‘I think we’ve upped our dosage of the Red Cordial, but we’ve learnt how to tolerate it more!’
Eighteen months ago, Sydney’s Reliqa released the EP I Don’t Know What I am, a collection of widely entertaining short prog songs that this reviewer has since suggested was like a child on red cordial such was the rollercoaster of styles, landscape and dynamism created. Now on the eve of debut full length album Secrets Of The Future, vocalist Monique Pym kindly chats about the bands journey.
‘If I’m going off your analogy, I think we’ve come into our own a lot on this record. I mean, being an album, you definitely do need to have this sense of identity sort of down pat because you need to come out strong. Your audience needs to know who you are, especially because you’re reaching a new audience. And with I Don’t Know What I Am, it was this more of a tasting palette for what we could be, I guess. And now we’ve sort of taken the best bits of that identity and we’ve still put the pedal to the metal in terms of the experimentation. It is a very diverse album. It has heaps of different sounds on there, of course. So, we are still going all over the place, but I think it’s all with a greater degree of intention than we’ve had before. Yeah, yeah. I like that analogy. We’ve doubled the dose, but we’ve learned to tolerate it more and we sort of make it our own now.’
The album does have continuation elements of the EP however also crashes the doors down of other styles making them uniquely ‘Reliqa’d’. Sariah envisages an elusive ghost like aura, Physical is certainly not music by numbers unless you have a maths degree and Two Steps Apart lush piano and soaring solo reminds of 80’s music videos.
‘That song has my favourite solo on the album, just FYI. When you mention the solo, my favourite. People won’t really get that because it’s quite simple a solo. I think that’s why I love it so much because Brandon Hutcheson exercised so much restraint on this album, but beautiful restraint, like only hitting the right notes at the right time and I’m just like, it’s so good!’
The band’s style is very much ‘expect the unexpected’, which begs the question is it by design or the creative gods inspiring?
‘I think there is a little bit of both. We intentionally experimented with our songwriting on this record by dismantling this production line style of writing where Brandon drops a demo, Miles Knox (bassist) picks it up, Ben Knox (drums) picks it up, I write vocals, etc., and then we’ve got a song. Rather than doing that, we worked with Chris on a very intimate level to… For example, different groupings of us, like Brandon and myself would get into the studio with no preparation and just walk out. We would walk out with a song and we don’t know where it’s going to go. So we would just take it as feel… It was very directed by feel and emotions and chemistry sort of thing, rather than, “Okay, we need to write a proggy song to fill this gap on the album.’
‘But that is to say that towards the end, once the album started taking shape, we did have ideas of what was missing and what we needed and so we would write songs to fill those voids. But towards the beginning, it was so… we had the world at our feet when it came to writing and we really tried to not have any limitations. You know, limitations as in come with nothing prepared. Brandon play a riff until Mon feels something and then I’ll go, “Oh, yeah, I like that, I like that.” And me have a pen and paper for the first time ever, really, to write on the spot. So yeah. I think there was definitely intention behind some of the directions we went in. And then there was also… But there was also an open-mindedness I guess, to the direction we were heading in.’
The EP was very much for Monique an introspective record of fear and anxiety, this album though ventures in ‘soft sci-fi’ and other complex emotions. But what is soft sci-fi?
‘It’s more because of this through line of the futuristic element. There are some songs that are more conceptual, like ‘Killstar’, is pretty much a concept song about a dystopian future and where we’re headed, and very eat the rich, classist sort of vibe. That’s ‘Killstar’. But yeah, once you apply that to the rest of the songs, you do kind of get this like… this kind of pondering about the human experiences and where we’re headed into the future. Yeah, I mean there is still that, like I said, that human element of fear for the future, but there’s also a reverence for the future and an eagerness for where we’re headed, sort of thing. I think that’s where that came from.’
Lyrics such as “The villain in my throat had more to say” on ‘The Flower’ are more about the here and now.
‘’The Flower’ is kind of about how you try to exercise restraint as a person, but there’s always like… Sometimes you just… It was a very personal experience that one. It’s like I was feeling so much anger at myself at the time of writing it for like… Sometimes I’m like, “Just shut your mouth.” It was just, you know how you can be quite self-destructive in the words that you say and it’s almost like you’ve got a passenger, the real you is in the back of you and you’re just like, “Stop. For the love of God, just be reasonable, be rational.” But when you’re overtaken by these emotions, sometimes you can spit the most vile things at yourself.’
‘So it was like that lyric,‘the villain in my throat had more to say, much more to say, I thought I was on my way’. It’s like you think you’re progressing as a person, you think you’re growing, you think you’re evolving, growing the flower, but then you lapse into this sort of evil self, You’re just really ashamed at yourself. So that song, “I wish I could get under my skin and plant a flower. Let it grow into a garden, so the beauty that you need.” So like, I wish that I could be the identity that people want me to be, sort of thing, but sometimes the emotions take over and you are just a real person, and that real person isn’t always what people want.’
‘Physical’ is about that as well. ‘Physical’ has a lot of that anger and explores anger as an emotion too. It says, “I wish it wasn’t so easy to exhale and let it go because I want to feel the hate get physical.” Sometimes you want to kind of push the limits and see how far you can go with it. But as a person, as a functioning member of society, we let these things go. We let them roll off our shoulders and we get along with our day, which is healthy. But sometimes, you’re sitting with something and you’re letting it fester and you wonder where it could go, just kind of hypothetical sort of thing.’
Monique is refreshingly honest and I can assure you the vocalist is an actually an effervescent – and talkative – joy to interview. The enthusiasm for the music radiates through the screen much how the music does through your speakers. The up and coming five date tour around Australia one area of excitement.
‘So now it’s like, all eyes are on Reliqa now and it’s up to us to deliver on this tour. You can trust that we are going to be bringing our A-Game to this! We’re going to strike when the iron’s hot. Now that we have all the setup in place to make that happen, We will be touring this album extensively. If I have anything to do with it, we will absolutely be showing it to as many people as we can in a live setting!’
Interview By Iain McCallum
Reliqa will release their long-awaited debut album Secrets of the Future on Friday 31 May via Greyscale Records and Nuclear Blast Records
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