The Electorate On New Album ‘By Design’

The members of The Electorate (Eliot Fish, Josh Morris & Nick Kennedy) have all been part of the Australian music scene for a number of years, with ties to Big Heavy Stuff, Knievel, The Apartments, Imperial Broads, Atticus, and the Templebears. This invaluable experience has shaped their sound and informed their astute musical choices, evident on their 2020 debut album, You Don’t Have Time to Stay Lost, which received a 4.5-star review from Rolling Stone. Their latest album, By Design, produced by Wayne Connolly (Teskey Brothers, Babe Rainbow, Underground Lovers), marks the latest culmination of their musical journeys.

Each of the album’s singles deliberately highlighted a different side of the band — Face of a Giant is angular, ethereal and metronomic, Peace Love & Kindness is frantic, sharp, and political, The Great Divide is vulnerable, honest, and stripped back to its bare bones. Now with the album release, ‘Don’t Go Out’ finds the band digging into a knotty Fugazi-styled post-punk rhythm as Josh Morris rides the nervous energy of the song, singing about the realisation of your own anxiety, and how easily that can feed the need to hide away.

Across the album, the band explore their myriad influences. You can hear the astute pop songwriting of Neil Finn, jangly indie rock circa The Go-Betweens, angular Interpol-styled post-punk, and the modern Americana of a band such as Wilco, to name just a few. Josh Morris talks to Hi Fi Way about the album.

Congratulations on the album. Is it a feeling of relief, excitement and satisfaction now that it’s finally out?
All of the above. It’s really great. I mean, it’s something we’re really proud of and we’ve worked really hard on. So it’s nice to have it out in the world and sharing it with other people, getting it out of our heads and into others is good.

Have you been stoked with the feedback so far from fans and music people in general?
It’s pretty early days, I mean, it’s less than a week since it’s been out. But the response has been really great which is nice, you put in so much work and it’s hard to have any kind of perspective on it objectively. So, when you put it out and people go, oh, this is good. It’s like, oh, good. Okay, it’s a relief.

Does the whole process get easier with each new album or new EP?
I think so. I mean, we’re more relaxed at doing it, so yes, that makes it a more enjoyable experience and I think that there’s always a sort of upping the ante aspect to it in that you want to try and better what you’ve done previously. But this record is very different to the last. The last was putting to bed a lot of our past, whereas By Design is very much focused on who we are now, what we’re doing now, and what we believe musically, conceptually, and lyrically. The first album was really just a reset and an honoring of us as a much younger band, when a lot of those songs were written.

Did you feel like this album really challenged the band?
Not really, I mean, yes and no. There are always challenges. Oh, yeah, actually, as soon as I said that, I’m like, yeah, it’s always challenging because I second-guess stuff. I’ve learned from this that our instincts are pretty good. If an idea starts somewhere and you work all the way around and end up back where you started, maybe you just go from that first point rather than laboring it around. I guess it depends on how we feel when we start looking at the next bunch of tunes for the next album, which we haven’t done yet. I guess I’ll be able to reflect upon that a little bit more then.

Approaching this album, was it clear in your own mind what you wanted to do, where you wanted to take the album? Particularly sonically?
Yeah, I mean, there was a real belief that if we just recorded the bare bones of what we do well, it would focus attention on what was there rather than us trying to throw a bunch of extra stuff in and we did and didn’t do that to various degrees. It depended on what the song was. But there were definitely songs where we held true to those principles and didn’t overlay too much. A lot of that is on me as a guitarist, because I’m probably the one that’s more likely to go berserk than everybody else. It was a pretty successful mission in that regard, and we’re really happy with the breathing space we’ve allowed for the songs and the sounds. There’s a good, wide sonic palette, with some songs being quite sharp, others more meditative, and others more exploratory.

In terms of making the album, did you need a consolidated block of time, whether that’s a couple of weeks, or did you record over a period of months?
It was three batches of recording. We went in with Simon Berkleman for the first batch and recorded five tracks, of which he ended up mixing four. Then we brought in another track that we recorded at Damian Gerard Studios with Steve Coull. We then brought that back to Simon. Simon was able to go, oh yeah, okay, great, let’s mix that. Then we changed tack and ended up finishing the album with Wayne Connolly, who Nick has played with for years in Knievel, and Elliot had worked with Big Heavy Stuff as well as Nick. Wayne was a great way to end the record because he brought together a lot of different experiences and perspectives. There’s a classicism to what he does that really appealed to us. It was as contemporary as it needed to be, but also kind of timeless. We weren’t looking for anything that stamped the record as now in particular, not because we were afraid to do so, just because I don’t think we’re interested in operating in that very specific time period. Does that make sense?

Yeah! Do you put a lot of that down to just experience and being a lot better at what you do now compared to past albums?
Yeah, I think we’re a lot more relaxed at what we do. We trust each other implicitly. With about seven out of ten songs, we knew what we were doing before we went into the studio, enough to be pretty confident. Then there were bits and pieces, either within those songs or entirely new songs, that were fresh. The pressure of having to make it work is actually quite nice, it makes us go, hey, we’ve got this, we can do this. So yeah, it was good.

What was your reaction playing it back for the first time?
I think listening back to it, we’ve got two different formats and two track lists depending on where you want to end up. If you want the LP, it’s one track list, and if you want the digital or CD version, it’s another. Both of them take you on a real journey, which is what we were really wanting. I’m always finding it hard to be objective, but I was really proud of what we’ve done. It’s hard to gauge whether your own sense of pride and relief is actually justified, but I am. It felt really good to me, and I think it feels really good to the other guys as well.

With the greater attention this album’s had do you think it might open up more doors for you to tour more broadly around the country this time?
Yeah, hopefully. I think it’s such a crapshoot, and people’s attention spans now are much shorter. I remember when you’d get an album and really live with it for a long time. Now, we’re bombarded by so much stuff. It’s hard to know whether or not it’s going to last. But yes, my hope is absolutely that there’s enough attention to get us up and out of our respective homes and onto the road, playing to people. I think it’s just the logistics of going, “It’s totally worthwhile. We’ve got to do it. We just make it happen” and putting the work in. Like everything about this band, you’ve got to put the work in to make things happen. If we put the work into getting shows, that’s the hurdle I need to overcome. The nice thing about doing what we do is that we concentrate on what we can do really well. We’d rather wait for a good show that’s worthwhile. That’s frustrating for people who might be waiting to see us live, but for us, if we’re going to do it, we’ve got to do it well and properly. Otherwise, there’s no point. With kids, full-time jobs, and everything else, it’s a balancing act.

So, what’s next for the band? The album’s out, you’ve done a few shows, anything else on the horizon?
We’ve got the Sydney launch in July. We haven’t even locked in Adelaide or Melbourne shows yet. I think we wanted to see how the reaction was and then go from there. If there’s a bit of groundswell, then maybe a little bit of touring. Writing the next batch of tunes and seeing where that takes us. What’s been different about By Design is that Elliot and I would usually bring in songs, but writing collectively as the three of us has allowed us to explore different territories than we otherwise would have. The opening track on the streaming version is End. The first single Face of the Giant, and another song called Unfamiliar, were all built from the ground up by the three of us in the room, pulling things out of thin air. That’s what excites me most about this next phase, exploring different areas we haven’t gone into before and seeing where they take us.

Interview By Rob Lyon

By Design is out now, Stream. Purchase your copy HERE…