Track By Track: Harry Howard & The NDE

HARRY HOWARD (These Immortal Souls, Crime & The City Solution) has made two solo albums backed by organist/vocalist Edwina Preston, bassist Dave Graney and drummer Clare Moore. ‘Pretty’ is the second.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

‘Wanted to Live’

The first track we recorded in the Pretty sessions. It went down without a struggle (first take?). I was so pleased I stuck it at the start of the LP. I guess it's a domestic kind of song, at least the setting is. There’s obviously something wrong and someone is no longer happy. “Some of them didn’t suit you” – it sounds kind of nasty. It’s desperate and pleading: “Don’t stop it/Don’t you stop it now!”

‘Let Me Go’

‘Let Me Go’ comes from a similar place. But this time it’s more purely about relationship strife. Is it autobiographical? Songs are stories, not documentaries. At least mine are. It’s certainly not without truth. Love and paranoia (it hurts) – are you stringing me along? “Please let me go.”

‘Let Them Live’

The love problems in ‘Let Them Live’ aren’t for the protagonists; they’re for the rest of the world. Believe it not (and personally I don’t) it was influenced by Cate Blanchett in The Lord of the Rings. “They will love me and be destroyed!” My god, that’s fantastic, I thought. I read that book twice when I was teenager. I won’t be reading it again.

‘Casual Thing’

‘Ménage à deux’: French, France, the whole thing, I like it. Dave laughed at me for taking ‘ménage à trois’ and making it ‘normal’. Well, he’s right, but I guess that was part of the point. ‘Love on the rocks’ (as the man said). It’s full of sex basically.

‘Surround Me’

Started as an outright love song, moved into some kind of NY underground scene and came out the end a pop song (Edwina Popston). It sped up by a factor of 10 times as we learnt and recorded it in the studio. I hated it at first. First impressions can be wrong.

‘Sensitive (To the Cold)’

A lyrical idea that made me laugh until I realised that it was more serious than I had been allowing myself to know. I imagined it as some sort of dark disco thing. Dave plays some great bass.

‘Devils’

“I’m the Devil. No, I’m the Devil. No, I’m the Devil.” This one just appeared in my head one day. I’m not surprised that Nick the Stripper (nothing to do with me!) appeared in the video. There is a bit of The Birthday Party in all this. It wasn’t a conscious effort, mind, and neither is that something that embarrasses me but I recognise it. Paranoia, sex, worthlessness. That’s real anger in the organ part, Edwina’s a wild(cat) card.

‘Monsters’

Written in bed at about 4am with work looming like a looming work thing. Everyone has their own monsters and ghosts to live with. I like this one a lot. The drumming is relentless.

‘Love Me’

France again. I’m going to write a French pop song, I thought to myself. This is the result. It’s hard to write a ‘French’ song when you don’t know French, but this is the result. I tried to get that Frenchy “We are loving ze rock ‘n’ roll” thing going. Did you realise that Plastic Bertrand didn’t sing on his first two LPs?

‘Safe Bet’

A sort of pop paranoia deal. Is it a “Don’t mess around” song? Or is it a “Don’t get obsessed that your partner is messing around” song? You can dance to it while you think about it. Lazy, almost funky.

‘Wipe Out (Pretty)’

When is a title track not a title track? Dave and Clare could only make one day in the studio so I put down the last songs of the session with a drum machine and Loki Lockwood. It’s impossible to write a song about nothing (although some appear to have great success in that regard). I like all the contradiction. It’s anti-‘good lookin’’ ultimately. People look good and bad, that’s how things go. Good sides, bad sides – good days, bad days. She’s too good-looking for me. She’s not good-looking enough for me.

Clare overdubbed some percussion to my ill-fitting drum track, I played bass and Dave played lead guitar. Ed did a piano in the chorus.

‘I’m Still in Love with You’

The second drum-machine number. I wanted it to sound like Elvis losing his marbles on a cocktail of downers. Something he did every other night, from what I understand.

I tried to imagine God. All I could get was this ghastly, entirely alien creature living in a cave [and] witness to every abomination that has ever happened. Not terribly positive. Thank heavens for human love. Dave and Clare beamed in their contributions from the mountain range where they live.

‘How to be Kind’

‘How to be Kind’ wasn’t intended to be pop psychology. Or even pop, for that matter. It’s a half-scathing indictment to “small people’s meanness” (I'd include myself in that). Hopefully it is a reminder of something fundamental, also.

I find recording a bit of a terrifying process. Live, the moment passes and chaos is something we can play off. When the moment is set in glass (i.e. recorded), you have to live with its permanent existence. At one stage I hated the first LP so much I think I would have burnt it, had that been possible.

The psychic trauma was slightly reduced with Pretty, but yeah ... torment. ‘Pretty’ is often used to mean “having attractive qualities” and in the US is applicable to both men and women, if often reserved for younger women in Australia. Anyway, I wanted the LP to be attractive in some way. I wanted more finances to support our reign of terror! Especially post-naming, I’ve become more aware of how often ‘pretty’ is used to indicate an equivalent of ‘kind of’, perhaps a shortening of ‘pretty much so’ – or something.

I wanted to make a more expansive record than the first: to stretch our elastic a bit, to shove my own envelope. I think we kind of did that ... pretty much.

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‘Pretty’ is out now digitally and on CD through Spooky. Upcoming gigs below.

Thurs, April 17 – Homestead, Hobart, TAS
Thurs, April 24 – Metro, Adelaide, SA
Fri, May 9 – The Spotted Mallard, Melbourne, VIC