AS THEY EMBARK ON THE TOUR CELEBRATING THE RELEASE OF THEIR DEBUT ALBUM RAGGED & ECSTATIC, YVES KLEIN BLUE FRONTMAN AND SONGWRITER MICHAEL TOMLINSON AND GUITARIST CHARLES SALE TALK TO STEVE BELL ABOUT CONFRONTATION, ISOLATION AND COMING OUT ON TOP.
It’s been a steep learning curve for aspiring Brisbane rock quartet Yves Klein Blue, but from afar it seems that they’ve managed to cross every hurdle placed before them with relative ease. In the past two years they’ve toured extensively overseas, played a host of high profile supports, strutted their stuff on the stages of the big Australian festivals and even had songs soundtracking high profile commercials, and all on the back of their presciently-titled debut EP Yves Klein Blue Draw Attention To Themselves.
Now they can add to their catalogue the remarkably assured full-length effort Ragged & Ecstatic, a diverse collection of songs that they recorded in North Hollywood under the watchful eye of American producer Kevin Augunas (Cold War Kids). While justifiably proud of the final product, as the band members explain it the road to the album’s completion wasn’t all smooth sailing.
“It’s been a long time,” Tomlinson reflects on the album’s genesis. “For us it’s been almost a year of continuous slog. We started the demos mid last year, and we didn’t finish the record until this March on the first day of the Laneway tour. Then it was getting mixed while we were overseas on tour around America and the UK. We’d wake up and go sightseeing, then we’d play a gig, and then we’d get home and as we’d get home as the sun was rising and the mixes would be there waiting for us. It’s been flat out – not only the writing process, which went on indefinitely before that, but also the whole recording process was incredibly intense for a long time. Seeing the album finished is incredible. This is the first time that we’re able to have a definitive record of what we’re about. It’s all been leading to this for us.”
After decamping to America to record the album, the band found themselves confronting a very different recording experience than the one that they had initially envisaged.
“There was an agenda for what we wanted from the album going into the studio, but it got changed as soon as we got there,” Sale recounts. “It was, ‘Why the hell are we here? What’s the point of this? Why are we booked in for a month just to go in there and play the songs?’ At the start we thought that we were going to go in there and do it live, but once we got there we realised that we weren’t good enough to just fire it out and needed to spend some time on the songs.”
“Because we’d been playing together for two years we had a number of songs, so the most important thing for us was to make the best possible record with the best possible songs that we had,” Tomlinson continues. “We wanted to show the full range of songs and give the record an ebb and flow, and make the record like a record that we would love to listen to ourselves. We wanted to make it an experience, a sit down pop record with ten to twelve great songs. We thought what we’d do is tour the fuck out of it and then cut it live, but in the end we wouldn’t have got the record that we ended up with – and the record that we’re so proud of – if we had done that.
“So we got to the studio thinking that we were going to cut it live, and Kevin Augunas – the producer that we worked with – said, ‘What song do you want to start with? What song are you excited about?’ And we started with a newer song called ‘Soldier’, and we listened to the demo and he said, ‘Well, this song needs a lot of work’. And we’d been thinking that all of these songs were perfect and ready to go. So he began to rearrange it by stripping it back and we immediately realised that the drum beat and the bass line weren’t lining up, and that was a fucking awful moment for us. It was a really challenging moment – we were four cocky guys who thought we had it all, and then we realised that we still had a ways to go. Kevin’s contribution to the record was that he said, ‘Is this good enough?’. And as soon as that seed of doubt was planted by an objective third party, we knew we had to work really hard in the studio. The result is just that five percent extra – in grooves, arrangements, lyrics and everything – which has made this record better than what we thought would be possible.”
Being confronted in this manner, while somewhat threatening at first, was ultimately an invaluable lesson in the eyes of the band.
“It was definitely tough to face at first, but once we realised that Kevin was right it was awesome,” Sale offers. “We had a love/hate relationship with Kevin at times, but he did some really good shit and he changed our way of thinking, and we’re way better off for the experience. Hopefully next record will be even better again.
“We learned a great number of lessons about the music that we make and the music that we like to listen to,” Tomlinson agrees. “To become an editor of your own work takes a huge amount of discipline, and I think Kevin taught us a lot about discipline by being so uncompromising. In the end Kevin was right some of the times, and sometimes we were right, but there were two people going head to head and this synthesis – this huge dialectic.”
The impact of this clash of ideas on the young band was magnified by the fact that they were overseas and out of the confines of their natural respective comfort zones.
“At times we felt totally alone and isolated, and we had no choice but to face the confrontation,” Tomlinson continues. “I don’t think we would have been so receptive if we were in Sydney and could just get on the phone to our friends and family – if we had our support systems we wouldn’t have had to face it. So in many ways I think that was crucial to the whole thing – that we were away from home trying to stand on our own two feet. It was too important for us to fuck up – that was the main thing. There was no way we could fuck this up because there was too much at stake, and if we ever gave up we’d just be screwing ourselves over, so we were determined.”
It’s apt then that the album’s title Ragged & Ecstatic is taken from a passage of iconic Beat author Jack Kerouac’s legendary travel tome On The Road.
“In On The Road Kerouac talks about ‘the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being’ – which is something that my little brother suggested we call the album after I recommended that book to him. Immediately I felt that it summed up what our band was like – a little bit of a shambles, but maybe like a well-oiled shambles,” Tomlinson laughs. “We’re just thrilled to be doing it – we aren’t the best and we aren’t the worst – but we’re trying our hardest. The experience in the studio was one of absolute despair and absolute triumph, and the lyrical content of the album is all about finding out about the world by living and experiencing defeat. I guess the mantra of the lyrical content is ‘hope not defeat’, so it seemed to be really fitting and indicative of both the band and the album.”
WHO: Yves Klein Blue
WHAT: Ragged & Ecstatic (Dew Process/Universal)
taken from: http://www.timeoff.com.au/html/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2951:yves-klein-blue&catid=11:features&Itemid=29
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