Big Rock

They may be returning to Australia for a quick three-date east coast tour promoting their debut album, The Horrifying Truth, but as I Am Giant drummer Shelton Woolright explains on the line from New Zealand, he's just ducked out from a session with the band writing material for the second album while they've some downtime between tour commitments. They're already booked into a studio in France to record it this coming May, once again with Australian producer Forrester Savell, so it's obvious they're not letting any grass grow under their feet.

“We do a lot of stuff with Quiksilver in Europe,” he continues, “and in their headquarters in St Jean de Luz, they've actually got a really beautiful studio. We went out and had a look at it last year and they basically said we'd love to have you guys here and record the album in the studio. So we're going to fly up Forrester, and he's going to spend a couple of months there with us recording the album. We've got a really good relationship – we almost kind of look at him as if he's a fifth member of the band.”

Savell, whose CV includes records with Karnivool and Dead Letter Circus among others, co-produced The Horrifying Truth with Woolright and bass player Paul Matthews. The two of them, along with guitarist Andrew Kerr, relocated to London from New Zealand a few years ago after their respective bands had broken up; they hooked up and decided to give it a shot. Auditions through 2009 turned up English singer Ed Martin, and they've been on the road between London, New Zealand and Australia ever since. When they released their debut album in NZ in August 2011, it debuted at #2 off the back of first single, City Limits, which scored them solid airplay. Meanwhile over in Poland, Purple Heart recently topped the Radio Eska Rock chart. Along the way, they became Quiksilver Ambassadors for Europe and have been playing its attendant festivals.

“We also had two number one hits on the rock network, the biggest radio station in Holland,” Woolright continues. “Purple Heart was voted by the public the second biggest song of 2012, so that was a bit of an honour, and we sold out our show there, which is exciting. The UK is a really hard market, but we expected that. We've been up there for five years and it's really fashion-based I guess – it's almost what you wear, not what you sound like,” he chuckles. “We're very much a jeans and T-shirt kind of band and we just put the song first, and I guess rock isn't the biggest sort of sound at the minute, or the last few years. We've just stuck to our guns and we've got some really exciting stuff – [BBC Radio One DJ] Zane Lowe played us on his show [Next Hype]. He's a really big tastemaker up there – he broke bands like Kings Of Leon – and he said we're a band to watch. We're just about to release Neon Sun up there as well, so hopefully that'll get a bit more love and push the band a bit further.”

Not that the internet community is waiting to be told whether I Am Giant are the business. The band has over 56,000 Facebook followers and there's even a 1,000-strong international 'IAG Army'.

As for the new songs, “We've really been influenced by a lot of '90s rock,” Woolright explains. “It's really hard to talk about because we haven't really had any input from the outside of the new tracks – we haven't shown many people – so we can't really tell how different it is. They're definitely different but they're still I Am Giant – you know, big rock songs.”

I Am Giant will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 14 February - Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne VIC
Friday 15 February - GoodGod Small Club, Sydney NSW
Saturday 16 February - X & Y Bar, Fortitude Valley QLD