Peters, Glenn, 1999, 'The Rectifers', Beat Magazine, Issue 682, pp47
With light use of pedal steel guitars, organs and a string section and the combined songwriting talent of the Volk brothers, Jo and Nik, The Rectifiers have made one of the most impressive local debuts with the release of their album, Sparkles from the Wheel. Glenn Peters spoke to Jo Volk about the new album and the band's ever changing live set.
Beat: What has the reaction been to your album been like?
Volk: "It seems to be going pretty well at the moment. We've gone into the second pressing which is good. We have had a lot of good feedback and we are playing some good shows over the summer. It should be good."
Beat: Its a very warm record. Was this part of some sort of quest?
Volk: "Yeah. The warmth is the way you record, the stuff you use and the way you play. If you use valve amps they are going to sound heaps better than the transistor stuff. We all try to use cool old amps and guitars. The music is really aimed at taking you somewhere so its supposed to be warm. Its something that you work on."
Beat: What sort of themes were you thinking of while recording the album?
Volk: "There's constant themes in songs, travelling, distance and open spaces. Its trying to be evocative in that way to the music I guess is also about that stuff. When we are writing the music comes first and I bung the lyrics in later. They are always trying to take you somewhere else."
Beat: Where do you think it goes?
Volk: "Well that's up to the listener isn't it? Its not for me to say. I don't want to get post modern on you but that's not for me to answer."
Beat: Lots have been said about your country roots, but I don't really hear them in the album. You have been celebrated on the twang radio shows but there is something else there. I think Sparkles from the Wheel is more of a modern pop record.
Volk: "We came together to play under the idea to play as a country band, inspired by a lot of new country acts and stuff like Gram Parsons and Gene Clarke. We actually sort of think that its sort of a country album and we are a country band. Its not that much of a confronting question but I think the live shows are a lot more country than the record. We can start off saying that and that maybe some of the cliched parts of country, the stuff we love but can't bring ourselves to write, we leave out. We play a lot of country songs and we wrote a lot of songs that didn't get onto the album but they are part of the live show. There is a line. You just play in the studio and we just kept building it up with the different keyboard and string sounds. That probably did take it away from country."
Beat: Would it be also a mark of respect that you didn't go real country on the album?
Volk: "Respect of who?"
Beat: Respect of country artists on the past?
Volk: "Yeah. You could say that. I still derive a great deal of pleasure from listening to it, also playing it. We still play covers in our set and we change them around. We are doing some Jimmy Webb songs at the moment and its great. I know where you are coming from and I guess our sound is our own. That's something we have tried to do, not consciously trying to imitate anyone else."
Beat: So your live shows are more country influenced.
Volk: "We do lots of differents sorts of shows. We are going to start promoting the different shows, differently like we have been playing the Town Hall Hotel and the front bar of the Corner, doing two sets, sit down, more acoustic country roots sorts of things. They have been going well. We started off playing that way all those years ago. Its something that comes really easily and we also had to do it to pay the album off. Then there is the stand up shows like the Punters Club or the main room of the Corner where we aim for the album sound. Sometimes we play with an extra pedal steel player to get that spread we have on this album."
Beat: That's good because you can play around with different moods?
Volk: "It also gives you a huge set. Its getting better the more you do it. The way we write a set becomes more and more interesting because we have more songs to choose from, three years worth."
Beat: It also gives more power to the songs.
Volk: "We have played a fair bit this year and we haven't rehearsed any of the set songs. We have just worked on new stuff to keep the passion in the set because we have had to play under an economic imperative for awhile. We have just come to the end of that and now we are playing better shows. We aren't playing four times a month, just twice a month. Melbourne is a small town."
Beat: How are the songs written?
Volk: "Mainly my brother and I come up with the stuff and take it to the band takes it from there."
Beat: Obviously you and your brother have written together for a long time?
Volk: "We have. We (are?) writing again at the moment and things are going well. Its good. You have to trust a lot, to play somebody your songs and take criticism. Its a bit like a marriage. We do work with each other's ideas and do sometimes bend them beyond recognition. Its a long slow relationship that builds up where you can communicate musically. Its a good thing to write with somebody else. I don't know how people can write by themselves. I have a lot of respect for people who can do that."
Beat: Its also easy for you to say to each other that a particular song sucks. What are you doing? What were you thinking there? ... And then hit each other over the head.
Volk: "Yeah. Hopefully we compliment each other too. Not like asin give each other compliments but make up for each other's deficiencies. I'm worried about melody while he pushes the big vision of the song. Sometimes it compliments each other."

Jones, Martin, 1999, 'The Rectifers - Sparkles from the wheel', Inpress Magazine, Issue 585, pp65
Having incited a barrage of critical praise with their self-titled debut EP, Melbourne country popsters The Rectifers have delivered a follow up to exceed all expectations in Sparkles from the wheel. In contemporary country influenced style of the ilk of Uncle Tupelo and The Pernice Brothers, the eleven album tracks elegantly unwind with the aid of occasional string and brass arrangements and more of the rich electric organ and piano and weeping pedal steel that characterised the EP.
    Jo Volk's singing is not as effortlessly palatable as some of his contemporaries in this genre, but has a rough edge which makes it perfect for this smoky, melancholic stuff. And brother Nick Volk does a tidy job with the harmonies.
    The eleven tracks range from sparse, intimate ballads (Falls by the Way and Driving Home), to lush, dynamic arrangments (Fallen Star) to swinging, boot shifting grooves (Hitch the Sundowner and Dead Reckoning). While it's nothing revolutionary, it's all classy, homegrown stu ff with more than enough genuine emotion and musical creativity to inspire repeated listening.