The Henrys: Sum Total.

The Henrys launch Sum Of Us at the Goodearth Hotel, Spring Hill on Friday.

"We say that the album sounds totally crap before 10 o'clock at night, but as soon as the clock strikes ten the whole thing comes alive and people have to sit down with a glass of red or a hot chocolate or a glass of port or something and listen to it to kind of really catch what The Henrys are on about."

That's guitarist/bassist Steve Drinkall's intriguing summation of The Henrys' new album Sum of Us. A loose conglomeration of musicians from a variety of well-known Brisbane bands (Steve himself is from Rhubarb), The Henrys have crafted a beautifully evocative, shadowy recording built around the delicate, poignant songs of Matt Griffith. Exquisitely produced by the ubiquitous Caleb James, it's certainly true that the songs come into their own in the later hours. So what started the whole project off?

"Well Matt and I were sitting together just writing songs for the fun of it, and then we thought, well, we should record them, otherwise they just get lost," Steve explains. "So we were just doing that initially. We kicked in some of our own money just to go to Caleb's studio to really just keep a record of the songs, but it turned out much better than we thought. So then we were kind of faced with the fact that, well we're not really a band, but we have a release that we want to release so we came across this organisation (TEAR Australia), some friends of ours were involved in it that do development stuff in the third world. So we thought if we put these two things together we've got a record that doesn't have a band, and a cause that doesn't really have anyone promoting it."

With TEAR Australia working to provide adequate water and sanitation in the third world, it's certainly a worthwhile cause, with proceeds from CD sales going directly to the organisation. You'll get the chance to hear the album performed live this Friday night at the Goodearth Hotel. Um, where is that exactly, Steve?

"It used to be the Gazebo Hotel on Wickham Terrace. They have a room up on the tenth floor, which is seriously one of the best rooms in Brisbane. It's got floor-to-ceiling glass walls that are about twenty feet high, and it's on the tenth floor of the building so it's got 270-degree views of the city. So we just play against the glass, so that the backdrop for the band is the whole city. We picked that because we did our launch for our EP there, and for a band like the Henrys, we're not a pub band, and the view and the atmosphere of the place kind of contributed to the experience."