Adam Said Galore: Hey Driver.

3 March 2003 | 1:00 am | Peter Madsen
Originally Appeared In

Galore And Peace.

Adam Said Galore play The Healer on Saturday and The Alley on Sunday.


t’s a long hike to sunny Vegas from the far reaches of Western Australia, but Perth based quartet Adam Said Galore are set to make a return with their second full length album Of Lost Roads. The disc offers up a unique and twisted listening experience, ranging from three and a half minutes of near radio friendly swagger to near 15 minute behemoth tracks over the course of it’s hour plus running time.

"We learned to play together, so we probably don’t know how to play with anyone else,” bassist Simon Struthers jokes.

“We’ve been recording on and off for the past year or so. We’ve basically got our own studio and recording gear this time, and we’re doing it all ourselves. We had it set up in our guitarists bedroom and belted out songs for a week that we’ve been coming back to a various times. We got our own studio space half way through the year, so there were things written in the studio as we went along.”

“It was the quickest record for us to get out. About four weeks after it was finished it was out in shops, whereas (last album) The Driver Is Red too two years to come out after we finished recording it, and we were writing songs the whole time. So it’s been good to have it out so quickly.”

Was it important to the band the recording sounds live? Like four guys up on stage?

 “I guess so. We really are a live band, and that’s the sound that we have in our heads when we play the songs. At the end of the day we are two guitars, bass and drums, and the album is pretty true to that. There’s a few extra things like vibraphone or some acoustic guitar on a couple of tracks, but it really came down to how it felt on the first couple of takes.”

So what of the massive soundscapes that dominate Of Lost Roads?

“We’re not out to rush tracks, and some tracks benefit from that time to develop. We really like quiet bits to be quiet, and loud bits to be loud, and we want the range in between. You can’t really rush it. Things come together in their own ways, and sometimes it takes fifteen minutes. Sometimes you can write a song and thing, wow, that was only five minutes long, then you time it and realise you’re playing 11 minutes… it’s a really unconscious thing.”