DAVID NOVAK of Polish Club: Simplicity at Volume Level 11
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
Do you ever listen to an album for the first time and just think; yeah, this is it?
A little bit blues, one part soul and a whole lot of loud are just a few of the elements that make up the sound of Sydney’s Polish Club who have just recently completed a sold out tour around Australia. The duo made up of vocalist/guitarist David Novak and drummer John-Henry (who is particularly talented at hitting things hard) are in New Zealand next week for two shows. I recently caught up with Novak to talk about their debut album and everything Jeff Goldblum.
So is Jeff Goldblum a major influence because of his work with the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, or because he looks just so damn good without his shirt on?
Oh look, I just love the whole package. I don’t know what it is, he’s just, he’s got that I don’t give a shit attitude. He kinda of started as a bit of a meme and I’ve just grown to like him; he just exudes confidence and I think that is what I like best. Not to mention his many important roles in some of the foundational movies of my life, a la Independence Day, The Fly what not. The Fly was incredible; he’s just such a bad ass!
Actually, one of my aims in life is to see his live jazz band play in LA, I’ve heard that he does shows quite often in a small dive bar over there so that’s on my bucket list, right at the top. There’s just not enough Jeff Goldblum music to go around as far as I’m concerned.
Alright Already released earlier this year had a bit of a rocky start in the beginning of the recording process; was it a total labour of love?
Yeah I mean, it kinda felt like the longest process in the world which is a bit rich coming from a guy who has only been in a band for like two years; but it kinda took forever to get everything together! But once we had it ready we had like 50 or 60 ideas and we locked ourselves in a room for 8 days and before you know it we had a big beautiful healthy album ready to go.
So yeah it was quite a quick process once we pressed record but getting to that point was a total ball-ache; I am just happy to have it out of our hands and in the laps of people who can actually listen to it now. And I couldn’t be happier with the result!
I understand that initially you recorded the album with Rob Cavello (Green Day, Black Sabbath, and Linkin Park) in LA?
It was a weird experience because we actually ended up recording [the album] in Sydney with Wade Keighran (Wolf & Cub). We started recording in LA with Rob Cavello and that was a crazy experience unlike anything we’ve ever done before but we ended up not using what we started there because I think we were just, it was a bit too early for John and I and we didn’t really know what we were doing and what we wanted.
As a result of that we kinda learned a lot of stuff along the way and were much better prepared to just do it really quickly in Sydney where we were comfortable and familiar with the surroundings. And you know, despite not using the stuff that we did with Rob I still see it as a really important part of recording the album. Those two recording sessions weren’t mutually exclusive of each other that was kinda the first runaround we had and because of that we ended up with a really great album.
In other words the first recording session provided you both with the building foundations for Alright Already?
Probably! I think you can’t afford to be precious with that kind of stuff and you have to sort of give up…let down your guard a little bit and make mistakes and experiment with different things. Eventually you’ll latch onto something that seems to work for you and once that happens you kinda know that you’re in a good place and everything all of a sudden lines up and becomes super easy. So right now where we are at is a result of trial and error; we’re a much more efficient recording machine so to speak and we know what we’re doing so much more than we did back last year in LA.
First track on the album ‘Where U Been?’ comes out swinging – it’s an absolutely brilliant in your face opener!
I actually wrote the lyrics when we were in LA, it’s a super simple song, it barely has a chorus and it’s just loud from start to finish which is kinda our most comfortable. It’s just a product of not overthinking things and it’s the sound of John and I having fun. We don’t really put aside time to think about what we’re doing we just do it … we do stuff! As long as we can have fun with it and more often than not if we’re having a good time, good music comes out of it and I think it’s evident in that track.
I mean that’s how we approach everything; we have precious little time in this day and age to kind of win people over with music, so we want to make sure that every single second we put down to tape is gonna make sure that people are paying attention and what better way to do that then to just turn everything up as loud as possible and force it down someone’s throat?
My favourite track has to be ‘If It Was Me’ – around that 2:30 mark it just goes off into a whole other tangent!
Yeah well we kinda have to, well we don’t have to but as a two piece there’s only so many moving parts that you can play with! And once you break that two minute, two minute-thirty mark it’s a lot easier to keep people interested and make sure that people are paying attention if you just do something unexpected, something completely different. The challenge is to kind of marry the two ideas and make it work; yeah it’s a bit of a new idea halfway through that song but I think altogether it kinda works and the three minutes or whatever it is feels like it goes by in one minute!
So yeah we are slowly but surely doing more, using songwriting references that we haven’t used before and changing up songs halfway through; going with a different vibe here and there. But again it just comes down to, “Am I still interested while I am playing the song for three minutes? Am I still invested? Am I still doing something that I wanna pay attention to, that I’m excited to do? That’s the only thing we ever think of.
Interestingly enough though you guys decided to include three previously released tracks on the album; what were the reasons behind that decision?
Well we don’t really like to retread things that we’ve done before. I think all we wanna do is with all the songs we’ve written that we wanna release; we want to make sure that that particular recording is as good as it can possibly be.
With ‘Able’ and with ‘Beeping’ we wanted to make sure that those songs got the treatment that they deserved and with our debut EP … the total mish mash of recording studios, scenarios and personnel … we thought we could add more to those couple of songs that we’ve done before that weren’t on the EP and they were worth doing again.
There are people that come up to me and go – we have a song that’s called ‘My House’ that was released on a double A side 7 inch earlier last year that we didn’t put on the album – “How dare you, why wasn’t that on the album, it’s my favourite song!” and I go well surely you wanna listen to as much new Polish Club music as possible!
I’ve got absolutely no problems with the recording that we did earlier so there’s no point in shoving that on the album to make up the numbers. Especially the way that people listen to music now you can just switch over and listen to ‘My House’ very easily on a streaming service or whatever. It’s right there for you, so I just want to make sure that everything we release is something new and something worthwhile be it an old song, a new song, there’s always gonna be something you haven’t heard before in a new recording.
What if I asked you to pick your personal favourite off the album?
Well, I go back and forth. I think we’ve kinda pigeon holed ourselves a bit – before we released the album – into being that band that plays short fast and loud rock songs that are like a minute and a half or two minutes long. But whenever we play live you know there’s half of the set that’s slow, more intimate love songs for lack of a better word. I wanted to have that in the album and have both sides represented so ‘Divided’ is a really important song for me. First of all the first half is without John in its entirety; it’s just me on a guitar, which is such a plain concept but in terms of Polish Club we never really put that down to tape before. So to get that out and have people know the song, hearing us earlier and sing the words back and connect it back and realise that Polish Club is more than a loud brash two piece? It’s quite satisfying to be able to do that successfully and represent that in a recorded form.
Polish Club has gained quite the reputation for their high energy live shows – what can New Zealand punters expect?
(laughs) Look music now days is such that a couple of blokes playing Rock n Roll or Soul music as loud as they can and bleeding over the drums and sweating over a microphone is unfortunately not something you see very often. And that’s all it is, it’s painfully simple, you kinda get the gist when I tell people what it is but you don’t really understand the extent of it until we play live and it’s just crazy loud and we’re both never satisfied unless we are gasping for air and feel like we’re gonna pass out.
I keep telling people that it’s just a rock n roll show. But I keep seeing everyone who sees us for the first time get struck by surprise at how much noise we’re making and how intense it is. I guess it’s the fact that just two blokes are making more noise than two blokes have ever made on a stage, and despite that, we’re still keeping – mostly – in time and in key. I look at our shows as less of a one way performance by me and John and more as a battle between us and the audience, as I try to implore them to dance, freak out, feel warm and fuzzy and uncomfortable at the same time. And at the end of the day, it’s still a good old fashioned rock show, but when was the last time anyone ever saw one that was memorable?
Polish Club will be performing two live shows in New Zealand next week on their “Rockin’ World Tour (To New Zealand) 2017”. Tickets to both shows are still available (here) but get in quick as they are playing (two of the fucking best) intimate venues and tickets are selling fast!