Track By Track: Fourteen Nights At Sea

Instrumental band Fourteen Nights at Sea fixed their sights on contrast and texture for second album ‘Great North’, writes guitarist JAKE McMINN.

‘Glass Monster’

This was the first song written for the record. We usually write songs together at rehearsal, but we were in a writing slump at the beginning of 2012 where nothing seemed to be working. I decided to write a track and bring it to the band as a fully formed song (which, as a process, was quite foreign to us). The result was ‘Glass Monster’. This set the direction for the record and broke through the difficulties that we had writing new material.

Going into the studio, we really wanted the record to have an organic sound. Cold, but organic. We recorded all the tracks live together in the main room at Head Gap and added minimal overdubs or effects to the recorded material. We steered clear of fixing all the little mistakes and string scrapes, and didn’t set delay pedals to click tracks or anything like that. We wanted the record to sound like it was played by humans rather than machines.

‘Stalking Horse’

We were keen to explore some textural aspects on the record. ‘Stalking Horse’ is the result of some pre-recorded loops, guitar layering and pedal tweaking. A bit of in-studio experimentation really. While not a song in the traditional sense, it adds to the overall feel and tone of the record. In isolation, these types of tracks don’t always make sense. But in the context of the record, it helps add tension and contrast with the rest of the material.

‘Country Victoria’

This is about as straightforward as a song gets for us. Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Crescendo-Chorus-Outro. Within the song, though, we played with the texture of guitar parts and tonal aspects to strike a balance between bass, keys and guitars. We also brought the keys up in the mix to add a drone element. The final result of this track is quite different to when it was first written.

The keys [played by Jay Earles] across the entire album are somewhat buried beneath the guitars. But the keys parts are pivotal to our sound and provide a base layer between the rhythm section and guitars. It really pulls together many of the individual parts without being audibly obvious or overbearing.

‘Tired Hands’

‘Tired Hands’ went through a number of changes all the way up until we entered the studio. The second half of the song was fully rewritten about two weeks before it was recorded. Given the late changes to the song, it never really felt finished following the recording process. Liam [Matthew, drums] suggested adding trumpet to the end of the track, which is something that no-one else had even considered. By the time we decided to try it, we were well into the mastering process and were questioning the value of experimenting at this late stage. The result speaks for itself. It’s hard to picture the track without the trumpet now.

‘Departure’

The original idea for this track was recorded on a phone at rehearsal by Drew [Watson, guitar]. It had a really nice distant feel. We tried to recreate this in the studio but really couldn’t get the same sound or texture on the track, so we decided to use the original track recorded on the phone. I hadn’t consider using the original recording from the phone for the record, but [engineer] Neil Thomason insisted that if we liked it, we should use it. Much like ‘Stalking Horse’, it provides a point of contrast within the record.

‘Ghost’

‘Ghost’ is an attempt to move away from the usual modus operandi employed in a lot of instrumental music. We were keen to close the record with a song that went big early and fades simply and gently. ‘Ghost’ is a simple song but, once again, we were more interested in adding textural elements to the sound rather than additional melody.

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‘Great North’ is out now on Hobbledehoy through MGM. Fourteen Nights at Sea play DARK MOFO in June. Album launch gigs below.

Sat, Apr 27 – The Old Bar, Melbourne, VIC [w/Ninetynine + Bulls]
Fri, May 10 – The Hi-Fi, Melbourne, VIC [w/Om + Dead River]
Wed, May 15 – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC [w/Isaiah Mitchell + A Dead Forest Index]
Fri, May 31 – The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine, VIC [w/Junk Horses]
Fri, June 14 – The Reverence Hotel, Melbourne, VIC
Sat, June 22 – DARK MOFO @ MONA, Hobart, TAS