The Holy Soul: 'We're Just Fuckin' Renegades, Man'

The Holy Soul speak to A.H. CAYLEY about a 10-year career that almost wasn't. Photos by LYNDAL IRONS.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] “The band started as a joke,” says The Holy Soul's lead singer Trent Marden. “This band comp had come up, we'd seen all the other bad fuckin' punk bands playing, it was like, ‘Alright, let's just see how good we are. Let's go onstage, not practice, be shit, and [act like] the MC5 and Blues Explosion and shit like that.’ We watched too many James Brown videos. It was like, let's do that. Just be ridiculous, you know?”

The Holy Soul formed in 2001 at the University of Western Sydney. In this time, it has seen three line-ups and only two albums, with a third on the way. Though their physical output has been small, as a live band they’ve played countless gigs and have toured both nationally and overseas with several big-name artists and icons. Now, in their 10th year, it seems odd to think The Holy Soul were once little more than a musical gaff.

“[The band comp line up] was a whole bunch of music students' bands, you know, playing tricky time signatures, and it was dull, so I guess it was probably pretty easy for us to be edgy,” shrugs bass player/manager Sam Worrad. This remained the case until Marden witnessed Love's Arthur Lee in 2003, which convinced him he could write better music than he currently was. “And sing nicely. It's really pathetic, it was that easy … before that we had one song, [and] a whole bunch of surf rock jams, and I'd go around the audience yelling that we were the best band … and it turns out, you don't have to scream. I'd forgotten about microphones making stuff loud.”

“We had some really funny early recordings,” adds Worrad. “But I remember Trent saying that was a pretty pivotal moment, and it was a great fucking show, but I remember probably six months after that we played at Livid in Melbourne and I remember just watching The Drones for the first time and thinking, ‘Oh, wow. We should really get our shit together a bit more.’ I felt pretty piss-weak compared to them.”
“So, basically,” laughs drummer Kate Wilson, “personal shame and feelings of gross inadequacy got us to 2010.”
“Yeah!” laughs Worrad. “It's fuelled us ever since.”

Today, The Holy Soul is: – Trent Marden, a call centre worker and guitar teacher, who writes the majority of the songs and is the perfect frontman for the band: tall, gangly, nonchalant but threatening; – Sam Worrad, a writer for suburban newspapers and also a freelancer – most often the voice of the band offstage; – guitarist Jon Hunter, co-founder of Magnetic Recording Council in St Peters, who has recorded The Holy Soul since their 2004 Love Has Left The City Limits EP; and – Kate Wilson, previously of The Black Ryder and currently also of The Laurels, a scientist working on product research and development for a microbiology company.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] In late-2009, The Holy Soul released their second album, Damn You, Ra, following 2005's Sign Of The Triangle. It was critically adored. Possibly the best review of the album, however, came from one of Wilson's friends, who was caught having sex to it. The track was the slow-burning, tense, misanthropic 'I'm Spent'.

“We're not sexy people,” Marden bluntly states.
“It's not appropriate music,” adds Wilson. “It's like, the least appropriate song to be fucking to.” This is true. Though there's a certain lustful quality to Damn You, Ra, it's more of pent-up frustration than mood music. Conversely, it's a great album to soundtrack one's break up. Marden agrees, eyes lighting up. “That's what my songs are for!” he exclaims proudly. “My songs will fuck you up, and you will break up.”

“It got mastered the day Michael Jackson carked it, actually, so it was too late to add some Off The Wall strings,” jokes Worrad. “We couldn't capitalise … I'm happy with how it's come out. I don't think we had much of a plan of how it was supposed to come out, but I think we were just like [simpleton voice] uh, let's do like, a really good album.”

“Some of us wanted to make one that sucked,” Wilson interjects. “We had lots of argumentative production meetings.”

“Good won out over suck, so it was out-voted,” laughs Worrad. “For me anyway, I wanted to hopefully do a record that was a lot better than our previous record.”
“We put a bit more effort into this one,” admits Marden, before realising what he's said. He leans into my shitty dictaphone. “I'm not saying that the other one was poorly done, though. You should buy that too.”

“I guess the other one was also done in a pretty fractious state of the band,” Worrad explains, “it wasn't the nicest sort of pleasant period for the band and I guess maybe as a result we didn't really get together enough to work on as much stuff, whereas this time we were more co-operative, and you can probably hear that.”

The “other one”, Sign Of The Triangle, was two line-ups ago. At that time, the band consisted of Marden, Worrad, Tim Malfroy (guitar) and Owen Penglis, of The Straight Arrows and most recently Catcall, on drums. It's a great album, but nothing on Damn You, Ra. Listening to it now, it's easy to see the progression of both the band's sound, and of Marden's songwriting, from one to the other. It's no secret to say the band dynamic is now at its best, too, with Malfroy's departure announced onstage at the Triangle launch.

“I thought everyone knew, you see,” says Marden. “He just told me, 'Alright, I'm announcing my last gig.' I went, alright, cool. And then I've done it and everyone was just like, 'What?!' I just thought everyone knew, man!” Worrad didn't. “I mean, it wasn't a great surprise, but –”
“… not psychic enough,” deadpans Wilson.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Now in their third incarnation, The Holy Soul are happier than ever. Hunter was asked to join in 2006 after his work producing the band, and then it was Hunter who asked Wilson to join in 2007. “Jon was a pretty obvious choice,” says Worrad. “So then we found The Laurels,” continues Marden. “And found a really good drummer, and stole her.”

Though they're able to laugh about it now, before Hunter and Wilson joined, it seemed likely the band wouldn't go on.

“I think I thought that was entirely possible before we groomed Kate, that it was all just going to die in the arse, 'cause there were just all bad vibes and it felt like it had just totally fallen apart,” Worrad explains. “We did that trip to Melbourne where we played with The Drones and Kim Salmon at the Tote, and we just had really great gigs and it should have been fun but I had a really fuckin' miserable time, and I came back home thinking, ‘Urgh, fuck this’, and I was pretty close to just giving it away … But I don't want to get into all of this ... [I’m] happy with how the [latest] album came out and how it's been received. What about you, Jon?”

“It's done some pretty good things for us. We got to go to Taiwan and Malaysia and stuff, and that was largely based on the strength of the [songs from the] album.”

The Asian tour of mid-2009 was a big moment for the band, leading up to Ra’s release. They played two dates, Malaysia, on a Tuesday night – a disco in a shopping centre – and the Music Terminals festival in Taiwan. “We got told it was gonna be like, Patti Smith and Sonic Youth and stuff, and we're like, alright,” says Marden. “Then it turned out it was like, Placebo and Tricky.”

“We took a journey with Tricky,” muses Wilson. “We introduced him to a new drug [betel nuts], then we hung for a while, then he became a sex pest.”

“Fucken Tricky … He has no concept of time. It's like, you know, chew this for two minutes,” Worrad recalls, before pulling off a near-perfect imitation. “‘When? Now? Now? Now?' It's like, alright, we'll tell you. 'Now? What, now?' He also name-dropped John Jarrett, which I thought was hilarious … It's just kinda weird hearing Tricky talking about Noni Hazelhurst's ex-husband.”

The tour itself came from an equally weird encounter at Melbourne's Pony, following an “atrocious gig”, playing the 2am slot. “Which we weren't gonna do,” explains Wilson. “Because the last time we played at Pony in Melbourne we got stranded there 'til like, 6am –”
“Five,” corrects Marden. “And my plane came in at six. We made this awesome game of, let's throw crates at the window next door.”
“Yeah, we were trying to get arrested so the cops would drive us home.”

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] The band met a promoter called James Chen, who offered them the opportunity then and there. “[He’d] taken the Dirty Three to China and Taiwan and a few other things,” recalls Worrad. “He just came up after the show and went, ‘Hey, you know, do you wanna go play some festival in Asia, and stay here, and we'll pay you this much, and all that, and we're like –”
“We're like, 'bullshit!'” yells Wilson. “They said, you can't have any beer on your rider. You must have fresh mango juice and vodka. It was awful conditions for the band to work in,” she chuckles.
“Yeah, it was harsh, says Worrad. “And then we played on the Music Terminals Festival. I guess we would have played to roughly like, an Annandale's-worth of people spread out over a large area, which is cool. And we got to stay at some pretty plush digs, which was nice. I had enough fun in those 10 days to tide me over for a few years.”

Despite being received so well on their first time in another country, it took The Holy Soul quite a while to be accepted in Sydney circles, outside of some short-lived keenness from “industry schmoozers”. They disappeared according to Worrad, “due to the nature” of the Love Has Left The City Limits EP.

“There was one guy,” he recalls, “who used to come see us quite often, and we went to lunch with him, and he was like, 'Hey, Trent's really got that Dave Gleeson [Screaming Jets] thing about him’, and that was kinda like, maybe we shouldn't have lunch with you anymore. There was also a hilarious label guy who met with us and kept on talking about how much he liked The Holy Ghosts. I shit you not, it took me a while to figure out he was talking about us. He also bought us middies. Which was an immediate ‘no’ as far as we were concerned.

“I think when we started playing in the city,” he continues, “there was this whole bullshit like, ‘Saving rock, blah blah blah’, you know. The whole, Jet and The Vines thing, and maybe some people thought there was something in us for about two months. Just various industry folk coming to our shows. But we were basically just too inept, and too disorganised and too disinterested I suppose to take them up on any offers. I think you can track it to pretty much when the EP came out. I really like the way it sounds, but it sounds like total shit. And I think they were just like, 'Fuck these guys'!”

“They're not playing by the rules!” quips Marden.

“Basically we're just fuckin' renegades, man. You can't ask why, alright,” Worrad laughs. “We didn't get heaps of approaches, but just a couple of people that were interested in managing, or putting out a record, and we just went with someone who we felt comfortable with, like Rusty [Hopkinson, of You Am I] who had Reverberation at the time and it was just better to ... talk to someone who had a bit of a clue about what we were doing. As opposed to thinking you were like Dave Gleeson. For obvious fucking reasons! With all respect to Dave and The Nevilles and the rest of The Jets.”

The Holy Soul soon opened for You Am I, which Worrad considers their “first proper gig” in Sydney.
“That was a bad gig,” Marden says.
“Yeah,” agrees Worrad. “We played pretty bad, but we had to learn some stuff, I think we only knew about four songs before that gig. But I remember a mound of vitriol back in the Mono days of Mess+Noise, for being like, pampered, out-of-nowhere, whatever, because we had fuckin', first-on at the Metro with like 62 people. There were a couple of really angry people which was kind of hilarious.” “You shouldn't have hired that limo, guys,” quips Wilson.

It must have been slightly disappointing that the schmoozers stopped calling, surely?

“Well we wouldn't be here now, I don't reckon. Bands burn out. It'd be like, alright, put another album out now. Put out another single. Do this jeans ad. Do that,” says Marden.
Hunter agrees. “There's not many bands that have lasted, like, since when The Holy Soul started, the bands that were around at the time – not many of them are around anymore.”

“We're fortunate to have a line-up of the band [who have] a stupid amount of dickhead fun together … There's not any pressure to do anything, really.”

“Maybe it's just because we never got anywhere and we're unsatisfied and we have to keep going!” Worrad laughs. “But also, especially in the last few years, the onus of any gig or whatever has been: if it's fun, we'll do it. We don't have any grand careerist plan or anything like that. We're fortunate to have a line-up of the band [who have] a stupid amount of dickhead fun together … So, there's not any pressure to do anything, really. It's only pressure we impose on ourselves. If we put out a record it's not because anyone's saying, 'Hey, we need a record', or anything like that. It's just because we can. I think I'm still a little bit amazed that we can. That even the like, 27 people that care, do ... I think we're condemned to being the Holy Soul pretty much forever now.”

“We never really had that much ambition to start with,” Marden adds. “It's just how it rolls.”

Most of what comes out of the mouths of the Holy Soul members has a level of sarcasm or wryness to it, or is just completely ridiculous, but generally makes perfect sense if you're on the same map. They're a group of incredibly intelligent, fiercely witty and sometimes absurd people, though at the same time, some of the loveliest folk to interview. They're genuine, and it shows, not only in conversation, but in the sheer number of relationships they've maintained with other musicians. Their international support slots include Mudhoney, Damo Suzuki of Can, and David Thomas of Pere Ubu and Rocket From The Tombs. “He's a pretty big support,” Wilson giggles.

While it's true that Thomas is, physically, a big man, it was his big expectations, chronic perfectionism and prickly demeanour that made the show with him so memorable. Those who attended the Notes, Newtown gig with Thomas – at which he played a list of old favourites and new creations with the Holy Soul providing the music behind his often deranged and mostly self-congratulatory theatrics - still speak of it in awe. It was intense. Musically brilliant, however, the atmosphere at the gig was that of a classroom, in which one fellow student is being ripped apart by the teacher, and no one else dares to speak a word nor move an inch. The audience could do nothing but mentally will their comrades on in silent solidarity.

Thomas was belligerent, rude, pedantic and disrespectful. He forced the band to play – and the audience to listen to – the same song twice because he deemed the way the band ended it unacceptable, then kept referring to that supposed failure for the rest of the gig. He forgot their names and hardly seemed to care. He would strike fear with just a carefully-directed scowl. He would order the band to stop and start songs again – faster, better! At one point, as he seemed unsatisfied with how a song was going, Wilson softened her strokes on the skins. It had seemed he wanted them to stop. But no. This infuriated Thomas. “PLAY. THE FUCKING. SONG,” he hissed loudly, turning around to look Wilson in the eye. For a moment, it looked like she was going to cry. She didn't.

At other points, Thomas would choose a band member and put them on the spot. “Play me a line. Play me my caravan in Texas. There's an Elvis movie on TV, and it's hot outside. And I've got a bourbon, and a gun...” etc. Though not a direct quote, it's not far off. “Play me that.” He would then critique it, and make the other members join in, making up his own lyrics lyrics on the spot.

“Maybe after a couple of weeks I was like, I'm really glad we did that gig,” reveals Worrad. “Funnily enough, Dave Graney, he emails me and he's like, 'Hey man, how'd the gig go?' I told him how it was and he was like, 'Alright. Just don't squeal about it. Don't squeal.'”

Thomas, however, was complimentary. “He sent quite a nice email,” adds Worrad. “'I had a great time, you guys are really nice', and then we saw him posting it on his friend's Facebook page as well.”
Wait. David Thomas has a Facebook page?
“You should see his profile picture,” chuckles Worrad.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

As for Suzuki, The Holy Soul has played with him numerous times as an improvisational backing band. They’ve since formed a strong working relationship, and will play with him again at Sydney's Excelsior Hotel this Sunday (November 21).

“I think we did like, four shows with him that first year; like, three at the beginning; and one at the end,” says Worrad. “And then we didn't play with him for a while, and we recently started doing it again.”

Of the gigs they’ve played together, a Melbourne show in 2008 with The Drones' Dan Luscombe on keys and Sydney electronic artist Peter Newman, will soon be released as a live album. “I remember, I'd been to see some gig the night before,” says Wilson. “So I was a bit tired. Under the weather. And that guy had a full mixing desk, and I was sitting up there going, ‘Who is this? It sounds really cool’, and he turns around and goes, 'It's you guys.'” She pauses. “Don't put that in.”

The Holy Soul is also the only rock'n'roll band to become Wu Tang Clan Affiliates – or so the story goes.
“Well, someone put that on our Wikipedia page, probably Kate—”
“No!” interrupts Wilson. “It's not just our Wikipedia page but their Wikipedia page. It's one of the best rock'n'roll rumours ever started. “[So] it actually ended up being approved,” nods Worrad.
Wilson agrees. “It's been validated.”
So, it’s not true?
“Well, it started off, we went around telling people we were Wu Tang Affiliates. And then, it was said on a press release, which of course, you know, got into the Malaysian press,” laughs Wilson. “So, we completely hit the mainstream. Of rumour-mongering.”

Faux affiliates aside, the band assembled several guest musicians for Damn You, Ra including former-Drone Rui Perera, who provides the hysterical, wailing guitar on the psychotic 'Train'; saxophonist Ralph Carney, best known for his work with Tom Waits, on the demented Brechtian cabaret of 'Just Another Day'; Kym Louise Barton and Fiona Whalley of The Exiles, who had vocals and sax, respectively; and perhaps the most well-known Australian artist on the album, Loene Carmen.

“Most of them are our friends. I've been in Loene's band for about six years, I guess,” Worrad explains modestly, with a shrug. “And Trent has played with her as well. So it was good to get her [on the album]. The funny thing about the guests is that the one who gets mentioned least is probably Kate Mara, who played the most. She did the accordion.”

“Especially in the last few years, the onus of any gig or whatever has been: if it's fun, we'll do it.”

Mara's humming accordion is what takes Ra to a higher plane. Imbuing the whole work with a certain bohemian patina, it is the first instrument to introduce the album and one of the last to wave it goodbye.

“I reckon she could be the most famous,” Hunter counters. “You say it to anyone, anywhere, and they're like, ‘Nah, I don't know any accordion players.’”
“Then you say,” interrupts Marden. “What about the chick at the bus stop on King Street [in Sydney's Newtown], with the 'Ease The Squeeze' sign?” “She has a massive age range of fans as well. Little kids love her and old people love her and people in between. So yeah, you're right,” concedes Worrad. “She is famous, it's true.”

Another key element of the band’s sound is Hunter’s production. He recorded and mixed Ra at Magnetic Recording Council, which he runs with former Ghosts of Television members Nicholas De Jong and Nathan Ashmore. Hunter’s first interaction with The Holy Soul – besides watching them at the Swamp Bar in Penrith – was the Love Has Left The City Limits EP, which was recorded in the bee shed of Malfroy's farm on a 4-track, straight onto Aldi cassettes. At $9 for a three-pack, the tapes stretched and some of it had to be re-recorded.

“Who would have thought that would go wrong?” laughs Worrad. “I guess they gave me the gig [producing the album] because I'd done the EP,” says Hunter. “But I'm like, ‘Really? … I kinda don't have the gear.’ And so I rocked up to Malfroy's and set up all this stuff – a car-load of random recording equipment that I'd collected over the years. I look back and think, ‘Wow, it's pretty good results considering the shit I was using.’ Nothing was really fancy about the equipment other than the tape machine I was recording to, which is still the tape machine I record to to this day ... I guess my knowledge and tools have improved, and having a bit more knowledge has mostly changed how I record [The Holy Soul].”

The band has plans to record something new before the year’s end, says Worrad, but it all depends on their respective plans.

“I think that's the vague aim, to try and do something before the end of the year. Impose a slightly false deadline on ourselves just so we can get it together enough. It'd be good,” says Worrad. “I think it's been four years since Sign of the Triangle.”

“Well that was two line-up changes. Half the band leaving, figuring ourselves out again,” reasons Marden. “This one's gonna be even better than the other one.”

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The Holy Soul will perform with Damo Suzuki at Sydney's Excelsior Hotel this Sunday (November 21).