Melbourne's Crayon Fields have been quietly building a legion of followers - both locally and internationally - for some time now. From clattering indie rock beginnings in 2002 through to the sophisticated pop of debut album Animal Bells in 2006, Geoff O'Connor and band - Brett Hudson (bass), Chris Hung (guitar, percussion) and Neil Erenstrom (drums) - have fashioned for themselves a unique pocket in the pop landscape. In our review a few weeks ago of the band's latest opus All The Pleasures Of The World, Ben Gook summed it up thusly:

"It rewards attention. Unlike many pop bands that get stuck in merely aping certain sounds and eras with a few perfunctory words on top, there’s a genuine depth here in both the reflections on life and the sounds that travel with them. The album builds upon the songs captured on their first album, Animal Bells. Where the indie-pop sound there felt sketchy and a little hesitant at times, Pleasures finds the band much more ambitious and confident."

On the eve of their album launch in Melbourne, we speak to frontman and recording mastermind Geoff O'Conner (above, second from left) about his songwriting evolution, the dynamic of the band, and coming into their own as a live entity.

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When I was emailing with your label manager last night he said you were working until 11pm.

Yeah. I'm a mixer, I mix bands. I was working at Gertrude's (venue in Melbourne), I'm sort've the mixer on call there.

Is that your only job? That's a musicians luxury.

Yeah it's great. There's a lot of clashes though.

Would you say then that music is what you do full time?

Yeah pretty much. Mixing, recording...with the occasional shit kicker dishwashing job thrown in. And yeah performing. I've worked full time hours with various part time jobs but I've never had the actual 9 to 5'er.

You must be happy with the response to the new record. How do you feel when you're reading what people are writing about you?

I read every review pretty much. I'm not one of those people that doesn't act like they don't care. They totally make an impact. I'm not quite as nervous as I used to be I guess because you see as many positive reviews which, are as kind've offputting as negative ones. Sometimes the positive reviews can be more insulting! But I find them really interesting.

When you've being doing it for a while and you're satisfying yourself then it almost doesn't matter what people think.

That's true. It certainly matters, you know, what the people like in terms of what's actually connecting. But you get a thicker skin I guess.

That must be rewarding in light of you carving your own path to this point. I remember when you started Crayon Fields that you were kind've a wiry, indie guitar rock band. That's now blown out into this Phil Spector meets '60s French Pop kind've angle. Or something. How has that evolution happened?

I guess the arrangements got a lot more complex. You know more well thought out. It's a matter of detail really. I guess it was a different band then, it was a three piece that would pull songs together very quickly and rather haphazardly. With the three piece it limits how much detail you can have I guess. Now it's great, we can focus on each song independently and making sure that there's no real dead air.

You must've had a different set of influences when you started as well?

Kind've. I think I listen to louder music now that our music's a little less brash than I did when we were making fairly loud guitar and noisy music. Like back then I was listening to singer/songwriters. It's kind've bizarre.

Maybe you're searching for something different to add to what you've already got going on.

Perhaps, yeah. It's really hard to know how you process your influences. You can often see it in other people or think you see it in other people. So when you try and dig it out of yourself, it's hard to know. I think a lot of people's melodic sensibilities comes from childhood. Kids are always singing this gibberish and I think that it influences a lot of people in some ways. Music that you latch on to [as a kid], that you might even really dislike, and find really sickening when you're a five year old...it affects you when you're older.

Is there anything in particular that you can recognise following you through your life?

Not particularly. I like all those dramatic Dusty Springfield songs and Dianne Warrick type of upbeat ballads. But I think those have always had a big influence on me. I think I'm always trying to capture that sort've mood.

Did your parents listen to that stuff?

No my parents listened to Deep Purple and boogie-woogie piano. I mean Deep Purple are ok but [my parents] have terrible taste. 

Maybe you're subconsciously reacting against your parents?

Oh totally. Rebelling with wussy power ballads. So much of it is sexuality really. Like the music that you listen to and vice versa has an influence on what you associate with sex and romance and stuff. And you don't want to be thinking about the same things that your parents do (laughs).

Is that why then you always orbit romantic ideas in your lyrics?

I think so. I guess I feel music's the perfect backdrop for that and vice versa.

Are you trying to woo someone in particular or are you trying to woo this idea of yourself, or who you'd like to be?

A bit of both really. I feel like music can be this presentation of yourself as you'd like to be seen. Not that my songs are particularly fictional. They're all based on experience, or that's the thing lyrically anyway. It's quite a luxury to be able to work on these lyrics and then have this monologue in front of people, presented with a beautiful melody line and a nice backing band.

Does that mean you invite objects of affection to your shows in the hopes that they'll be smitten? For example this weekend you've got these big shows at Trades Hall, the focus is squarely on you. It's a good time to solicit any advances.

For sure. (Laughs).


Crayon Fields - 'Mirrorball'
 
One thing I was thinking about when listening to the record, and knowing how you work - I guess as a sort've of a real production nerd, and I mean that in a nice way - do you think that focus has led you to make the kind've music that you do? I mean you could also apply that process to dance music, rock music, punk music...

That's very true. That's one thing that I'm always thinking about when I'm writing songs. I've been recording myself for so long I guess I have a very particular idea about how something's going to work and how the arrangements going to work, recorded.

I've always wanted to branch out and produce for other people. Which I guess I'm starting to do now a little bit. I'd love to try a few things, like I'd love to make beats for someone. I have no idea how good I'd be at it. It's something I'd be very interested in. I guess the problem is I'm a bad collaborator. I like to do things on my own. I'm an only child so I don't like working with people. Kind've selfish.

How do the guys in the live band feel about that?

It works really well. We've got extremely talented musicians who are really good at working out arrangements and adapting. So I just bring the songs along, and they're fairly scratch lyrics and melodies, chord progressions. And I explain to them in a clumsy how way how I want it to sound. And then they usually top that. So it works well. It's very much four quarters of one band. My sole function is to write songs.

And tell them what to do.

(Laughs). Yeah but they usually do something different which is a lot better. We don't sit down and write lyrics together and we don't sit down and write melodies together. I'll come up with the song and then they'll create the arrangements and you know, write the dynamics, which is just as if not more important. But we're not a songwriting team per se, we don't sit around with acoustic guitars and say "I've got this great line".

They can be just as effective with the tone of their drums or how hard they're playing the guitar.

Oh precisely. It totally transforms what is initially a fairly plain song. I guess we all listen to fairly different stuff, the four of us, so it ends up being a fairly nice controlled mixture of influences.

How are you feeling about the launch shows this weekend?

I'm feeling great. There's a couple of songs off the album that we've never played. I'm really looking forward to performing them. We've got projections that I've been working on all week and stage props and that sort've thing. I love preparing for a live show when you have that much control over it. It's nice to play your own show.

As I guess as a producer and mixer, are you one of those guys that is halfway through a song, listening, thinking "Oh god the keyboard is too loud".

Not really. This is going to sound horrible but the only thing I care about hearing when we're playing is the sound of my own voice. I always ask that to be turned up as loud as possible. That's all I ever really listen for, which is probably a real pain for the others. They just have to play along.

Do you feel the band is coming into its own as a live entity? I ask because I've seen you play a fair bit and especially earlier on you weren't quite so confident on stage.

I think we used to be like that for sure. I think now we're more confident. I think the songs are a bit more assertive now and I feel that we've started to see our live sound as far removed from our recorded sound. Like they're arranged differently and we've moved them away from the recorded sound. Makes them more interesting live. And also Neil and Chris do a lot more talking now which is better. My banter is horrible.

You've asked them to step up.

No they just have. And I know why (laughs). And that's a good thing.

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CRAYON FIELDS ALL THE PLEASURES OF THE WORLD LAUNCH DATES 2009

23 Oct - Bella Union at Trades Hall with Panel Of Judges, The Twerps and DJ Jens Lekman, Melbourne, VIC
24 Oct - Bella Union at Trades Hall with Pikelet, Minimum Chips and more!, Melbourne, VIC
5 Nov - Bar 32 W/ Jonny Telafone, Teddy Trouble and The Space Boys, Canberra, ACT
6 Nov - Spectrum W/ Bearhug and The Twerps, Sydney NSW
5 Dec - Metro Hotel W / TBA, Adelaide, SA

Read our review of The Crayon Fields All The Pleasures of the World, out now on Chapter Music.

myspace.com/thecrayonfields