Saturday, 25 February 2006 07:50

“We’re always thinking of ways to present something in a totally unique fashion,” he says, “almost destroying it whilst trying to retain the core of what made it appealing.”

 

 

Radiohead is perhaps best known recently for it: that unique sound of a band following its muse, creating music that is simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking and haunting and poetic and symphonic and cacophonous and unlistenable. Australia’s Bluebottle Kiss is all of that, and more. In fact, I would venture to say that, given a chance at a wider audience, this band could catch fire, reaching more introspectives and inner poets and musicphiles than even Thom Yorke’s otherworldly imaginings.

In March, after ten-plus years under the tutelage of mastermind singer-songwriter Jamie Hutchings, Bluebottle Kiss finally has its chance to make a splash on this side of the Pacific, appearing as part of the Australian invasion at SXSW. On the cusp of the release of its sixth LP, Bluebottle Kiss will be previewing songs from Doubt Seeds (out next month Down Under; no U.S. release date has been set) and showing us why their time is now.

For one, Hutchings has assembled a new lineup for his musical creations. What this means, he insists, is “a more rough-hewn sound, but it’s more resolved as a result. The main thing with creative work is that it moves forward; each lineup brings a different approach. It’s just a matter of finding people you have that unspoken connection with musically, which is really happening right now for us.”

The band’s creation process, according to Hutchings, consists of first piling on the layers, then slowly stripping them back. “We’re always thinking of ways to present something in a totally unique fashion,” he says, “almost destroying it whilst trying to retain the core of what made it appealing.

“I’m a music geek to a large degree,” he continues. “I love working backwards, finding out where stuff begins, the genesis of the idea. I like to trespass through other [artists’] worlds momentarily and come back with some kind of vague memory or impression and start from there.”

Doubt Seeds is a double album, planned as an adventurous departure, a throwing to the wind of caution. “Some people may find [that] a bit grandiose,” Hutchings admits, “but in the context of making a sprawling, left-field record, we think it really works.” Based on what we’ve heard thus far, we’d have to agree.