Stepping Out

They may both reside in Sydney these days, but Adele Pickvance and Glenn Thompson – the pairing behind new pseudo-eponymous duo Adele & Glenn – have played an incredibly important role in the Brisbane music scene over an extended period of time. They first joined forces as a rhythm section – Thompson on drums and Pickvance on the four-string – supporting Robert Forster on a world tour in the mid-'90s when he was performing in solo mode during a hiatus from his day job, but when Forster once again joined forces with Grant McLennan and dusted off The Go-Betweens moniker at the start of the millennium Thompson and Pickvance soon found themselves in the ranks of one of Australia's most beloved bands, part of the line-up responsible for 2003's Bright Yellow Bright Orange and 2005's ARIA-winning Oceans Apart, remaining in the ranks until McLennan's tragic passing in 2006.

Of course they have other accolades in their extensive resumes – in particular Thompson's stint as sticksman for the much-loved Custard for the last few years of their existence and in subsequent reformations, and Pickvance's lengthy stint with The Dave Graney Show – but it was during their time together both on the road and in the studio that an alliance was forged, so when they both found themselves living in Sydney it seemed an obvious step to reunite the team. Thompson had been recording in solo mode under the guise of Beachfield – releasing the album Brighton Bothways locally in 2009 – so it wasn't too much of a stretch to form a duo, and now they're ready to unleash debut long-player Carrington Street on an unsuspecting world.

“It started quite a while ago,” Thompson recalls of the collaboration. “We played together with Robert Forster and then The Go-Betweens for years, and then in the downtime between those things we tried to get something going quite a while ago when Adele was still in Brisbane – we played a gig or two, but it was just too difficult, because I'd fly up there and try and work a set up in the afternoon and then we'd go and play a show at night, it was a bit chaotic. It never really got off the ground that way, but then Adele moved down to Sydney a couple of years ago and I thought, 'Beauty!' and put my other project on hold and started up with Adele.

“We've spent ages together [in the past] – when you tour with people you get to know them pretty well, and I suppose you either never want to do it again or you become good friends. It's been pretty easy. We've always had great fun onstage together and been there for each other and worked things out – there's a lot of things to organise when you're touring around, especially when you're musicians in other people's bands.”

Once the project was off the ground they set about documenting the songs that they had between them – according to Thompson they didn't have any preconceived notions of how the ensuing album would sound, they let the songs themselves dictate the direction.

“It was pretty organic,” he continues. “I had some songs because I was getting ready to make another Beachfield album and Adele had some songs that she'd written before she arrived, and we just went from there. We started playing together, and I have a little studio set up about five minutes walk from my house so we just thought, 'Okay, we'll go and start recording these songs'. We didn't have many set ideas, we just thought that we'd do it a bit non-traditionally – like we didn't want to have straight drums and bass ploughing in the background – we just wanted to make it interesting, so we just did one song at a time and followed our noses wherever it took it and where it seemed to work.”

The result is a cohesive album which hangs together well despite being comprised of a collection of songs quite disparate in tone and feel.

“Yeah, they are quite different,” Thompsons agrees of the songs' eclectic nature. “I don't know why. I guess that recording process that I just described is part of the reason – we let each song just be whatever it was. Also we did it over a long period of time – well, not really that long, it was the best part of a year. We both worked but not full-time, and we had a shared Monday off so we'd definitely be there on a Monday, and we'd do it other nights and the weekends as well, but it was a very organic process and I think that leads to some of the songs sounding pretty different. And the songs were written over different times – some were written quite a while ago and some were written as we were recording.”

Thompson is no stranger to recording material he's written – as well as Beachfield he was responsible for the enduring Custard classic Music Is Crap ­– but he doesn't feel that there's a different mindset required working on your own creations compared to songs written by somebody else.

“No, it doesn't seem to be, thinking back on it that way,” he ponders. “Being in the studio with Custard or The Go-Betweens, recording was always a pretty open process – most people are open to how you want to interpret the song on whatever instrument you're playing. Some people have reasonably set ideas, but even when they do and they tell you what to play you never play it exactly like that anyway. I've always felt like I've had a lot of creative input so it wasn't that much different. I suppose the big difference is that there was only two of us, and each of us gave each other a lot of input, because you can't do everything – it kept us both busy.

“But you come to know what's expected. What takes up most of my headspace these days is that I've been learning how to do the technical side of it as well. I remember when I first started recording, I just didn't want to know about that – my job was to play the instrument and get the vibe. In those days it was just the drums, so my job was just to get a good drum track and the right vibe and I'd just ignore the other stuff. But since I got to a point where I wanted to record stuff and I couldn't afford to do it because I was just by myself with Beachfield, I realised that I was just going to have to learn how to do it at home, so I've immersed myself in that for a long time – about ten years now I think – so when I think of the studio now I'm thinking from a technical perspective, I'm thinking microphones and pre-amps and all sorts of gear, which was something that I'd never had to think about in the past with Custard or The Go-Betweens. That was someone else's job.”