The Panics - The Year of the Panic

It’s not a good time, I can tell as Julian Douglas opens the door, and I tiptoe through an obstacle course of guitars, amps and miscellaneous leads. But if it’s the night before their tour you’d never know it, for aside from the general mayhem, I’m greeted with the same warmth as on any other day. Front man Jae Laffer is nowhere to be found, but I’m hardly concerned, with four Panics at the one abode, I’ve still got three to spare and thanks to their strange symbiosis, one Panic is as good as the next. Drifting down from upstairs comes the sound of a guitar and harmonica, drummer Myles Wootton, is at it again, leaving my Panics count at 2, I usher Drew Wootton and Julian Douglas towards the couch Douglas shakes his head as I fumble with my cigarettes and bang my tape recorder into submission, ‘What a pro’ he muses, barely concealing his mirth.

Usually when individuals cram themselves into one area, it’s a matter of economics, in this case it all comes down to proximity and the obvious sense of family makes my first question somewhat obselete, but with the transition from Perth to Melbourne finally complete for the entire five members but a year ago and our fair city now claiming these lads as their own, I’m wondering; does it have not just the talent but also the smarts to call itself home?

When Drew Wootton speaks it is measured and pensive, whereas Douglas is by nature articulate in the most irreverent sense of the word, still the theory essentially remains the same, Wootton leans in and claims rank, ‘It took a while for everyone to get based over here and finally find some grounding where we could be creative again together but it’s been pretty easy since it’s all happened’ , it’s at this point that Douglas chimes in with much more serious priorities ‘Melbournes a pretty liveable city as well, so it makes it easy when even if you live ten minutes apart there’s about 15 pubs to chose from between the 2 houses’ , It seems I hadn’t considered ALL of the factors that would make it a creative environment. However, it seems that despite it’s homely charm, it’s done little to allay the pressure of a worthy follow up to 2005’s stunning Sleeps Like A Curse. ‘…we always feel we need to build on the last one, but this one’s the third one so everyone’s kinda got a bit more critical weight on their side, because it’s the evil third record’ Wootton comments and Douglas nods his head ‘…I mean there’s always the difficult second record and then the evil third record and then the blasé forth record I suppose, or the experimental, who knows.’ But as if I didn’t already know it yet, Douglas next comment assures me that all this talk about the ‘evil third record’ has come to just that, mere talk; ‘to be completely honest it’s been the easiest, most gratifying and probably the best work we’ve done to date.’ And as Douglas points out, it seems that the dreaded pressure factor has also come to nothing ‘all the tracks came together kind of seamlessly where as before there’s always been a certain sense of looking back and seeing the mistakes that we might have made but we don’t have so much of that sense on this one.’ Wootton furrows his brow at the mention of creative introspection ‘We don’t really think about pitfalls of things, we just look at the mistakes and make sure we don’t do them again, but just move on and make sure it’s better than we did the last time, and hopefully the song range develop and the characters develop in the songs and the whole nature of the beast gets deeper and darker and more involved.’

Speaking of the metaphorical ‘beast’, tracks like 'Ruins', 'Cruel Guards' and 'Something In The Garden' may indicate a growing ominous flair beginning with 2004’s mini album Crack In The Wall. As Wootton explains, this may be attributed in part to the stretching of Laffers proverbial emotional and lyrical legs; ‘I guess he’s opened up and been able to be a little more creative and specific about certain emotions that he probably couldn’t describe before, and that comes with age, that’s probably the main difference. Probably not being scared to hide anything of yourself in a way or being able to deal with yourself in a different way so you can actually let the right parts go’ However Douglas is quick to remind me that the influence of a maudlin Melbourne compared to their sunnier home town of Perth is just as likely responsible for the descending darkness; ‘This is kind of our first Melbourne record as well, and I mean it’s a darker city, you’re always effected by your surroundings, you’re not necessarily gonna write Beach Boys anthems when you’re sitting in drizzle. Our first record was pretty sunny but still the melancholy in the lyrics certainly came through, there’s was always that kind of longing, but I think perhaps that longings now become more of a sense of loss. I think that’s just got to do with having perspective on things that have happened in recent years.’

The cold, dark heart of Melbourne may be in large part responsible for a deeper perspective, but the most cohesive elements of Cruel Guards may very well be attributed to the newly acquired proximity of youngest Panic; Myles Wootton. Trolling through the album credits it’s obvious that he’s taken on an enormous amount of responsibility, from production to composing along with his normal percussion, vocal and instrumental duties. Understandably it’s Wootton who fields my questions about his younger sibling; ‘Yeah on this one he kind of had many of the bigger string samples, then he played them to Jae and then Jae gave him a couple of chords and said “put them around this, cause I can sing around these”, he built the song around that. You know lyrically Jae puts the whole song together but Myles will sit there and tool it about so that it goes into a verse or into a chorus differently…… ‘Don’t Fight It’ Myles and Jae pretty much sat up for a few days putting most of that music together, so they did some pretty good work on that.’

Wootton is quick to remind me though, that the creative process is by no means the realm of these two alone.‘Everyone throws in their two cents, it’s not like everyone gets half an hour with it and you either do your bit or don’t, everyone get’s a chance and everyone listens to it, throws in ideas. So it’s been good having our own studio being able to do that.’

But recent times have not just brought the good fortune of a solid working environment, but also their shift from indie label littleBIGman records to Dew Process/Universal. There’s no denying it’s been a long road, so I have to ask, was it a case of just reward or simply overwhelming? Wootton pauses, smiles, ‘Bit of both’ , Douglas interrupts enthusiastically ‘Yeah definitely, I mean it’s nice to have the occasional well not perks but ease that comes with working on a major label, we’ve always been on such a shoe string to do stuff , like we’ve always done every video clip with mates and just grass roots home recordings through people we know on the cheap. Even when we went to Sydney for Sleeps Like A Curse that was kind of a big deal for us and it took a lot of working out for a lot of people involved to actually get over there and make it happen so I mean it’s been a lot easier since we’ve signed on with Dew Process but that said, I don’t think it’s in any sense a compromise, like we’ve kind of spoken to those guys for a long time and I think they really get where we’re coming from with what we want to do and there’s been a really good kind of a chord between us so far, just in terms of how we made the record and what happened with it. Yeah it’s been a good transition simply for the ease of things happening and the fact that there’s actually some cash lying around in case we have to do something. But working with people close to us, that’s always the way that we’ve preferred to do things….I guess we’ve just got more important friends now’ he laughs, but I’m wondering if the other parties involved were quite so jovial about their new arrangement, specifically LittleBIGman. But as Douglas explains their loyalty to Pete Carroll and his label is as solid as the first day they signed; ‘They haven’t lost us really, I mean you can see on the back of the record Pete Carroll management right next to Dew Process / Universal, we’re still working really closely with Pete. I mean the only difference between being with his label and him being our manager is now he gets paid, so I think the situations worked out brilliantly for everyone. I mean we were still under contract with LittleBIGman in essence and Pete was like get the fuck off my label, but that was sort of the mission statement from the start, he’s very much that sort of guy, he’s just very ethical in his dealings and just wants the best for the people that he’s taking care of and nothing else. And he’s always done that for us, often it’s meant his own expense his own time his own stress his own family his own resources, everything, and that’s why we continue to work with him because there’s just no one else in the industry like him.’

It’s not the first time the lads have been blessed with the opportunity to work with some extraordinary individuals, Engineering mastermind, Tim Whitten lent his deft hand to 2005’s Sleep’s Like a Curse, the album that finally made them. And now not only Scott Horscroft but Victor Van Vugt have joined the ensemble on Cruel Guards. And as Wootton explains it, there were plenty to choose from;
‘Well Scott Horscroft was one of many that we short listed for this record, there were a few others that the timing just wasn’t right; we were talking to John Porter who’d done a lot of Ryan Adams and Smiths from a long time ago, he was willing to do it but we had to go over to the states and do it really cheaply which we weren’t really willing to do because we didn’t want to rush the record because we’d spent so much time in pre production. So Scott seemed pretty cool, he seemed to get our music, he was really enthusiastic about trying different stuff with the arrangements and adding all this extra layering, and since he’s worked with Silverchair and he had a mint studio which we’d thought about recording in before and it kind of felt pretty natural and organic when we met the guy, so yeah we shifted camp up to Sydney which was pretty weird after moving from Perth to Melbourne, but it was good get out of our comfort zone so that there’s no distractions….not there’s not heaps of distractions in Surrey Hills, but hey once you’re inside the walls it’s a good space to be in the B.J.B. And then Victor…I can’t really speak about it too much but he seemed pretty much like one of us straight away, he understood the music straight away, knew where it was meant to go, so it seemed like a pretty fit match in the end. I’m glad that he did it, I can’t wait to meet him personally, yeah er thanks for working on the record.’

There’s no doubt that 2007 has been The Panics year, with a support slot for both Noel Gallagher and The Pixies amongst other well deserved rewards. Their vision for the year to come however is larger still, Wootton addresses my question with a new enthusiasm; ‘In the New Year we’ve got Festivals and then hopefully we’ll be off overseas for the South By South West thing. If that happens we’ll definitely get over to Europe and do all the summer season over there. Definitely overseas is on the cards next year.’

Douglas shifts a little in his seat, he’s barely finished unpacking the last box after relocating from Perth and something tells me that the practicalities of this process are still fresh in his mind; ‘There’s always talk about moving overseas, but I think it more just a case of there’s a lot involved in getting five or more people overseas for any period of time. I mean we’d love to but the practicalities aren’t always there, but I mean it’s always worked well in the past when we’ve only been there for six weeks or so and we did a lot of the pre production for an album or just played a few shows to just cement something, but that said if you can go and get a good string of dates booked and get onto the continent you can still do three or four months of just travelling around, stuff that doesn’t necessarily involve relocating but it’ll certainly involve a lot of fun I’d imagine. But as for a definitive answer as to relocation I mean who knows, I mean we were talking about moving to Melbourne from day one, could happen any time.’

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