Let It Flow

As the creative lynchpin behind dapper alt-country sextet The Hello Morning, there's no better person to comment on the state of the group than frontman Steven Clifford. Both versions of the band: the one that toils in the studio and the one that remains tirelessly on the road are invigorated and inspired.

Part of that is to do with guitarist Dave Manton taking the recording reins for their new four-track Tie That Binds. Clifford says that Manton has a cool way of working, capturing the full scope of what the six-piece do rather than breaking it down into tiny pieces.

“It just made so much sense. It's so different when you've got someone doing it on the inside. It was the experiment to see if it would work and it just felt so much better, it was so much easier. And that's important, it's not about doing something quickly so you get something over and done with, it's about not getting stale and capturing the right stuff, not labouring over little things that are really unimportant.”

The other part is that The Hello Morning are simply enjoying the challenge of playing their new material. Clifford explains that after becoming comfortable with the tunes from their self-titled 2012 full-length debut, the band are once again being pushed in the live realm.

“You take for granted how well you know all the intricacies of the songs – things just happen – and you don't notice but the songs just morph and take on their own life when they're in a live set and you've been playing the same songs for 18 months with the same six people,” he expands. “But then when you introduce something new you have to really do some work and make sure the arrangements make sense.”

Tie That Binds holds songs that formed organically for the Melbourne group. But even if things don't work that way all the time that's not such a bad thing either.

“Half of them seem to just happen, we just play them and it all just works,” Clifford remarks on songwriting for the band. “I like that energy when everyone is on the same page, where there seems to be a common ground that we're all drawn to. Having said that, when we made the [full-length] album, pushing on through things that were more complicated or maybe took a lot more debating, that had its rewards as well.

“[But either way] I'd rather just keep moving and do things,” he concludes, adding that stagnation is a terrifying prospect for the band. “I feel like you block up the creative flow if you just start storing things like, 'I can't do anything until I've gotten these songs committed to something'. And then [that way] we [always] have something to play; we get to play new songs.”