Beaches: ‘This Is Its Own Thing’

It’s been five years between albums, but Beaches are better than ever on ‘She Beats’. DOUG WALLEN sits down with guitarist-singer Antonia Sellbach and drummer-singer Karla Way to discuss the band’s unique momentum as well as the delays and anxieties that come along with that.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Syrupy layers, locomotive rhythm section, snaking guitar leads, multiple vocalists, instrumental marathons: yep, She Beats is definitely a Beaches album.

There may be more vocals than on the self-titled debut, and extra guitar from ZOND’s Justin Fuller and Neu!’s Michael Rother, but that tidal push-and-pull and those climbs to surreal reaches are still very much at the core. Jack Farley is again producing and mixing, and the interplay between Alison Bolger, Ali McCann, Antonia Sellbach, Gillian Tucker and Karla Way is as natural as ever.

So the whole team is here. Now it’s just a matter of re-establishing the Melbourne band after spending the last several years off people’s radar. That lull was due in part to Bolger having twins and to members’ other musical activity, but it was complicated by a scrapped earlier attempt at the second album. In a crowded Melbourne bar just after close of business on a Friday, Sellbach and Way reflect on the sprawling journey of a band that began with no expectations.

Our review of the new record mentioned that the members were at different skill levels when Beaches formed. Was that part of the band’s sort of thesis?
Antonia: Yeah, it was. I think it appealed to us that everyone was coming at it from a different skill level, which meant that it allowed for a fresher approach where it wasn’t too thought out. We just kind of blurted it out. Sometimes when you’re learning an instrument, the rudimentary ideas that come out are really inspiring to other musicians. Everything just came together naturally, in a way, with the first album. It was very fresh and very much just reacting to picking up an instrument and learning how to play it.

And it was born of a friendship thing?
Antonia: Yeah, we were all part of the same social scene. All fans of the same kinds of bands.

Karla: It was just another really good excuse to get together and do something outside of the normal context of hanging out in bars listening to the music. Just trying to create something together. We all found each other standing in front of the same bands thinking, “We could do something together.”

“It’s not like we had a big break where we didn’t do anything. We kept jamming together and we kept working on the record. It’s just the record took a really inordinate amount of time.”

Why did you record again with Jack?
Antonia: It just seemed really natural. And we’re really comfortable with Jack and he’d come on tour with us and he understood our sound. And what we liked, in terms of sound. I guess we were excited about what he was going to be able to do, because he understands the band so well. He’s almost a sixth band member, so it was definitely the natural choice. And his skill level has also come up since the first album, so it was exciting to see how it was gonna sound after five years.

Obviously the time between the albums is part of the story now.
Antonia: It’s not like we had a big break where we didn’t do anything. I think that people kind of perceive it that way because we didn’t play that many shows. But we kept jamming together and we kept working on the record. It’s just the record took a really inordinate amount of time. It just stretched…

Karla: [Laughs]

Why was that?
Antonia: I think it probably has to do with any project that goes for more than a set period of time. Like, say you’ve got two weeks and you really focus in on something and there’s a beginning and an end.

Karla: We didn’t have a deadline. We hadn’t set ourselves a deadline and we didn’t have deadlines for anyone else.

Antonia: So if you do stretch something out over a long period of time, all of a sudden you find yourself working around other people’s projects. Jack’s a pretty busy guy, and all of the sudden we were trying to figure mixing around when he’s got a spare day here and there. And all of the sudden the project became quite spread out in terms of people’s availability. And that kind of stretched out and went on for a few years. Coordinating six people, including Jack, and everyone’s separate projects, we kind of just let people do what they needed to do. We’d just reschedule Beaches things around everybody else’s other projects.

I know on paper, when you’re looking at the release year for each album, it’s a big gap. But you played all these festivals, you went to America; there was a long tail on the end of the first album. Are you going to do all that again with this one? Are you going overseas again?
Antonia: There’s been loose talk, but nothing’s been decided. We do plan to go to Europe in November. Hopefully November. We’ve never been to Europe before; we’ve done two US tours. We’ve had a little bit of interest from some people in Spain and Paris, and it sounds really fun. Europe is so diverse culturally as well, it’d be a fun experience for us to go and do it.

Have you played outside Melbourne much lately? Because people know you here but, again with that time between the records, you almost have to start over when you’re going outside Melbourne, to recapture everyone’s attention.
Antonia: Yeah, I think that’s true. [Laughs]

Is that something you worry about, or are you pretty laidback about it?
Antonia: It’s OK. I mean, I guess we’ve laid more groundwork in Melbourne, just in terms of being at other friends’ shows as well and being part of a scene. And maybe we feel less connected – slightly less connected – to, say, Brisbane and Sydney and Adelaide and Hobart. But that’s why you go and play in those places. The [launch] shows might not be as … I don’t know whether they’re going to be busy, but if they’re not then it’s still laying the groundwork and going over and making the effort to spread it around a little bit.

Karla: We’ve only played Sydney and Brisbane and Hobart once, or some of them twice. So it’ll be great. It’s been something that I think we’ve wanted to do time and time again, but there was always something that I kept us from going.

Antonia: And there’s five of us. It’s five plane tickets. But we’re really looking forward to these shows.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] I know while Alison was busy with the twins, Justin [Fuller] filled in for her on some of the shows, and he plays a bit on the record. Did that influence the direction of certain songs at all?
Karla: I don’t really think it influenced the direction. Justin was playing Alison’s parts, but with his own style of course. He was playing songs that were already written. It wasn’t like we were writing any new material with Justin on board. He was really great. He just took on Al’s parts and played them the best he could, like Alison would play them.

Antonia: And then when we recorded, having the experience of playing with Justin, we wanted him to play extra overdubs on the record. I guess we knew intuitively, having worked with him, that he would know what to do if we say, ‘We want you to play a crazy wigged-out bit here.” He plays on three songs [‘Granite Snake’, ‘Weather’, ‘Send Them Away’], which is nice because he’s a bit like an honorary member of the band.

When he played with you live, did you do any of the songs that Alison usually sings and have someone else sing them?
Antonia: Yeah, I guess it was probably me or Ali [that] would sing Alison’s parts. Just temporarily of course.

Was that strange? It’s one thing to play guitar for someone else, but to sing their lyrics…
Antonia: Totally. It was a little like Bizarro World. A slightly bizarre version of our band. But it was quite an interesting thing to do. It was fun.

You should all try it, rotating around. Keep everyone on their toes.
Antonia: It would be hilarious. Just when you think you’ve got your part down, you’ve got to…

Karla: Step out.

And Michael Rother [Neu!, Harmonia, Kraftwerk] played on the record as well [on ‘Granite Snake’ and ‘Distance’]. How did that happen?
Antonia: We met him at ATP [in 2009] when Harmonia played. We ended up getting to know him quite well at the festival, because we played two days in a row and spent quite a bit of time hanging out after the shows. And ended up staying in touch. He came over for a spate of shows recently [in 2012] and got in touch with us and wanted to know what we were up to. We said we were recording an album and he said, “Can I come and hear it and maybe I can play on it?”

We never would have asked him, because it’s kind of a forward thing to do. But it happened organically and he showed up. Having never heard the songs recorded, [he] listened to them through once and then just played completely off the cuff. Just responded to the music. Yeah. It was pretty wild.

“We did so many overdubs, adding and subtracting and kind of shifting things around, that adding a few others didn’t seem like such a crazy idea.”

Karla: It was pretty wild. The songs were pretty much finished and now this extra element comes in. And just the way he approached it as well was pretty hilarious. Like, we were just playing him the track so he could, I don’t know, figure out what he was gonna do. And he just started playing [during it] and then at the end of the song, he said to Jack, “Did you get that?” And Jack was like, “Nooo.” Jack hadn’t even started recording. His response was really immediate to the songs.

Was it cool to have this thing that you knew would just be on the record and wouldn’t be part of it live?
Antonia: Well, I think at that point we’d layered the album so much. We did so many overdubs, adding and subtracting and kind of shifting things around, that adding a few others didn’t seem like such a crazy idea.

Karla: But the two guitar parts that he has contributed, they are really quite … they’re definitely his style of guitar playing. I don’t know how we’d do that live. I mean, there’s some tones in other guitar parts that sound similar…

Antonia: You mean you don’t know how we’d incorporate it live?

Karla: Yeah.

Antonia: Well, we could get him to come play it with us. [Laughter]

Karla: That would be good, wouldn’t it? I think we should ask.

Antonia: I think we should.

You talked about adding and subtracting overdubs. What usually didn’t work when you decided to take something away?
Antonia: I guess when someone has something negative to say about something, or they have reservations about it. That’s a good enough reason for everyone to listen and go, “Well, maybe that’s not working.” And there was a lot of that in the process, where we were sort of “Well, we tried it.” Some things just worked and others didn’t.

With all these layers and all this saturation, there has to be a balance where you don’t overdo it.
Antonia: Yeah. For Jack as well, as the person who mixed the album, particularly songs like ‘Granite Snake’ that are really layered – that was something he had to really grapple with. He was fading things up and fading them down so that everything would have its little cameo but nothing would take over.

Karla: Because there were a lot of different guitar ideas going on in that song. They were all really great, so they do pop up to have their own bit of time and sink away again.

How did the instrumental songs come about as instrumentals, rather than vocal songs?
Antonia: Some of them we probably tried vocals with them, and we might have collectively decided that, now that we’ve heard it with vocals, it’s actually quite interesting without. So I think it would have been a trial-and-error kind of process there.

Karla: And that’s the thing, also, that you get: the freedom from working on a project for so long is you really can try everything out.

Antonia: Yeah, which we kind of did do.

“We’re not really a vocal-driven band, but it was a nice progression to have more on this album.”

Karla: Yeah, we really did. [Laughs] There were some points too, when I think we got worried about there being too many vocals, given that the first album didn’t have too many. We’re not really a vocal-driven band, but it was a nice progression to have more on this album definitely.

Antonia: And I guess we see vocals as more like another instrument anyway, submerged in the mix with the guitar and everything.

I had this idea of the band being almost a mixtape of different genres, and not having to restrict yourselves, maybe, in the way that another band has to. Is that something you’ve thought about, that you have more freedom than most bands to make those transitions more naturally?
Antonia: Yeah. We’re not driven by this idea that we’re … people bandy ‘psych rock’ as a label for our music around quite a lot. We didn’t set out to be a psychedelic rock band and we find that everything that comes together, it’s more like, “Does it sound like Beaches?” more than “Does this sound like the genre we want to sound like?” Does this sound like what happens when we get together and things work?

And then, from that, people listen to it and go, “So it kind of sounds like psych-rock, with kind of like surf guitar lines.” And that’s cool because that’s what people do to categorise things and to store them in their brains. But it’s not set out [upon]. It’s more like, let’s see what happens when we get together and play and take it from there.

Karla: It’s always a weird collection.

Antonia: Yeah, it’s always a bit weird.

Karla: The two albums are pretty similar in that way. It’s a collection. It’s a weird collection of songs of different styles.

How early was that scope arrived at, or the parameters of the Beaches sound?
Antonia: Right away. As soon we started playing music together. We had no expectations whatsoever about it. It was a really noncommittal thing. I remember saying, “Oh look, I’m kind of busy with my other band [Love of Diagrams]. I think we should just play parties. Or maybe we shouldn’t play live at all. Let’s just do this for fun.”

Karla: We didn’t even know if anything was going to happen after that first Sunday. And then we wrote two songs that ended up on the first album in that first jam.

Do you remember what those two songs were?
Karla: It was ‘The Rip’ and ‘Sandy’.

Where were you when you got together that first time?
Antonia: It was at my house. We’ve got a bungalow out the back of our house where we rehearse.

Is that still where you meet up?
Antonia: Sometimes. It depends. Sometimes we rehearse at a rehearsal studio in Richmond. Just because it’s a bit easier to hear vocals and everything.

Do you demo things and go through that whole process?
Antonia: Yeah. In fact, in 2010, when we recorded at Head Gap, it didn’t sound quite right to us. And so we see that as kind of really expensive demos.

Karla: [Laughs] We learned a lot though.

Was it the same songs?
Antonia: Some of the same songs. We had this idea that we’d go in and keep it really fresh, really quick, really instant. And it’ll be great because fresh things are good and overthought things … we don’t want to get bogged down. And pretty much the exact opposite to what we’d gone in there thinking we would do was what happened. Maybe because we’d jumped the gun a bit and went in before the songs were kind of … finished.

Karla: Resolved.

Antonia: Resolved, yeah.

“We realised at some point that it’s just going to take as long as it’s going to take.”

Karla: But then, some of those songs we dumped we’ve revisited as well. That kind of situation where you start working on something and you’re like, “Ah, I don’t know where this goes or what to do with it. I’m just gonna put it over there.” You kind of just cut it off and then push it away. And then it’s not until a little while later that you call it back in and you know how things are supposed to go, for whatever reason.

There must be, after playing together for years now, a real intuition about what works. But it has to be democratic as well. Is it hard with five equal voices to find consensus?
Karla: It is, but I think we’re pretty good at it. I mean, there is always balance. Sometimes we all agree on something. Sometimes one or two people have a stronger opinion on something. It’s just keeping the balance. It just works organically, and I think it’s because we’re all friends.

Antonia: It is a longer way of doing things, though. I think it’s another reason it’s taken so long. Because if one person was in charge, or a couple people, they’d sort of railroad over the creative process and get things done. And it would have come out two years ago. And there were some times, I think, when everyone probably felt a desire to give it that extra push forward, trying to organise everyone and get this finished. But it’s almost like the more anyone tried to do that, the slower it would go. It was almost like, this is its own thing with its own momentum and you really just have to let it [be that]. I think we realised at some point that it’s just going to take as long as it’s going to take.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Karla: Yep. Because we were panicked about it for a while. Five years! And then when we just relaxed and accepted that it was taking a long time, people felt better and things started working as well.

Antonia: And yes, we have to talk out every single decision we make, and it can be a sometimes lengthy and frustrating process, but that is just the nature of how we make [music]. It’s our methodology, and it’s something that we have to go with if we want to end up with something that we feel like reflects us as five individuals.

It’s this organic thing that came out of the friendship, so it makes sense that you can’t force it like a band that you start in a different way.
Karla: Yeah, there were no expectations and then we’re like, “Oh my god, that kind of worked.” I had no idea if I was going to be able to play two different drumbeats that first rehearsal. I hadn’t played before we started. Just messed around a little bit.

So everything just working … we didn’t know what everyone else did as well, whether everyone’s way of playing would actually meld. In our minds it was a great idea. So the actual playing and it working, that was the first decision right there. And it wasn’t really up to us so much, in a way. It just sort of happened.

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‘She Beats’ is out now through Chapter. Read Steph Kretowicz’s review. Launch dates below.

Fri, May 31 – Brisbane Hotel, Hobart, TAS [w/The Native Cats + Catsuit]
Sat, June 1 – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC [sold out, w/Bushwalking, Early Woman + Lady Shakes DJ]
Sun, June 2 – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC [w/Fabulous Diamonds + Lady Shakes DJ]
Fri, June 14 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD [w/Per Purpose + Occults]
Sat, June 15 – GoodGod, Sydney, NSW [w/Songs + The Friendsters]