Kingswood
Melbourne’s Kingswood have barely had time to catch their breath between the release of their sophomore album After Hours, Close To Dawn and hitting the road on tour across Australia. The guys are hitting up Darwin this month, bringing their catchy and celebrated indie rock music to the Top End. Off The Leash had a chat with guitarist and songwriter Alex Laska just one day after the release of their latest album.
Interview with Chelsea Heaney.
You just launched your album, congratulations. How does it feel to finally have it out there?
Yeah, it came out yesterday. It is weird actually, we have been waiting for it to come out for so long and then, in the days leading up to it, everyone was like ‘oh it is actually coming out on Friday’. It kind of took us by surprise even though we have known for so long. You can get caught up in the development and the building of it and forget about the actual putting it out part.
This latest album is quite different from your first release. Is this something that was intentional or did it happen organically in the recording process?
It was 100 per cent a natural progression. We could have set out to make it so different deliberately, but as soon as that is your intention, your artistic motivation is skewed. We have changed so much as people over the years, so things are undoubtedly going to be different. It was a completely natural thing and the way it was written, it was all about lyrics and melodies that moved us personally. There are elements of diversity on the first album though, that match this one. It is something that really excites us.
You recorded After Hours, Close to Dawn in Nashville. What was that like?
That was incredible. We did it in a studio called Sound Emporium – it is legendary. It used to belong to Johnny Cash’s producer, so obviously Johnny Cash did all his stuff there. The artists that have gone through and the albums that have been made in that room – like Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant did his rst return album there and Pharrell booked in just after we finished – it is pretty cool. The rooms are amazing. They sound unique but also familiar, they have their own tonality to them.
What can we expect from your live show?
We are basically building the means to be able to replicate the album live, which as you mentioned is so diverse, so we are putting a lot of work into how that is going to translate live. We will have an additional member playing piano, guitar and singing. And there are all sorts of textual additions and special triggers that we have designed so that we can play samples off the album live. It is pretty involved but super cool and means we can really get into it and explore everything we were doing on the album. We can’t wait to get out there.
What made you want to come up to Darwin on your tour?
We try and get to everywhere we can. If it fits in the touring schedule we do try to get up to more remote areas because there are obviously people all around Australia that don’t have the means to get to a southern capital city that still want to experience this music. We try to make that happen.
Fri 21 Apr | 8pm | Discovery Darwin | $30
