The Mess Hall - A Messy Accident
» The Mess Hall announce national 'Pulse' tour! - February 20, 2008
» The Mess Hall - Northcote Social Club, Vic - August 22, 2008
» Falls Festival 2007 - Lorne, Vic - December 31, 2007
From Mushroom Record’s bright and salubrious offices, Cec Condon, one half of the phenomenal Australian act The Mess Hall, picks up the proverbial pencil as we draw a fine line around the band's new album and other news.
The approach to making Devils Elbow, the blisteringly foot-stomping new release from The Mess Hall, was somewhat unorthodox. With the added dimension of Gerling’s Burke Reid adding to Cec and Jed’s normal dynamic, all the rules were abandoned for a more intrinsic modus operandi.
As Cec explains “We had a bunch of skeletons of songs, basic structures and most of the lyrics. We went in there and decided to take each song on its merits. To just let the song dictate where it wanted to go. Most days we did a song a day. That would involve setting up every day differently, and if it wasn’t working then we tried a different way.”
Rather than succumbing to a Simpson’s ethic of ‘If you don’t succeed, give up’, or going to John Cage’s 4:33 extreme, every musical turn had a reason.
“We got fairly experimental. Not for the sake of it, but if we felt that we needed a sound of a tin pan being hit in a stairwell, that it would add to the song, then we’d do that. There were lots of happy accidents. I think we were recording drums for ‘Keep Walking’ and Burke had left the microphones on in another room. When we played it back we were going ‘What the hell’s that sound?’ and it ended up being the basis of the drum sound for quite a few of the songs. This distant thing with the mics pointing at each other.”
Some of the Western tones inherent in the album also proved to be a surprise to the band although they keep it firmly rooted in their own backyard.
“It’s more of an Australian theme. An Australian Western maybe, like The Proposition - not intentionally though, I just like that stuff. Jed wrote most of the lyrics, and I did point out to him during the mixing that were a lot of walking themes. He was surprised as well, he didn’t realise that.”
Perhaps it was fitting then, that the album title, Devils Elbow (no apostrophe much to Cec’s chagrin), was once a hot spot for accidents. Not that there was that much thought or effort put into the title once the aesthetics were sorted.
“It’s a little piece of road in the Adelaide hills. It was a hairpin bend where there were lots of accidents and stuff, but they eventually fixed that. Jed’s from Adelaide, so it has that significance to it. But it just sounded good. It just seemed to fit the album. When we laid it out on the cover like that, the words looked great. It has great letters in it and visually it looked really, really good as well.”
Happy accidents may well seem haphazard, but as Cec quotes the great Miles Davis “There are no mistakes, just ideas”, and so it goes for The Mess Hall when live – particularly given the inherent complexity of the new material.
“We’ve managed to avoid cues. We tried it for a couple of songs, but it just felt too restricting. That’s just the way we play. It sounds really good with Burke as well. We’ve been doing a few rehearsals and experimenting with things like kick triggers and sampling and things.
We just worked out ‘Pulse’ yesterday, and Lorelei which will be good live. We did a media launch in Sydney and played six or seven songs off the record. They’re all really great to play because you have think about them. I’m sure we’ll get to the stage where we will just go on and not think about them, like the other songs, but they just seem really fresh and challenging to play. “
Having new songs isn’t the only change for the Sydney twosome, with Burke Reid not only producing the album but also touring with the lads, making a first for the Mess Hall as they become a trio for a string of shows.
“It doesn’t change the dynamic. Jed and I are still the guts of it, but Burke adds his own little flavour and augments the bits that make it stand out a little bit more”.
Standing out is not a problem for Cec. His own blistering live shows has caught the attention of many fans, but it’s his side of stage and general loitering that lands him in awkward moments. Take for example his inadvertent meeting with Le Tigre beauty Kathleen Hanna.
“Meeting Kathleen Hanna at the Big Day Out was pretty good. It was quite embarrassing actually. She came up to me at one of the after parties, cause I’d watched everyone of their shows, and she said ‘Hey I’ve seen you around I just wanted to come up and introduce myself’. And I was ‘Gasp!’, and starting babbling about shit. She had a friend their who was giggling and Kathleen looked at me and asked how old I was and I said 21, and she was ‘Oh I can’t do this you’re just a baby’, and walked off. She was, and still is, going out with a Beastie Boy, who were on the tour as well, so it was just funny.”
Happy messy accidents are pretty much a way of life for Cec, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. For him it’s “like when you accidentally go out by yourself and end up stuck in an elevator with people”, and that’s a good thing.
Devils Elbow is out now through Ivy League
