Super Wild Horses: ‘We Just Plugged In And Started Playing’

Launching their second album nationally, Hayley McKee of Super Wild Horses tells ANTHONY CAREW about the Melbourne duo’s humble origins, love of warehouse-style recording spaces and continuing surprise at how often gender comes up in Australian interviews.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] “Every single interview so far has opened with ‘What was it like playing with Foo Fighters?’” sighs Hayley McKee, in a lament for handling press that nevertheless hints at Super Wild Horses’ upward indie-rock mobility. Formed in 2009 in Melbourne by McKee and Amy Franz – old high school friends from the hills of suburban Perth – the band were born with a spirit of garage-rock primitivism, the pair swapping between drums/guitars despite little skill at either.

Their self-titled 2009 EP was filled with shouty, noisy, overdriven, one-minute songs where the booming drums sounded like they were coming from the bottom of a well. Their debut LP, 2010’s Fifteen, again recorded by Mikey Young, toned down the saturated scuzz, leaving more space between guitar and drums, and showcasing the duo’s far more tuneful singing. From there, they forged connections with the US garage underground, putting out records on Chicago’s HoZac imprint and playing the infamous Goner Fest in Memphis.

Their show with Foo Fighters came in Sydney in 2011 and, if it seemed odd at the time, April’s second LP Crosswords suggests that playing bigger stages looms in their headlining future. Recorded by Jack Farley in a ‘disused butter factory’ outside of Castlemaine in country Victoria, Crosswords captures a band who’ve tightened up noticeably in composition and delivery but not abandoned their love of cavernous reverb and fuzzy edges.

How on Earth did you actually find an abandoned butter factory? Why did such a lark take place?
We always like getting out of town to do recordings. It’s more convenient for us to shut down our lives completely when we record an album. That’s something we learnt making [Fifteen]. When it came time to write songs for this second album, we found an old little schoolhouse past Daylesford and stayed there and wrote a few songs. This just felt like the perfect option, this butter factory. We found out about it through the Twerps; they recorded a couple of demos there. It didn’t really suit what they were going for at the time, but that big, booming, warehouse-style space is something that we really look out for, and it makes for a sound that we really love.

What is it about that sense of ‘retreat’ that appeals to you? Other than being able to turn off your phones?
I just feel sure we wouldn’t do it any other way. It’s definitely more of a headache: we had to lug all our gear up there, hired a massive van, chucked all our shit out there, set up our own little world. I couldn’t imagine going into a studio after work and doing it like that. Amy and I just couldn’t function like that. We need to create our own little environment, carve out a space for a few days and work as hard as we possibly can.

How difficult is it corralling sound that’s bouncing off walls?
It can be difficult. We went down there once before the recordings for the album, to try it out, see if it was a viable space, and what kind of atmosphere and feeling was there. We loved it there. We took a lot of photos of all the hard surfaces, the walls and the ceiling, and took them back to Jack [Farley] to give him as much information as possible. Another friend of us who records music saw the space and was confident it could be wrangled.

“Being a two-piece, we have to be really careful with what sounds fill our space. Because obviously there is a lot of space between the two of us.”

When you’re recording in a space that isn’t built for recording in, it can become quite a logistical exercise: How do we get the warmth that we want for our vocals? How do we rein in the drums? How do we make it so it’s not a booming, crashing mess? Being a two-piece, we have to be really careful with what sounds fill our space. Because, obviously, there is a lot of space between the two of us. So we need to build depth from our sound, not necessarily from our drums. If there’s too much drums, it cancels out the guitars; the floor tom becomes too fat – and not P-H-A-T – [and] it just bulldozes other sounds. That’s one of the reason we’re attracted to those big warehouse spaces: that reverb, the hum of sound moving around, that fills in that space between the instruments with a real warmth, in a much more pleasing way than if we just crank up our amps or smash on the drums.

Is that almost how you started out, thinking ‘There’s only two of us, we should play as loud as we can!’? And only learnt, over time, how better to treasure space?
The first time we got together and played, we had no idea what we were doing. I’d seriously only just learnt the names of the strings on the guitar. We didn’t care, or have any ambition. We just happened to be hanging out in a community of people who were playing in bands, and we thought it was a good idea. Then we just kept saying ‘yes’ to things, and then all of a sudden we had a record out. We had to learn pretty quick, but we were always interested in all that stuff; every sound person we encountered had a lot of questions asked of them. Now we know way more about sound than we probably ever thought we would.

Starting your own band, at the beginning, what did you want it to be? What ideas did you have for it, or qualities did you want it to embody?
Well, we didn’t sit down and say ‘We want to sound like The Breeders’ or ‘We want to sound like The Shaggs’. We just plugged in and started playing. It kind of naturally just came from that; our abilities dictated what we ended up sounding like. We were just fucking about. I remember the first time playing together, recording it on our phones. We’ve known each other since we were 15. We’re 32 now. It’s as much a product of that friendship as anything else.

We don’t really plan anything; we never have. The second album, this one, that was the first time we actually sat down and talked about something, planned out what we wanted to do. Which was, this time, to not be afraid of anything, to challenge ourselves and push ourselves a little bit more than we ever have, in terms of vocal melodies or playing things quietly. We used to finish writing a song, and then we’d record it straightaway or play it the next weekend, and it was just there. That’s just how it was. Writing for this record, we wanted to be more thoughtful in the way we approached things.

How important are gender issues to your band? Is it a big issue, or a non-issue? Do you feel like the world looks at you a certain way, either positively or negatively, due to being two women in a band?
It’s certainly not an issue for us at all, personally, in terms of feeling sidelined or marginalised or neglected by being females in a band. There’s women everywhere, from bookers to publicists; every single band has a woman in it. In that way, it feels totally a non-issue. We never set out to be a feminist band, a political band, a riot grrrl band; we don’t particularly identify with those kind of themes.

I guess, when we do something like play with the Foo Fighters, I could see a different audience seeing us in a different way, being in a world in which two girls on stage is a novelty. Which it shouldn’t be. And if it is, it’s a shame. But to us it’s something we never spend any time thinking about. We tend to forget about the fact until we’re asked about it in interviews, and it always comes as a surprise. Even though we get asked about it every time, and I’m not sure why.

“When we do press in America, no one’s ever asking us about being women. They’re asking us about Melbourne bands.”

Reading the sad facts tabled by Female Pressure, this attempted cultural movement challenging the male stronghold in electronic music, or this essay penned by the hosts of No Pants, a show on RRR playing music by women, it’s like a cold reality check. In the safe confines of community-minded indie rock, you’re right, it’s totally a non-issue. But once you step out into the world at large – the realms of outdoor rock festivals and commercial radio – the statistics are totally horrifying.
I think that’s why we’re so thrown when we’re asked about it. Because we really spend no time thinking about it and, luckily, amongst the community of Melbourne bands that we come from it is a complete and utter non-issue. From our perspective it’s pretty equal, and I hope I’m not totally fucking wrong about that. What’s interesting, to me, is that this is something we only seem to be asked about in Australia. When we do press over in America, it’s never been brought up. No one’s ever asking us about being women. They’re asking us about other Melbourne bands.

Last year I really noticed that people from over the seas started asking me about the ‘Melbourne garage-rock renaissance’ and, thanks to things like the Matador Singles Club, there was suddenly this outside creation of a narrative to encapsulate what had been going on for years. How have you felt, both about being within it for years and then being asked about it once you voyage outside of Melbourne?
What’s interesting to me is that this real spike of bands – like Eddy Current Suppression Ring, UV Race, Twerps – that people are talking about, if there’s something uniting them it’s ... a looseness in the way that people are playing instruments. People aren’t obsessed with proficiency, or with their one band; they’ll swap instruments in their own band, they’ll play in a bunch of different bands, there’s a real sense of shared camaraderie and very little in the way of career aspirations. I guess that links in with the garage sound, which is loose and scrappy by its nature.

It feels though, to me, less like something that’s going on right now [and] more something that’s been happening. That could just be a personal opinion, because I’m not involved in the scene as much as I used to be. But there’s definitely been a sense, even amongst all those bands, that something was happening, and it’s been great to be a part of it. The cool thing about the bunch of bands that have been circulating is that everyone has been so supportive, and been so keen to support other bands and new bands. People will offer new bands shows, make sure they have access to recording; they’ll put a tape together and put it out. It’s a real awesomely spirited bunch of folk.

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‘Crosswords’ is out now through Dot Dash/Remote Control. Read Steph Kretowicz’s review. Dates for the launch tour below.

Fri, May 10 – GoodGod Small Club, Sydney, NSW [w/Day Ravies + Family]
Fri, May 17 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD [w/Day Ravies + The Kramers]
Sat, May 25 – The Bird, Perth, WA [w/Gunns + Dianas]
Fri, May 31 – The Tote, Melbourne, VIC [w/The Living Eyes + The Clits]