Parallel Lions: Extracurricular Activities

With Art of Fighting enjoying an extended hiatus, frontman Ollie Browne is satisfying his creative urges with new trio Parallel Lions. He talks to ADAM D MILLS about writing and recording their debut album 'Holding Patterns'.

Just so everyone’s clear on this: Art of Fighting have not broken up. In fact, they’ve been jamming together recently, with a view to possibly reconvening sometime in 2010 (but don’t hold them to that). The reason this is an issue is that frontman Ollie Browne has recently been seen around town playing with a new band called Parallel Lions, whose debut album Holding Patterns has just surfaced on new Australian label Bird Music.

The genesis of much of the material on Holding Patterns dates back to late 2008 when Browne began writing tunes for what he originally envisioned as a solo project.

“I could see that Art of Fighting was going to be on a hiatus of some length, [and] I didn’t know how long that was going to be. We’d talked about it a bit, and everyone was like, ‘Of course we’d like to make another record, but let’s not make any plans about when that’s going to be.’”

Browne then secured funding from Arts Victoria’s grants program Victoria Rocks, which allowed him to immerse himself fully in the process of working on this new material. “I kind of used it as a motivational device. And also it’s good to get free money,” he laughs. “At the same time, I was starting to think that I’d like to be able to play the tunes I’m writing with a group. I don’t mind playing solo, but it’s much more impactful to play with other musicians.”

Enter guitarist/keyboardist/soundscaper Hamish Michael and drummer Sam Bates.

“I met Hamish about five years ago, when a friend of mine was directing a short film, and he’d asked me to write a song for this central scene where a rock star character, for want of a better word, comes to a party and plays a song. Hamish, who’s also an actor, was playing this part in the film. So I had to teach him this song, and we also had to record a version of it with him recording the main vocal.”

Eventually, the two ended up as roommates, and when Browne began to hatch the idea of transforming his nascent solo work into a fully-fledged band, Michael was the first person who came to mind. Sam Bates, meanwhile, was an acquaintance of Browne through the jazz scene (Browne, you may or may not know, is an accomplished jazz drummer himself, and currently plays in a group called The Hoodangers).

“I called those guys up and we started to jam on the tunes,” Browne continues. “Somehow it transformed itself into this new group. Those guys got involved in the recording, obviously, and had an incredible amount of input.”

“Consciously trying to do something different to what you’re used to can be both a curse and a boon. It can be really good for the songs, but it can also sabotage what makes your songs OK, or what makes your songs workable.”

Browne took a somewhat different approach to writing this time to how he’s worked in the past. Usually, he says, he’d write songs with just an acoustic guitar, laying down the basic tracks on tape before presenting them to his Art of Fighting bandmates. But having recently bought himself a ProTools rig that came with “a bunch of free software”, Browne embellished his unfinished songs with electronic beats and synthetic textures, which were then interpreted and refined by Bates and Michael in the studio.

“The songs retained their essence, but I think they’re a lot more dynamic,” says Browne of the finished versions versus his original demos. “I found it hard to get a lot of dynamics into the tunes when they were just MIDI-based ProTools excursions with live overdubs.”

Given Art of Fighting’s revered status among fans and critics alike, it’s inevitable that Parallel Lions are going to invite comparisons. But Browne is quick to acknowledge that while it was in the back of his mind during the songwriting process, it never became an overriding concern.

“It was definitely in my mind, hence playing around with computer software, which I’d never really looked at before. But also I wanted to make sure that the songs had a bit more rhythmic drive in them. Not as a reaction to AOF, but just to do something else.

“Also, I wanted to play with some different chord patterns,” he says. “With AOF, there’s a palette of chord ideas that a lot of the songs are taken from, and I wanted to break out of that. But it was a struggle in a way. Consciously trying to do something different to what you’re used to can be both a curse and a boon. It can be really good for the songs, but it can also sabotage what makes your songs OK, or what makes your songs workable. So there was a fine line there. Some might say that this new record sounds very similar to AOF, and it probably does in a lot of ways.”

He’s right. Holding Patterns does bear certain inescapable similarities to Art of Fighting. But they tend to hinge on Browne himself – his voice, his songwriting idiosyncrasies.

But just as Peggy Frew, Miles Browne and Marty Brown add their own distinct personalities to each Art of Fighting record, Browne’s current collaborators are central to Holding Patterns. Michael’s burbling electronics and Bates’ jazz-influenced drumming are nothing you’ll ever hear on an Art of Fighting record. And while a direct influence from Parallel Lions is unlikely to bleed back into Art of Fighting, the experience of writing, recording and playing under a different set of circumstances is almost certain to have in indelible impact on Browne.

“It’s very different playing in this group than it is playing in Art of Fighting. It’s two different levels of concentration. With Art of Fighting you have to concentrate on the minute details of the music, and trying to get the mood of the song right, and create that atmosphere. But with this band, the songs are a bit more up-tempo, and I find myself concentrating more on dexterity tasks, like actually getting the chords and singing at the same time. So I’ll probably find myself playing a lot more intricately on the guitar with Art of Fighting, because I’ve been used to doing that in Parallel Lions, which is a three-piece so it requires a bit more guitar-wise from me to fill in those gaps.”

Parallel Lions will take up most of Browne’s time over the coming months. Thereafter, anything’s possible. The return of Art of Fighting? Another Parallel Lions record? Who knows. But Browne’s confident that Holding Patterns isn’t the last we’ll hear of the group. It’s likely to be an ongoing project, he says.

“I think it probably will be. We’re having a great time. Ultimately it’s a ‘see how it goes’ kind of thing. But we’re all really committed to promoting this record and playing as many shows as we can. It remains to be seen whether I can maintain being in two bands as the primary songwriter, but why not?”

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Parallel Lions will launch Holding Patterns at Notes in Sydney on November 11.