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The Whitlams.
 Even while retreating to New York to get some long-overdue down time, Tim Freedman's creative juices just couldn't stop flowing. Hence, upon his return to Australia 18 months later, The Whitlams' frontman had three-quarters of a double album written up and ready for completion in Sydney. The 16-track two-disc set album (split into 'Little Cloud' and 'The Apple's Eye') is a guaranteed gem to satisfy the ear and soothe the soul in 2006... but then, it's not like we expected anything less from The Whitlams.
"Well, I think the fashion these days is the shorter albums. A lot of successful albums have only nine, ten, eleven songs, and I thought 16 songs without intermission would be too long for a single record. There's also a sense of time and place, being two separate discs - the New York songs and the Sydney songs. I just think people lose their concentration after about six songs these days - if it's a great album, I'm waiting for it to be over by ten songs!"
Deemed by many critics as a return to 1997's mega-triumph 'Eternal Nightcap', the new album sees Freedman joining forces with J. Walker - the man behind Machine Translations - who contributes his own songwriting efforts on six of the tracks.
"I was a fan of his records, so I asked him to produce the album while I was still writing the songs. He actually helped co-write, but the lyrics are still only my department. Three-quarters of them were written in New York, and then when I came back to Australia I played all my fragments to the boys and we arranged the songs together. But for sure, this one's definitely a simple album, more like 'Eternal Nightcap', and kind of like 'Undeniably The Whitlams', because the next two albums after that were quite orchestral."
Many of the songs, Freedman claims, have actually already been road-tested, not to mention given a big tick by crowds who saw the band last November on their national tour.
"We played quite a few songs at the Governor Hindmarsh, but obviously this time we can actually play all 16 of them... It's always tough playing a song when people haven't heard it on CD, but I did find Keep The Light On a live favourite, which has made me reassess my opinion of the songs - I've now put it up a bit higher in the order. It's little things like that which come out of playing live."
And for those unfortunate enough to never have had the pleasure of witnessing The Whitlams live experience, here's a hint: "Energy. You'd probably be surprised how much energy there is from the records. We don't think it's important to sound like the record, so our live shows are a much rawer and muscular version of the songs."
And the Governor Hindmarsh can take a bow as well, since it still remains the band's favourite Adelaide haunt after all these years.
"We don't really see the point of going anywhere else because if it's not broken don't fix it. It's definitely become our stomping ground in Adelaide! This time we're bringing a great singer from Brisbane called Kate Miller-Heidke, who is a very captivating performer."
England and Ireland will also soon be on the cards for the Whitlams, Freedman says.
"We're concentrating on England mostly because we've only ever played London there, whereas in Ireland we traveled all around the country. We've done the odd gig in America on the way home from Canada, but it's just too complicated because of the green cards and work permits. Everyone in the band has European passports because all of our fathers are British, so Europe is a lot easier to play."
Freedman admits that Australia is still the main game as far as the Whitlams are concerned. "Once you've gone through all the trouble of recording an album, it's only a bit of extra work to get it released overseas. I like traveling, but I see touring overseas as only a little side-bit. Now, that doesn't mean that I won't try and take it overseas... but it doesn't exactly upset me if it doesn't work, either."
Nina Bertok
 | 'Little Cloud' is out now through Warners. |
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