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Gersey.
 Craig Jackson from Gersey is sitting in a white cubicle somewhere in Melbourne with only a desk and a phone for company. No, he's not working in a call centre (for one thing, that'd mean he'd be in India): he's doing an intensive day of press for his band's upcoming tour and the release of the four track CD-EP 'Eyes Are Wide Tonight', the quintet's first recording since 2003's impressive 'Storms Dressed As Stars' album.
It's a step away from the band's trademark sprawling, textured guitars, stepping back to the early 90s with echoes of the shoegazing likes of Ride and Lush (not to forget Australia's contribution: heck, lead track The Girl Is My Gun even namechecks Canberra's guitar pop heroes the Falling Joys).
"I think that's a combination of that we wanted to be a little more upbeat with the next release, and having Dean Turner at the production wheel," singer/bassist Jackson explains when I ask about the poppier, more aggressive new sound. "He definitely set the bass and the drums up more than we anticipated. It was a nice little surprise."
The choice of Turner - best known for his day job as bassist in Magic Dirt - was clearly an inspired one, but Jackson denies that there was any great decision. "It all happened quite strangely," he explains. "We were at a party at a friend's house and I was asking him about Magic Dirt and he was asking me about Gersey, and I said to him 'we've got this song' - which was The Girl Is My Gun - 'and we can't decide on a chorus: we've got about seventeen of them, but we've played it so many times that we don't know what's good, it's gotten to that point,' and he offered to help out: he said 'this is what I do, I'm good at putting things together, show me what's you've got'. So we got together, we showed him and he picked out the chorus, we worked on it a little and all of a sudden we were in Birdland [Studios] and he was producing. It was great!"
So Turner just works parties, offering to complete songs as a way of getting production jobs? "That's exactly it, it's very subliminal. But at the same time it works!"
Jackson pauses when I ask whether the new disc marks an about-face in Gersey's musical direction. "I'm not really sure. We still really love that kind of music, but we made a conscious effort about twelve months ago, when we started writing, that we wanted to be more concise, more upbeat. We've done two records of sprawling, slow-building, cinematic kind of stuff and we decided it was time that we did something more concise and more immediate. But there are still a couple of songs in there that still have that real Gersey dynamic, just they're maybe not as long as before. Ollie [Browne] from Art Of Fighting said there was a real desperation and urgency in the new stuff that wasn't in the old songs, and we kind of agree with that. Parts of our live sets have been described as having that Ride/Swervedriver kind of thing, and we really love those bands. And I think music has maybe changed a bit in that direction over the last 18 months: you have that 80s/early 90s British underground guitar music sound around at the moment."
So the Chapterhouse revival starts here?
"Yeah, maybe," he chuckles, "but there's that sort of sound around at the moment with your Bit By Bats and your Fakers - and even bands like Wolf & Cub. It' really exciting, this change up in music: for a while there it was all just denim rock. And that's fine, you know, but..." he laughs.
I point out that two of the bands that he mentioned are from our own fair city. "And there's another band called Pharaohs, they're from Adelaide," he adds excitedly. "That drummer - he's probably the best drummer I've ever seen, and he's fifteen and looks like he's in The Strokes or something. I saw them at [Melbourne club] Pony and they came on at four o'clock in the morning or something and his hi-hat broke about half way through the set, and he's fixing it with one hand and drumming with the other, and keeping everything going, still doing all the fills, and that was it: I thought 'right, that's it, I'm giving up music.'"
Andrew P Street
 | Gersey play at Jive on Fri 21 Oct. |
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