Working Class Hero

Thirty-two years and nine albums on, Ryan Adams, the prolific songwriter, musician and artist is still as passionate and curious as ever. But his guarded tone gives the impression he’s over the industry cavalcade.

Speaking warily and with a crafted ice-cool on the phone from his homeland, Adams seems to demand the same intelligence that emanates from his songs. He warms to questions of his various projects, philosophy and covers, and is even working on a novel – but remains tight-lipped about it.

“I don’t wanna give it away and should it never happen I don’t wanna build it up. It’s just something I work on here and there. I work on a lot of stuff; visual arts and writing, you know. I stay very plugged-in to the creative… I find it very healthy. I do paintings; I just got a painting on the cover of a Penguin Classics book, Dracula… I just got another painting on the cover of a magazine called Flaunt; I do a lot of visual art.”

Relentlessly creative, he is uninhibited by place or time. “I tour a lot, so when it’s time I kinda just write in just about any place you can imagine,” he drawls sleepily.
When asked if he plans to dabble again in his brief but fascinating i-foray into pseudonymous hip-hop, he says, “I suppose, if I’m bored! But I never did it in a way that I felt like it was ever serious anyway; it was just a funny thing to do, and something to, you know, laugh with and about.”

Though he is quick not to discredit the genre. “I take all music seriously! The songs that are funny to me are just as important as… I mean to make someone laugh is just as intense as to make someone feel sadness over life’s quandaries. They’re both valid, comedy is as important as, you know, rationalisation and or something that is more dire spiritually.”

His eloquent vocabulary a testament to a lifetime of artistic endeavours, Adams perpetually absorbs everything around him and turns it into gold. He muses about his inspirations; “It’s a kind of a fascinating world for me. So I just kind of follow what’s interesting to me at the time or maybe something that I find dramatic or real.”

I ask about the particularly drool-worthy cover of The Strokes’ Is This It, and why it is destined to remain under wraps. “Well the record already exists! I cover a lot of records when I’m bored, just messing around the house, you know. I never said that I would ever release it, I think I was talking to a journalist at the NME and he made a much bigger deal out of it than I did, I just had said that I’d had some dental surgery one week and I’d been sitting around learning albums on my banjo or mandolin, while I was on the couch trying to get over dental pain. And I’d mentioned that I’d actually learned those tunes for the first time, which was great because I’d wanted to understand the words more and the context of playing. Of course they’re very sensationalist, so their next headline was that I’d covered the entire record, and when would it come out. But it’s on a cassette tape made on four track and it’s in a duffel bag with about forty or fifty other cassette tapes I’ve made over ten years, so I mean I don’t even know how it’s labelled, but I know that it’s in there.”

Unperturbed and philosophical, Adams is a considered and fragile soul, despite his hardened demeanour. “The future has to happen first!” he exclaims when I ask what’s in the works for him. “I just follow the moment, you know? I just try to stay in the moment.”

Gold Soundz

Modest Auckland band Surf City snag a previous Pavement cover artist for their first release, change their name and amble down the path to success.

Kill Surf City was a popular live band, prolific in their infancy and gigging every other weekend; they quickly became a staple. Then, as things picked up for the slacker-rock inspired quartet, they set their sights further than the local dive and the obligatory name change beckoned. Drummer Logan Collins says it was an impending conflict they wanted to avoid.

“It’s one of those things where overseas there’s like three or four bands in the states and London [with the name Kill Surf City]. So I guess we just sorta had to do it now or… get in a whole lot of shit. So we just decided for the first EP we might as well do it now, and everyone was happy with it.” He laments, “It was stink because yeah, we did like that name.”

Dropping the ‘Kill’ was an obvious choice, as “just coming up with a name in the first place took us like six months, so to come up with a second name would’ve taken another six months. People probably think we’re a sixties cover pop band or something, but it’s alright,” he laughs.

Their peppy fusionist rock, with elements of the Clean, the Chills and Pavement burns with the sombre intensity of Animal Collective and the seasonal blitz of the Beach Boys; despite derivative qualities their delivery is faultless.

First single ‘Records of a Flagpole Skater’ also references the “usual indie shit”, but boasts a video. Shot by rising local underground film artist Sam Muirhead and featuring eccentric actor Stuart Devenie fawning over model trains, it portrays the band as miniature ‘guess-who’ cutouts, riding atop trains at 5am.

“It came out totally different to what we thought and he did a fuckin’ real good job on it,” Collins says.

‘Records…’ is on the self titled EP, with five other songs old and new. Their first release on Arch Hill and under the new name, it’s also their first release ever. Collins says, “we’re pretty stoked.”

Mastered by local pop prodigy Murray Fisher [of Goodshirt], it “was done over quite a long time, pretty much everywhere. We only used two mics… apart from one song; Jamie and Davin just sorta figured things out. A lot of our songs are quite old, so took quite a few goes to get right. We’d recorded a few of the songs before but they were pretty… they were just kind of shit, pretty much. But we figured it out and got it right!”

Nonchalance will get you everywhere. The band that appears to care so little about people’s perceptions has recently pulled a manager, a label and an internationally acclaimed artist for their first release.

“Oh that’s a pretty good story,” Logan says amusedly. “It [was done by] a guy called Steve Keene, a New York artist. He’s done albums like Pavement Wowee Zowee, Blondie, Dave Matthews Band and stuff like that. Davin just emailed him and was like ‘Dude, do you wanna do our cover art?’ and he sent back going ‘Yep sweet, what are some ideas?’ and we just said ‘chickens… with guns’. Then he painted like twelve original paintings and sent them over and we just chose! He didn’t charge us a cent, so that was pretty cool.”

Currently rehearsing for their upcoming dates as well as a support slot for Battles, the band hope to tour Australia later this year, funds permitting. “Until anything’s finalised or on paper it’s all up in the air,” Logan says. But fortunately the only direction Surf City seems to be going is up.