doesn't make sense, every song I write has some sort of meaning to me. But if a person that hears it doesn't pick up what it is, but gets a sense of foreboding or joy or melancholy, then that's what's going to hit them personally, and that's what makes it so amazing."
Steven Williams
 | Bluebottle Kiss and Karl Larsson play with Matt Handley & The Dagger Stares at Jive on Sat 13 Aug. |
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