Horsell Common

7 October 2007 | 6:30 pm | Staff Writer
Originally Appeared In

Hard work is something Horsell Common is all too familiar with. Having released 3 EP’s and split CD with Trial Kennedy, this Melbourne trio are about to drop their debut full length. We caught up with vocalist and guitarist Mark Stewart…

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Hard work is something Horsell Common is all too familiar with. Having released 3 EP’s and split CD with Trial Kennedy, this Melbourne trio are about to drop their debut full length.

We caught up with vocalist and guitarist Mark Stewart…

Interview w/ Mark Stewart (Vocals/Guitar)

of Horsell Common

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By Cameron Chambers





It’s a bit quiet down your

end of the line mate. 


Ha ha, I’ll do my best to speak

loudly as possible. 


Sounds like a plan. How are

you this evening? 


Yeah really good mate, how are

you? 


Yeah, good man. We’re on

a tight schedule so let’s get into it!  


Let’s! 


After 4 EP’s

and a hell of a lot of shows we’re finally getting a Horsell Common

full length! What can people expect from the new record? 


Something a little bit different

I reckon. To me, the record is in 2 halves. If people think they are

going to get what they’re expecting then they’ll get that in the

first 4 or 5 songs, but after that the record goes somewhere else. It

gets a little interesting and goes somewhere else… it does something

that we haven’t done before. 


The difference between recording

an EP and recording an album was enormous. Originally, before we recorded

we thought that you just needed twice the amount of songs that you had

for an EP but so much more goes into making a full length.  


It was harder to keep ourselves

interested in the record and even harder to try and keep all the songs

interesting. To keep people’s attention for 40 or 50 minutes took

a lot more effort than before.  


“The Rescue” has been a

long time coming, why the wait for a full length record? 


Our attention span at the end

of the day, ha ha. We were actually talking about this the last time

we were all in the van together and looking back, our EP’s sound a

bit lazy. If we’d stayed for another week or two then we could’ve

had a full length’s worth of material together… especially on Satellite

Wonderland. That could’ve been a decent album! 


There was no chance of us doing

another EP although we actually said that before we recorded Satellite

Wonderland but we fell into the trap again of writing 6 songs

that we were happy with and getting itchy feet, ha ha.  


I know you guys have

always laboured over every second of every song that you’ve written

– was it an arduous task to piece together 11 tracks? 


Yeah it’s fucked! Unless all

3 of us are happy with every second of music that we have then we have

to scrap it and start again. Most of our songs are written without any

preconceived ideas or riffs or anything like that. We just get together,

have some food and then start piecing the songs together.  


For “The Rescue” a few of

the songs were written at home which was cool. When I’m writing lyrics

at home I have an acoustic guitar with me for phrasing. I just strum

at some chords to see how the lyrics will sound and on one particular

song on the record I took it in to rehearsal to show the guys. I just

said these are the lyrics I’ve got but we can throw away the chords,

I was just using them to help me write, but they said the chords sat

behind it really nicely.  


The song didn’t really change

much from there; the guys just added their parts so that was a rarity

for us. Normally no one comes to the studio with a song, or even half

a song! 


When you’re choosing songs

for an EP, you’ve got to go with the most instantly recognizable and

hardest hitting tunes. In saying that, does writing a complete record

require a different approach compared to making an EP? 


I think so. When you’ve got

too much of the same thing 11 of the same songs doesn’t seem all that

interesting to me. We were conscious of that when we were writing so

we knew that we had 11 or 12 shots – or songs – to get it together

and that  made us feel like we could do what we wanted.  


We didn’t have anyone from the

record company knocking on the door asking how thins were going… no

one heard it until it was finished! We actually asked them to come down

but they never did, ha ha. Jaddan, the Boomtown owner was supposed to

come to the studio but he broke his foot so yeah, no one ever came in.  


We pretty much get a free run

of what we do and we definitely made a general decision to keep it as

interesting as possible. We didn’t want a record that sounded like

Satellite Wonderland but twice as long. We wanted something that was

interesting for us and for the listeners.  


Respected US producer Stephen

Haigler signed on to oversee “The Rescue”

– how did you guys swing that? 


It’s actually not as interesting

as it sounds. Most of the records that we’ve done we just sit at home

and look through our CD’s and look for records we like and his name

popped up on a Brand New record, something from Local H and Samiam as

well. So we just thought oh yeah, his name’s come up 3 times so we’ll

get in contact with him. 


We sent links to our MySpace to

him and he liked it. There was no way we could get over to the States

so we asked him to come over here. Australia is such an appealing place

for a producer and he’d actually been here before and used the same

studio we were working in too. It’s as boring and simple as that,

ha ha! 


Do you feel having Stephen

on board helped you guys to create a record that may not have been possible

without him? 


In terms of his attention to detail

I think so. In the past with some of our other records we’d pretty

much get a guitar sound and then start tracking the guitar parts. But

Stephen wanted a different amp and guitar sound for each verse and each

chorus and then he’d want to try something different again. 


He wanted so much shit going on

in the songs without it sounding ridiculous. It was frustrating at times

though, I’d be like “What the fuck is he doing, just give me a guitar

sound so I can record!?”  


Sometimes it took longer to get

the sounds we wanted but at the end of the day it sounds great. In the

past we just had one massive guitar sound but with this record we had

4 smaller guitar sounds and they became this huge sound and I think

it’s more colourful that way. It brought a certain aspect to the record

that we hadn’t tried before. 


 


Would you consider working

with another overseas producer again? 


The fact that he was American

had nothing to do with it. We’ll take the same approach with our next

record as well. We’ll just find someone that we like and if they happen

to be from somewhere else and we can swing it then we’ll do it! 


If it’s an Australian guy then

even better because it’s cheaper! Ha ha.


The 11 songs that make up

“The Rescue” are incredibly diverse and show another side of Horsell

Common, one which many fans probably didn’t know was there. How do

you think the slower songs will translate in the live setting? 


Dunno, we haven’t played them

yet! Ha ha 


We are playing 4 or 5 new songs

live at the moment but they are the more live sounding songs

like “Help Is On Its Way” and “Good From Afar”. You know, the

no brainer, loud guitars kind of songs to get behind.  


We’ll get the slower songs out

there eventually. Each time we jam we try them out. None of the arrangements

are ever changed that drastically before going into the studio so if

we ever did something in the studio that we can’t pull off live, then

we’ll just revert to playing it how we originally wrote it in rehearsal.  


We’re happy with the songs before

we go into the studio so we’ve got no hesitation to play them the

way they were demoed!  


Stephen Christian of Anberlin

contributes vocals on “I’m Dead”

– did you guys approach him to sing on the track or was it something

that came about once your bands had toured together? 


Well, apart from Satellite Wonderland,

which was supposed to have some of our friends singing on it but we

didn’t get around to it because we recorded it in 2 days, we’ve always

had friends sing on our records… and we’ve always sung on our friends

albums too.  


We have Lisa from Capeside singing

on our acoustic track as well but when we wrote “I’m Dead” we

just thought this is a nice little part, let’s ask Stephen if he wanted

to do it. It just so happened that Anberlin were coming through town

at that time so we shot him an email and demoed the song for him and

asked if he’d be interested. 


His vocals for that song were

actually recorded on the first day we were in the studio so we did the

vocals and then hung out for a couple of hours, grabbed some dinner

and then went and saw the Anberlin show at The Corner. It was great! 


As you mentioned,

“Annie, If You’re Listening” features vocals from Lisa of Capeside

fame on guest vocals – are we ever going to hear this song live? 


I hope so… although I don’t

own an acoustic guitar. We’ll play some shows and I’ll buy one!

I would really love to play it live though, I think it could be done

really well. Especially in smaller venues.  


Traditionally, Boomtown Records

bands have always gone over well with a younger audience, do you think

“The Rescue” is a record that kids will be able to get their heads

around? 


We’re on a tour at the moment

called Breakout which is strictly 12 to 17 year olds and the new songs

are going down better than the old songs so there you go! Ha ha 


Has being on Boomtown given

you guys a chance to open yourselves up to a new audience, one which

might not have given you guys a chance previously? 


Absolutely. We did the Boomtown

Showdown last year and then a run of shows with Behind Crimson Eyes

in December which was really cool. 


We’ve always been the odd band

out on most shows so it’s not an issue anymore. The Boomtown tour

wasn’t any different for how it’s always been for us. We started

off playing hardcore shows so yeah, nothing’s really changed. 


A lot of bands write music

which is very “hear today, gone tomorrow” but Horsell Common have

always strived to do their own thing

– do you think “The Rescue” is something that will still sound

relevant in 10 or 20 years time? 


I hope so! I definitely have a

huge respect for… there are a few bands in Australia who I really

look up to because they have these loyal fan bases. Bands like You Am

I, Something For Kate and Karnivool. Their fans are just so unbelievably

dedicated.  


I don’t have any ambition for

us to be like Oasis and be enormous, I’ll tae the small fan base over

that any day of the week. We love to work our arses off and grow our

fan base with us.

The general vibe of

“The Rescue” reminds of bands like Far and the Deftones

– who were some of Horsell Common’s key influences when writing

the record? 


I think you hit the nail on the

head mate. We’ve always been into those two bands. Last year we got

to tour with Jonah Montraga (ex Far front man) and we got to play 4

or 5 songs with him each night. It was the most unbelievable experience

for us as a band.  


We had to play our own set before

him every night and we played at twice the normal speed so we could

get off stage and play with him! At the same time, it still felt really

natural and not all that different to our own shows. There was just

heaps of melody and fun and big guitars but yeah, I guess that’s where

we do take our influence from.  


The clip you guys shot for

“Good From Afar” turned out really well, who came up with the concept

and location? 


That was me actually. I didn’t

come up with the location but I wrote the treatment. We write all the

treatments for our own videos. We figure they’re our songs so we may

as well tell the story ourselves. 


We did it in the old ballroom

at Flinders Street Station. It used to be used as a club in the 40’s

and 50’s and it’s falling down now… we were lucky to get in there

for the day! We were only given 12 hours to do the video between 7am

to 7pm and they only gave us 24 hours notice that we could use it! They

called and said you can have the room, but it has to be tomorrow. We

basically emptied our houses and grabbed random stuff to make the place

look homely


The theme was to make it look

like where we recorded… like we had been there for 6 months because

that’s how we did the album. Toby Anguin shot it. He’d worked with

our friend’s bands and he was awesome so we knew we should go with

him. He was stoked to work on it and it turned out unbelievably well! 


That’s 15 minutes

mate so I think we’ve got to wrap it up but thanks so much for your

time again mate.  


No, no. Thanks heaps for doing

this. 





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