GERLING

Over their very diverse 9-year career, you could never accuse Gerling of becoming stale. Juggling myriads of musical genres at will, the Sydney boys are once again taking their musical wagon in a different direction with the release of their new LP 4 and this time it seem they’ve left the samplers at home and borrowed Ryan Adam’s producer. Have Gerling finally snapped and decided to become Alt. Country superstars? I grabbed Presser from the band and demanded an explanation.

“We liked the stuff he (Producer Ethan Johns) had done, the two Kings Of Leon records sound really great. We knew that he had a really organic approach and we were trying escape the whole computer world. When he actually came back to us and said he wanted to do it and that there was no computer we were like ’Fuck…this could actually be what we want.’” He explains.
“It was kind of a godsend in a way because we’d had our head stuck in a process with the last two and this helped us break free from it.”

And break free they have. They certainly don’t sound like they could have ever collaborated with either Kylie or Kool Keith. The songs on 4 are, for the most part, guitar and drum affairs that show the three piece as solid songwriters as well as being bloody amazing at everything else.

“It’s probably the closest thing to the first kinda music were doing which was this stripped back two guitars and drums thing That was years ago…round in ’96. We had an EP out in then our first album was released and in between that time our music tastes developed a bit more too. The Daft Punk album came and DJ Shadow released his first. We were listening to a lot of Kraftwerk and that kinda stuff. We were into the idea of opening our little world up and buying a shit keyboard. The first album only took four days to record because we already had half the songs written in our heads and the rest of the time we mucked around with the electronic stuff. When that came out and we were onto our second album, we bought enough gear to have a shitty little studio. I guess once your in that room anything can happen. We just went nuts and just did any musical style we could basically.”

4 also sees Gerling heading overseas for the first time to record an album, in this case North Hollywood to work with Ethan Johns. Johns is well known for being one of the few producers left who still records to tape. It seems like an extreme departure for the former electro punks, right?

“We never really thought we were gonna do the whole producer thing. We went and recorded songs in Sydney, kinda like recording demos but also considering them to be the actual songs that’d be on the album. Once we had the songs done the record company liked them and suggested we work with a producer, not necessarily overseas but just to do a proper recording session. We made up a wish list and Ethan was on that list and he ended up saying yes which we were really grateful for. Even though we recorded it in North Hollywood it was very unflash. We recorded it in a big soundproof studio room that used to be the set for a Mexican sitcom. The studio was amazing…he has a Fender that Keith Richards gave him when he was 6, effects units and all this cool shit but he didn’t have any assistants or anything. It was just himself doing all the work…making the coffee and all that shit, which doesn’t really happen over there or here either. North Hollywood is kinda the Hispanic part of town and it was kinda cool cause you’d go out for a cigarette or a break and you hear the ice-cream man coming down yelling out in Spanish or you’d go to the Milk Bar to get a Coke and realize you were the only white person there. It did give a different sense of ‘what the fuck’s going on?’.

2005 saw Gerling touring the US as part of the Suicide Girls Burlesque tour as well as a number of other shows. Was it hard to compete with a stageful of strip-teasing vixens?

“It was good fun to do. The Suicide Girls shows were hard…to be honest, 90% of the people were just going there to see the girls strip. The shows were kinda tame. Everything’s covered up to a degree anyway. At a majority of the shows people didn’t know who the fuck we were but there were others where people knew us cause they had a CD of ours or something. I think the weirdest thing for us was doing a lot of All-Ages shows with a band called The Red Light Sting at local Rec Centres. There’s no booze and there’s about fifteen bands playing. Apart from feeling like the oldest people in the place we couldn’t drink so…yeah, that was pretty tough.”

Not just content with rampaging across America, the boys decided to shoot the clip for the new single ‘Turning The Screws’ in Shibuya, Tokyo to fully round out their international takeover plan. Any Jackass style harassment in the process?

“We like Shibuya a lot…that’s where we usually hang out when we’re over there. Our friends from Brisbane, these two guys Fifty Fifty came up to us and said ‘Why don’t we do this clip in Japan?’ and we said ‘Why not? That sounds cool.’ They followed us round for 3 days with a handy cam while we ran riot. We were doing shit at that big intersection (the one with the big TV screens from Lost In Translation) where there’s a zillion people walking through everyday and we were just there running amok and no one gave a shit.”

In the age of Australian Idol and overnight musical sensations that seem to come and go every other weekend, is it getting harder for bands who are exploring different musical horizons to make a decent living?

“I think it’s a weird thing now where it’s like ‘Ok…we’ve gotta go chase the next big thing now and give them a million dollar deal’. Before they’ve even packed up the van after their first gig they’re already getting schmoozed and boozed. I think it’s kinda odd and I don’t really understand it. I’m not saying that we deserve that cause we’re doing ok but I don’t know how it would be not having all the shit gigs and all the hard times. I think you need those experiences behind you to really appreciate what you have.”