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Murray, Justin, 1999, 'Deadstar: Somewhere Over the Radio', Beat magazine
Why is it that we always seem to be waiting for Deadstar records? Is it just me, or do the
band seem to release a killer single or two every two years and then take an eternity to
actually get the damn album out? Whatever Deadstar has finally let their third album, the
cutely titled 'Somewhere Over the Radio', out of the bag and the result is pretty much as
expected. Three or four radio ready ready, hook heavy, made for airplay tracks, three or four
solid album tracks, and three or four should have stayed a demo or B-side tracks. Not bad,
but again not the breathtaking pop beauty promised by the teaser single Run Baby
Run.
There is no doubt that Deadstar is a quality outfit and their better
moments easily justify their existence, being some of the best things you can hear on
Australian radio. Caroline Kennedy has the kind of voice marries a street smart attitude with
engaging little girl innocence and the collision of the two comes up both threatening and
inviting. And lyrically she has the occasional moment of brilliance. It has been this way since
The Plums. And her band mates have the potential to dress pop songs in clothes that don't
quite fit but still get them in to the ARIAs (assuming one wants to get into the ARIAs). Second
single 'Deeper Water' is a fine example of this, the insistent tremor that runs beneath the
track giving things a wonderfully troubled edge. Too often however the results are muddied
by an uninspired and boring approach to production and invention.
'Somewhere Over the Radio', is a good record, don't get me
wrong. It's listenable, catchy, friendly and warmly familiar, all the things previous Deadstar
records have been. And it suggests quite clearly - again - that Deadstar have a brilliant
record in them somewhere.
Perhaps to find it they really do have to get 'over the radio'.
O' Donohue, Shane, 1999, 'Deadstar: the Bazza and Cazza show', Inpress magazine
"We did this one pretty effortlessly. It was a very easy record to make," says
Deadstar guitarist Barry Palmer of the group's brand new LP, Somewhere Over the
Radio. "We could do another one probably in two weeks time if we wanted to. There's
never any shortage of songs. A couple of bottles of beer and an afternoon in a hotel room
and there you go." Barry and Deadstar vocalist Caroline Kennedy are sitting in Albert Park
cafe cheerily discussing the new LP, the third in the band's career. It sees a return to the
diverse songwriting that was a highlight of their self-titled 1996 debut rather than the upbeat
power pop the group pursued on follow-up Milk (home to radio hit Don't it get you
down).
"Yeah, well Barry was always a much heavier dude than I ever was and I think there
was some kind of splitting the difference on that first record," explains Caroline. "I think there
was a more homogenised sound on the second record and I think Somewhere Over the
Radio is in some ways a return to the original sort of thing which was ... I mean there's
obviously some real rockin' tracks on Somewhere Over the Radio but there's heaps of
ballads, so I think that diversity is more in evidence again now than it was on Milk.
Which I thought ... everybody loves it and stuff but I wasn't wholly satisfied by that endless
pumping sound.
The oldest song on Somewhere Over the
Radio is Satellite, written by Barry and Caroline while Deadstar were in London a
couple of years back. By all reports it wasn't the most productive trip - Nick Seymour, bassist
at the time, left the group soon after - and news filtering back here indicated the band could
have been close to breaking up. A fair assessment? "We'd only sort of just got together,"
laughs Caroline. "No one really knew what the fuck was going on. I mean we'd played two
shows and then we were over there so no I wouldn't say that's true, no."
It hasn't put the band off heading overseas though? "I don't know if
we're going to be going overseas necessarily, but we'd certainly like to," explains Caroline. "I
think that a release in America would be a splendid thing. I have great hopes about and
touring America and touring England again, but at the moment we're just really focussed
though on touring up the Eastern seaboard, so that's about as far as we've got in our plans
right now."
Looking forward to playing the new songs live? "I'll be interested to
see what happens", says Caroline. "There's definitely some disconnection between us and
the live circuit. I know that's not the thing to do in Australia. But we usually just tour to
promote a record. "And you're happy to keep it that way? "In this band? Totally", she says. "It
doesn't bother me at all. I like it, I think it makes the shows more special, lots of excitement is
generated within the band. There's nothing worse than feeling that playing music is a
drudgery in some way and this way we never feel like that. Turth be known I'd always prefer
to be in a studio though. I could live in a studio. Bloody expensive place to live though."
And how many of the songs off Somewhere Over the Radio
will Caroline be willing to sing live? Barry suggests that she can be a little fussy at times
when it comes to the setlist ("It's a great position to being the singer because you really do
have the right to veto," she laughs). I think it will be a significant proportion," Caroline says. "I
certainly hope so."
B: "All the quiet ones."
C: "I absolutely want to play Over the Radio, I love singing that. All of them
probably apart from ... is there anything you can think of that's really obvious?"
B: "No, you've already sung Deeper Water and Run Baby Run."
C: "Yeah, they're both really hard to sing and of course they have to be the singles."
B: "I know, I know one you won't want to play: Here you come."b
C: "No, yeah I'll end up not wanting to do that."
B: "Cos Caroline writes these melodies for herself and as she's writing them I'm thinking
'Yeah, great'. 'Cos most people can't jump two octaves midway through a word ten songs in
a row. It's difficult".
Which brings us to the issue of songwriting. Barry and Caroline's
songwriting is highly collaborative now, but in the early days Caroline would come in and lay
down her newly written melodies and lyrics over music Barry had already recorded. "There's
less of a surprise element this way. You do actually get to hear a rock song turn into a ballad
rather than after the fact," laughs Barry. "Many of these songs actually started out more like
Over the Radio. It surprises me that [this album] is not as rock'n'roll as it might have
been. Often I'd have a pretty raucous song and Caroline would start singing and the first
thing would be like 'Do you just want to slow it down a bit Bazza' - 'Oh how much? - 'About
half'."
One song the two didn't write together is Salon Baby, a
song written by Caroline outside of Deadstar (Salon Baby was also the name of a
short lived musical project of Caroline's). "Baz saw me playing it and he just said I really want
to use that in Deadstar," explains Caroline. "He had ideas about how he wanted to play it and
it's a very different version from the one that I played before. But that's the only song that's
not a collaboration.
Raphael, Emma, 1999, 'Deadstar', Beat Magazine
'Somewhere Over the Radio'
is the new album for Melbourne based outfit Deadstar. You probably know at least one song
already, 'Run Baby Run', which provides the soundtrack for a Just Jeans ad. What you may
not know is just what an infectious pop gem this album truly is. Barry Palmer and Caroline
Kennedy are in good, if not slightly caffeine-deprived spirits, as they lead the way to a local
cafe to partake in coffee, pastries and a chat about the new album.
Beat: What was the atmosphere while recording?
BP: "Just like it usually is when we record, chaos mixed with moments of
hysteria and then there were those times when we'd sit around an wondered if should even
be doing anything at all. It's good we get along really well as friends, because that means we
are patient about everyone wanting to explore some ideas. So I guess you could say the
atmosphere was one of adventure for this album."
Beat: You've all worked on other projects while in Deadstar, is it now your focus
as opposed to a side project?
BP: "No, the whole side project thing is a misnomer, how do you separate the
two things in your mind? You don't suddenly go okay I'm going to give this a certain amount
of attention. When you're involved in more than one thing you don't put less effort into
either."
Beat: What has most surprised you about this album now its finished?
BP: "That we actually made it (laughs). No, the thing that amazes me is just how
much of it isn't based around the rock and roll thing. It constantly surprises me that Deadstar
has come to where it has. Saying that is in no way acknowledging any form of
disappoinment, but I would never have dreamt we would have made songs like Texas,
Don't Leave, Satellite or Lights Go Down. I've always known what
Caroline's had interests in more gentle and subtle things than me and that's what this album
has achieved, bringing our diverse musical interests, which just wasn't the case in the past."
Beat: The album is quite pop orientated and upbeat, there aren't a lot of bands
writing happy pop tunes these days, is that something you consciously set out to achieve?
BP: "Yeah a lot of people who deal with pop music in Australia always want to
bend it. It's really post-modern in a way, because they spend as much time making a
comment about the nature of pop as they do about playing it. Look at Regurgitator or
Custard, they look at something and they acknowledge where they got it from and make it
really obvious so there is no doubt. I mean anyone who listened to their last album and didn't
to their last album and didn't get the 80's influences would have to be fucking deaf. We are
interested in classic pop and doing it in a classic way. This album, I think could have been
recorded 15 years ago, without a single thing being changed on it."
CK:"It's important to point out that is entirely natural to us, there is nothing
tongue in cheek about it. I think anyone who is interested in any sort of serious way about
writing good songs, ends up with something like that. I really admire Regurgitator because
they go that extra distance and they're critics in many ways, I wouldn't ever try to claim a title
like that for myself, I'm just a humble songwriter."
Beat: Who influences you in most song writing?
CK: "I've been listening to a lot of music recently and find whether its rotten crap
on the radio, or my favourite Bob Dylan record, as a song writer you tend to take it all in and
regurgitate it later, that's a really natural thing. I don't feel like I'm much of a copyist at all in
my writing and I think I'm stylistically apart from from others. In Australia it has become a bit
of a sickness where people do tend to say "that's the sound from LA... Sonic Youth are
making a lot of noise with guitars... Five years later what do you know, in Australia there are
six bands sounding somewhat like Sonic Youth. I think it's a disease of being culturally
colonised as we are, and a sad indictment of our culture."
Beat: How did the ad come about?
CK: "I was in Paris and got a phone call saying 'do you want our song to be on a
Just Jeans ad?' and I said fuckin' oath I do!"
BP: "(Jokes) "They rang me in Northcote, that equally salubrious location and
asked the same question and I said 'yeah fuckin' oath'."
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