Killian Gavin - Boy & Bear (12/03/2014)
In 2009, singer/songwriter Dave Hosking formed Boy & Bear as a solo project. Before meeting Killian Gavin in Orvell, Hosking had uploaded a track ‘The Storm’ to Triple J’s Unearthed program, which in-turn became a featured song on the station. Since meeting Killian, the duo was soon joined by Tim Hart, who played the role of drummer in the now celebrated band. The string up soon expanded to include Tim’s brother Jon Hart and Dave Symes. Through a progression of musicianship and originality in their songwriting and creativity, Boy & Bear released their first album ‘Moonfire’ to widespread critical acclaim. This praised earned the band five Aria awards and an 18-month tour that included the famous US festival Lollapalooza.
“It’s always fun heading overseas and touring. It’s intimidating and exciting all at once and it’s nice that it looks like its going well. But I love going to America because we get buy more guitars and they have amazing vintage guitar stores everywhere. Also with me being a guitarist, I just love that.”
With little signs of slowing down, Boy & Bear’s latest released album ‘Harlequin Dream’ has already garnered the best rock album nomination at this year’s Aria awards. But while critics have raved about their newest album, it was unpredicted how fans would react to it.
“It was definitely something we were nervous about, how it would go down. For us on the inside, this record felt like it was quite a big change from the first record. We were wondering if everyone would still come with us and still enjoy it despite it being slightly, what we thought different from the first one. But all the songs live, everyone was singing all the words to every track and that was definitely something we were blown away by and really stoked with. It felt like people were really getting into the new songs. Not just the singles but any song on the record, they were really enjoying them and that’s such a fantastic thing for us you know. It’s always a bit nerve-racking when you set off on a new record, so that was a nice little affirmation.”
While Moonfire received many accolades, unlike Harlequin Dream, Boy & Bear’s first album debuted number two on the Aria Charts. From his own individual perspective, Killian expressed his personal gratification when he learnt that Harlequin Dream reached number one on it’s first run and his initial impressions of a musician’s lifestyle during his childhood.
“I definitely felt one-bit better than the last one. But it’s amazing, its something you don’t even dream of as a kid. It’s so farfetched and far away, it doesn’t even come into your brain when you’re growing up. When I was growing up, all I thought about was touring, playing shows and actually have a job as an artist in a band. But to have a record go number 1 is such a fantastic feeling, you got to pinch yourself at some moments and that was definitely one of them.”
And concerning the amount of pressure the band faced to produce a successor record that would measure to same standard of legacy that Moonfire left over.
“We spent a better part of eight months slowly putting this record together. We had plenty of time to analyze how different it sounded and see how it was going to go; maybe everyone was going to hate it, pretty much all those concerns at the end of day. So we had built up a bit of anxiety and it was kind of nice that it sort of went pretty well for us and definitely calmed us all down.”
Recorded in Sydney rather than abroad. Harlequin Dream was produced at Albert Studios based on a premeditated decision by the band to record the album locally and strive back to their original roots. Co-produced with Wayne Connolly (Powderfinger, The Shins.) and mixed by Seattle’s Phil Ek (Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes.) Harlequin Dream has went on to delight fans with singles such as ‘Southern Sun’ and ‘Three Headed Woman.’ But this success can be attributed to the pace that producing locally offers as Killian explained.
“When we did Moonfire, as much as it was a fantastic process and loved going overseas and will do it again potentially on the next one. We found that the excitement of being overseas and also the nervousness of being in a massive studio and being the new kids on the bloke back then. It affected the songwriting and it made things probably a little bit faster than they needed to be. Because it’s all one big block and we were overseas for two months, we had to get the record finish in that short time. We found that put a lot of unnecessary pressure on the songs as well. While this time we decided to just spread it over like eight or nine months, we’ll go into the studio and just deal with three songs at a time and spend two or three weeks just on those three songs and just really record them and rerecord them until we were really happy with them. We found that we were able to really get the songs and every song into a place that we were happy with as a general kind of consensus within the band. So I think that was the biggest driving force in changing from international to Sydney. So we could do whatever we want, in a period of time and easily revisit anything that we wanted to.”
Killian went on to elaborated on the overall experience of working with Connelly and his overall input during the creation of the new album.
“Wayne is fantastic, he's such a lovely guy. He’s the kind of guy we all sort of laugh about in a really friendly way. But his never low energy nor high energy, his quite consistent. In honesty, he brought that consistence dynamic into the production of the songs, making everything even and he has a good grove, capturing a lot of great sounds. He has a huge love of old music and we were trying to create a new record that sounded old. So his approach to recording was something that really helped us make it sound a little bit older, a bit warmer, and a little bit rounder and not quite as sparkling but not quite as bright as the first record. So he did a lot and was absolutely fantastic.”
Compared to the likes of Fleetwood Mac and Fleet Foxes, Boy & Bear like all bands seek their own individuality. Unfortunately in the musical world, this sense of individualism is quite difficult to unearth, as a source of distinctiveness is often an inspiration of a renowned predecessor. Stripping off all comparisons, Killian went on to explain his own perception of the band’s uniqueness.
“I would definitely see signs of those bands in there. I think this record in particular, which I’ll just focus on that. To me personally I think it sounds quite different to the first one and they both fall into different categories. So I think with the latest, we sought to make a west coast, 1970s, rock record. Not big rock, but soft rock or whatever you like to call it due to a lack of terms. We spent a lot of time listening to that kind of music and I think this last record to some degree sounds like that American west coast, Rocknroll, like Fleetwood Mac and a bit of early Bruce Springsteen. I would like to think that it sounds like that, but it may not to other people but that’s probably where I’ll hear it from my perspective.”
Jason Cheung
“It’s always fun heading overseas and touring. It’s intimidating and exciting all at once and it’s nice that it looks like its going well. But I love going to America because we get buy more guitars and they have amazing vintage guitar stores everywhere. Also with me being a guitarist, I just love that.”
With little signs of slowing down, Boy & Bear’s latest released album ‘Harlequin Dream’ has already garnered the best rock album nomination at this year’s Aria awards. But while critics have raved about their newest album, it was unpredicted how fans would react to it.
“It was definitely something we were nervous about, how it would go down. For us on the inside, this record felt like it was quite a big change from the first record. We were wondering if everyone would still come with us and still enjoy it despite it being slightly, what we thought different from the first one. But all the songs live, everyone was singing all the words to every track and that was definitely something we were blown away by and really stoked with. It felt like people were really getting into the new songs. Not just the singles but any song on the record, they were really enjoying them and that’s such a fantastic thing for us you know. It’s always a bit nerve-racking when you set off on a new record, so that was a nice little affirmation.”
While Moonfire received many accolades, unlike Harlequin Dream, Boy & Bear’s first album debuted number two on the Aria Charts. From his own individual perspective, Killian expressed his personal gratification when he learnt that Harlequin Dream reached number one on it’s first run and his initial impressions of a musician’s lifestyle during his childhood.
“I definitely felt one-bit better than the last one. But it’s amazing, its something you don’t even dream of as a kid. It’s so farfetched and far away, it doesn’t even come into your brain when you’re growing up. When I was growing up, all I thought about was touring, playing shows and actually have a job as an artist in a band. But to have a record go number 1 is such a fantastic feeling, you got to pinch yourself at some moments and that was definitely one of them.”
And concerning the amount of pressure the band faced to produce a successor record that would measure to same standard of legacy that Moonfire left over.
“We spent a better part of eight months slowly putting this record together. We had plenty of time to analyze how different it sounded and see how it was going to go; maybe everyone was going to hate it, pretty much all those concerns at the end of day. So we had built up a bit of anxiety and it was kind of nice that it sort of went pretty well for us and definitely calmed us all down.”
Recorded in Sydney rather than abroad. Harlequin Dream was produced at Albert Studios based on a premeditated decision by the band to record the album locally and strive back to their original roots. Co-produced with Wayne Connolly (Powderfinger, The Shins.) and mixed by Seattle’s Phil Ek (Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes.) Harlequin Dream has went on to delight fans with singles such as ‘Southern Sun’ and ‘Three Headed Woman.’ But this success can be attributed to the pace that producing locally offers as Killian explained.
“When we did Moonfire, as much as it was a fantastic process and loved going overseas and will do it again potentially on the next one. We found that the excitement of being overseas and also the nervousness of being in a massive studio and being the new kids on the bloke back then. It affected the songwriting and it made things probably a little bit faster than they needed to be. Because it’s all one big block and we were overseas for two months, we had to get the record finish in that short time. We found that put a lot of unnecessary pressure on the songs as well. While this time we decided to just spread it over like eight or nine months, we’ll go into the studio and just deal with three songs at a time and spend two or three weeks just on those three songs and just really record them and rerecord them until we were really happy with them. We found that we were able to really get the songs and every song into a place that we were happy with as a general kind of consensus within the band. So I think that was the biggest driving force in changing from international to Sydney. So we could do whatever we want, in a period of time and easily revisit anything that we wanted to.”
Killian went on to elaborated on the overall experience of working with Connelly and his overall input during the creation of the new album.
“Wayne is fantastic, he's such a lovely guy. He’s the kind of guy we all sort of laugh about in a really friendly way. But his never low energy nor high energy, his quite consistent. In honesty, he brought that consistence dynamic into the production of the songs, making everything even and he has a good grove, capturing a lot of great sounds. He has a huge love of old music and we were trying to create a new record that sounded old. So his approach to recording was something that really helped us make it sound a little bit older, a bit warmer, and a little bit rounder and not quite as sparkling but not quite as bright as the first record. So he did a lot and was absolutely fantastic.”
Compared to the likes of Fleetwood Mac and Fleet Foxes, Boy & Bear like all bands seek their own individuality. Unfortunately in the musical world, this sense of individualism is quite difficult to unearth, as a source of distinctiveness is often an inspiration of a renowned predecessor. Stripping off all comparisons, Killian went on to explain his own perception of the band’s uniqueness.
“I would definitely see signs of those bands in there. I think this record in particular, which I’ll just focus on that. To me personally I think it sounds quite different to the first one and they both fall into different categories. So I think with the latest, we sought to make a west coast, 1970s, rock record. Not big rock, but soft rock or whatever you like to call it due to a lack of terms. We spent a lot of time listening to that kind of music and I think this last record to some degree sounds like that American west coast, Rocknroll, like Fleetwood Mac and a bit of early Bruce Springsteen. I would like to think that it sounds like that, but it may not to other people but that’s probably where I’ll hear it from my perspective.”
Jason Cheung