Total Joy For Touchè Amorè Ahead Of The Release Of Their Sixth Album ‘Spiral In A Straight Line’
‘It is amazing. We just got to four and a half months and he’s really turned a corner where he’s just amazing to be around. The first three months were totally brutal. Now it’s like a total joy.’
Elliot Babin, drummer of Touchè Amorè, is not talking about the mood in the camp before the bands upcoming sixth album, Spiral In A Straight Line is released, it’s more about being a new father however it’s that sense of gratitude, excitement and mass change that seeps through the feeling for the upcoming release.
‘The album is definitely all about transition. I think the whole album is about getting older and despite being on the planet for longer, thinking you understand how things go, there being abrupt change and then all of a sudden having to adjust to scenarios that you’ve never experienced before. It’s kind of a juxtaposition as we were talking about, despite getting older and having all this familiarity, having totally new things thrown at you, having totally new life circumstances thrown at you and having to adjust to things that you’ve never experienced before, despite getting older, despite being on the planet for as long as you have. So that’s kind of the overarching spiral on a straight-line theme.’
Tracks like Hal Ashby, Nobody’s and Altitude lyrically confront about spiraling, Force Of Habit about being trapped in routine while Mezzanine musically pushes and pulls throughout that leaves you bewildered. Or a spiral. All of it though is indescribably Touchè Amorè – emotive, melodic, angst with lyrical play on words that Wilde himself would be proud of. There is though one track with Lou Barlow of Dinosaur Jr fame that will stand out to one Australian city in particular, Subversion (Brand New Love).
‘So the whole end part was taken from the segment that Lou Barlow wrote and Jeremy had been listening to that song as we were landing in Adelaide for the show on this past tour and it just kind of clicked for him at that moment. He knew because we ended up having Lou Barlow come in and record vocals at the end of that song. He kind of had this epiphany as we landed in Adelaide. As soon as he got off the aeroplane he’s like, yeah, the lyric is going to be ‘come down to Adelaide’ and I want Lou Barlow to come in and sing the part that he wrote over at the end of the song. And it had been this gap prior to that where he didn’t really know what he wanted to do with the song and it was kind of like this epiphany he had as we were landing there. So, Adelaide will be forever fondly remembered by us for that influence.’
Pushing the band from behind the board is legendary metal producer Ross Robinson, who returns for the second time with his reputation for pushing artists to the brink fully intact.
‘Without a doubt, I would say Ross’s influence is the biggest on drums, and he knows exactly what he wants out of the drums and it is amazing and challenging to work with him. He will come in and he will stand two feet away from me while I’m playing the drums along to a drum part and as soon as he hears something, he’ll stop me and he’ll say, ‘okay, so that part that you were just doing, instead of doing the bass drum on one and three, take it out and do the rack on the floor’ and it’s this stream of consciousness. He’s just an array of ideas and it super keeps me on my toes just being able to adapt to it, then it’s so much fun to go back and listen to the song with new ears after being able to digest all these ideas he’s had that have kind of flown through him and then flown through me. A lot of that for me on this record was practicing flexibility and just knowing that everything is kind of subject to change and trying to work to that and it’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s difficult, it’s stimulating, it’s exciting, it’s challenging. It’s kind of the whole realm of the experience of creating.’
The band have found memories of Australia and do plan to come back however for now America, and in the near distance Europe, awaits. They also have the small matter of the album launch too for an album that not only will Touchè Amorè fans love, also those that enjoy thought provoking lyrics, emotional music and getting lost in the sound.
Interview By Iain McCallum
Touchè Amorè release their sixth full length Spiral In A Straight Line on October 11 via Rise Records/BMG. Pre-Order/Pre-Save HERE…
