Sly Hats - a bizarre notion of 'Scottish Twee'
It’s a typically bleak winter morning in Melbourne when a sleepy eyed Geoff O’Connor greets me at his front door, there’s a swift duck of the head, a smile and I’m ushered in. ‘I’m sorry’ he apologises ‘I’m usually so much better in the mornings’, clearly he’s functioning on 5 or less hours of sleep, but it’s empathy, not sympathy that’s tugging at my left nerve….it’s like looking in the mirror.
As far as I’m concerned O’Connor’s the last person who should be apologising, his last two projects; The Crayon Fields, Animal Bells and The Sly Hats latest offering Liquorice Night are proving to be nothing short of forces to be reckoned with.
Anyone keeping their ear to the ground can hear the growing murmur of interest amongst his peers, but it’s by no means talk that’s come cheap; Liquorice Night has been years of E.P.’s in the making. For O’Connor it seems, the tree of his labour's is at last bearing fruit; ‘I’m never going to make another E.P. again…they’re always going to be albums from now on…I think I have a fair idea of what the next couple of albums are going to be like. I feel like I can make the albums that I want to now, and with the next two I might have more resources to make a higher quality album.’ Personally I’m wondering who’d have the nerve to complain about the wares O’Connor’s offered to date; sublime and slightly narcotic, Animal Bells and Liquorice Night are both lush and dreamy exercises in nostalgia.
Inevitably as with any solo outing, comparisons are bound to surface, hopefully if I give O’Connor a pre-emptive strike they may not steal the limelight. ‘I’d say The Sly Hats material is a bit more diverse instrumentally, there’s layer upon layer of instruments that we never really use in the Crayon Fields because we want to make sure we can perform it live with just the 4 of us, where as The Sly Hats is an expandable and retractable band. I guess the song writing will always be fairly similar because it’s me, but the compositions and structures and that sort of thing are a lot more premeditated, I guess because there’s really only one person constructing them.’
I should be happy, it’s a thoughtful answer, however I’m determined to cover all my bases, if O’Connor will just clue me in as to what was rattling around on the turntable perhaps there’ll be less assumptions made about influences, this time around. ‘Both times when we were recording, the two albums that I was listening to the most were The Carpenters and Nico’s Desert Shore….I think one’s got a bit more of The Carpenters and one’s got a bit more of Nico in it….I guess in the process of things, and what you’re listening to at the time, you might actively be trying to deviate from it, no one wants to sound exactly like someone else.’
But it seems it’s not so much people’s comparisons between the two works, as their overall perception, that has O’Connor slightly perplexed, asked about last years reviews for The Crayon Fields Animal Bells he immediately looks bemused. ‘I always thought the Belle and Sebastian comparisons were really strange…people also described the work as bookish, but there’s not one reference to literature or anything like that. And we were always described as cardigan wearing and I don’t actually own a cardigan…to have these live reviews that said ‘Geoff still loves his cardigan’, and I don’t have a cardigan…. there’s no way I’d ever wear a cardigan’ Geoff shakes his head, smiling. ‘It’s bizzarre, people just composed this notion of Scottish ‘twee’.
O’Connor may be puzzled over last years reception, but there can be no confusion about his own personal vision when approaching the Sly Hats latest effort. Originally intended as a 10’ that outgrew all expectations, and nothing short of obsessively constructed over 6 months with each song reworked at least 5 times, it’s process proved remarkably organic. One wonders exactly how far the end product strayed from it’s beginnings; ‘I wanted it not to be secondary to The Crayon Fields album, I suppose if I‘d made a 10” album, I realised it would be received as a side project…. In some cases it was exactly as I envisaged, I simply laid all the instruments out exactly the way I’d dreamt up. But there were others that I started adding a lot more percussion to make them a little more buoyant.’And it’s quite obvious the issue of control is one that remains of fundamental concern.
It may be a popular choice for most artists due to fiduciary contraints, but for O’Connor a 4 track constructed on a home computer is not about the money so much as the power; ‘Yeah it was definitely about maintaining control, but definitely if I’d had more resources I would have attempted to record some of it in the studio, buy a couple of new microphones. I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly lo-fi recording, I’m not actively aiming for the whole lo-fi thing…I’d love to have a nice big extravagant studio’
However by his own admission, the home studio does hold other rewards; the luxury of time and effort. ‘I think my favourite part was adding all the string synths…they just made the composition sound that little more graceful. That was my favourite part, sitting there with it for hours on end just adding all these layers.’ It’s been months of fastidious labour, but O’Connor is merely pausing momentarily before departing overseas with sometime band mate Guy Blackman for the briefest of Sly Hat’s tours; ‘We play composite sets, we can play entire sets of each others songs, it works quite well. As soon as I return I’m going to do another Sly Hats tour a little bigger than this one and try and consolidate a more regular line up I guess, although I do like having a different one for each show, but after a while that’s going to be taxing for the other people playing. I’m also going to record another Crayon Fields album and go on tour with The Crayon Fields overseas in December and January.’
O’Connor yawns and smiles sheepishly, pensive and introverted he may be, but his recent works also exhibit a frightening talent and extraordinary growth, remarkably it seems the best is yet to come.
