Red Wine and the Hunt
About two years ago, former Clouds singer / songwriter / guitarist Jodi Phillis got
together with some old friends, all of whom were involved with her Lounge-O-Sound project.
They named themselves The Dearhunters.
Jodi, along with The Verys' Tim Oxley, Greg Hitchcock (ex-You Am I) and Clouds drummer
Raphael Whittingham, soon started recording songs in a shack in the beautiful little town
of Bundeena, where Jodi was living at the time.
Bundeena is a very relaxed little town on Port Hacking on the edge of the Royal National
Park. It is quiet, serene - all beaches, trees and native birdcalls. If you're not into
tramping for days through bushland, there are only two ways of getting there. You can
drive through the park or you can get on a little green and yellow ferry at Cronulla and
boat it across. This I know, thanks to a decision made by my parents many years ago to
purchase a fibro weekender in the town.
It is, then, little wonder that the product of The Dearhunters' collaborations turned out
to be so relaxed, breezy and sweet. Jodi agrees that a relaxed atmosphere was important.
"I think the thing with the Dearhunters is that we've always made sure everything was
relaxed and just as if we are a bunch of friends just getting together and playing some
music. We tried to have one rehearsal in an actual rehearsal room and the vibe was awful
and the band in the next room was drowning us out with distortion and drums.
It's really quite fragile music and the only way to do it would be to sit around somewhere
peaceful. I just had a baby too when we started recording the album so being at home was
the only way we could have done it and it didn't cost anything either," she explains.
Jodi's baby daughter, Ivy, was the inspiration for the song of the same name, which is
included on the album "Red, Wine & Blue", recorded by Cameron McCauley. Its
opening words, "Oh my god now I have everything", are indicative of the
sentiment.
Greg Hitchcock's pedal steel combined with the guitars of Tim and Jodi, Raphael's soft
percussion and all their voices harmonising beautifully creates the album's decidedly
delicate sound.
Jodi adds that "it's quite a sad album, basically. "Ivy" is probably the
happiest song on the album and it sounds sad anyway. It came from a lot of
melancholy stuff in all of us, I think."
The band's vocal harmonies are enchanting. Jodi says the band's "voices have always
blended really well. Raph as well. He wasn't really a singer before The Dearhunters and
his singing is just really beautiful and it blended really well with ours."
Since recording the album, Raphael, who now plays in Stella One Eleven, left the band and
is replaced by Trout Fishing In Quebec drummer, Dave Aston.
Jodi has a go at some backwards guitar on "Ballerina" which adds some unusual
texture to the blend of instrumental sounds.
"I learned the song backwards. I had to write down all the chords forward and then
work them out backwards and then look at that while I was playing. It was a bit
confusing," she admits. "That was probably the trickiest thing that we had
to do. It was just all pretty organic actually apart from the fact that it was recorded
straight onto computer."
I would agree. It is organic and that is probably a result of the straightforward
approach to creating the music.
"The approach was, forget cleverness, forget originality, forget all the words that
go with what you think goes into making great music. We just completely did what was in
our hearts. That seems to be the way we approach music and that, to me, comes through.
It's very heartfelt ."
My judgement is that The Dearhunters' live show would be something quite intimate,
soothing yet dramatic and an altogether emotional performance.
Jodi tells me "the live shows have actually been pretty fun. We're playing quite a
few new songs now so we're breaking away a little from all that completely slow sort of
totally relaxed stuff. We've got a few, certainly not rock, but more up-tempo numbers like
just happier sounding songs. We try to mix it up a lot more live."
Karl Mayerhofer
for Revolver Magazine
30th August, 1999 |
