GUSSIE LARKIN and EZRA SIMMONS of EARTH TONGUE: Slightly Macabre
An interview by Bridget Herlihy.
Earth Tongue are living the dream. The New Zealand heavy fuzz/psych-rock duo featuring Gussie Larkin (guitar, vocals) and Ezra Simmons (drums, vocals) have become renowned for their intoxicating fusion of eerie melodies and thunderous rhythms, and their spellbinding live shows, both at home and abroad. This year they signed to iconic rock n roll label In The Red Records, who are committed to groundbreaking artists and fostering creativity (and boasts artists such as Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Boss Hog and Ty Segal). They performed the coveted support slot for Queens Of The Stone Age on their recent NZ shows, before de-camping to Berlin, home to one of the most prolific underground music scenes in the world. Having already played a number of shows supporting Acid King, the pair are about to embark on an comprehensive tour across Europe for the Northern Hemisphere summer, which will see them play Paris, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Prague, Dublin…. and the extensive list goes on. And to top it all off, Earth Tongue have just released their greatly anticipated second album Great Haunting, the follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut album, 2019’s Floating Being.
While Earth Tongue are living the dream, Great Haunting is the stuff of nightmares. Drawing inspiration from the Black Death and vintage horror films, Great Haunting is a sonic journey unlike any other, one that showcases a high-energy, slightly macabre, and completely alluring version of Earth Tongue that will leave listeners crying out for more.
After wrangling with video calling technology, I had a fascinating chat with wunderkinds Gussie and Ezra from their new apartment in Berlin.
How are you both? Have you been making the most of the Northern summer?
Gussie: We are slowly coming back to life. This is our first day back after doing about a month of touring. It was awesome; it was a lot of shows…just so much travel and you never really realise until you stop just how much it took out of you.
Ezra: I think we did 23 shows in about 26 days, or something like that. We had a couple of days off, but a lot of back-to-back… so even just the fact that you are staying in a different hotel every night, it really catches up. But we had a great time; probably our best Europe tour so far. Definitely.
Gussie: Definitely.
Have you previously toured Europe this extensively?
Gussie: Yeah. This is our fourth tour. We’ve a few really DIY ones, like before the pandemic, and then we were finally able to come back at the end of last year and since then it’s felt like a lot more of a sustainable thing because we have a booking agent over here, and just more opportunities started coming up after we came over last year. So that’s why we have relocated here, we just told them to book us as many shows as possible for this year.
Ezra: They’ve done a pretty amazing job for us. They’ve booked us around 50 shows from now until the middle of August. So we are already 23 in, and there are about 27 to go. But from now on they are a bit more spread out, so they are not all back-to-back. In a week we have another run that goes for about two and a half weeks. But then throughout the rest of summer over here we have one or two festivals to play a week. It’s pretty fun; it’s a pretty well planned out, nice, achievable summer. [laughs]
It sounds like you are living your dream; relocating to Berlin and being able to play festivals for the summer.
Ezra: Yeah! Before covid when we came over we crowd-funded money to do it. We booked everything ourselves; we did the work then and now its paying off. We spent so much money and worked so hard getting the contacts that we now have, and getting to the place we are now. And now it’s starting to be enjoyable and sustainable, so we are happy.
Is this a permanent or temporary relocation to Berlin?
Gussie: Its very open-ended. We don’t have any tickets back to New Zealand, so… yeah. We are going to give it a good go.
Ezra: Its one of those things where if we feel the call to come back we will, and we won’t be gutted about it. But if we keep doing well over here we will stay until people are sick of us, or however it works! [laughs]
Do you have any plans to tour NZ again now that the new album has dropped?
Gussie: No solid plans, unfortunately. That tour we did in April was sort of like an early album release tour; that’s just how the timing worked out. I mean we will undoubtedly come back and play shows, but no plans at the moment.
Ezra: It’s likely that we are going to want to escape the European winter, and then come back and tour over summer.
Having said that, we are a couple of weeks into winter now, and it’s actually been quite mild. Although NZ doesn’t quite compare to Berlin…
Ezra: Yeah, it’s not as cold and dark! [laughs]
Your new album Great Haunting has just dropped, and it’s a fascinating sonic journey that really is spellbinding. How long ago did you actually record the tracks?
Ezra: It was mostly through 2021-22. It was a wee while ago; it was kind of like our lockdown project. And then it just goy delayed and delayed from, basically just us being happy with the sings we were writing. We were being a bit precious about it as the kind of second album thing, you know? We kind of accidentally made the first one almost, it feels like now, we just wrote it quickly and didn’t think too much of it. But we really enjoyed it so we felt like we had to try to manufacture what we captured in that album, but build on it. We took a while. We recorded some songs that ended up getting scrapped. Gussie was also working on the Mermaidens record throughout that time, so it was split; that’s why it was drawn out over quite a long period of time.
Gussie: Yeah, it was very bitsy. Upon reflection we probably wouldn’t work like that again, because we had so many different recording sessions and lots of recording sessions where we were writing the songs as we went, which is cool, but it did make it take a bit more time.
Ezra: Also because the world was shut down travel-wise, we didn’t have much urgency to get it done. We were just taking our time.
How much did the pandemic play into the themes that flow through Great Haunting? The imagery and lyrics alluding to the Black Death and the plague, and you are doing that while we grapple with a modern version of the plague. Were they two related in any way or was it coincidence?
Ezra: That was coincidence, honestly.
Gussie: Yeah, that wasn’t really related. With Out Of This Hell we kind of linked the lyrics to medieval plague and death as the song was being finished. And we were like ‘that’s something that could help us round off the lyrics and to finish it. The pandemic in terms of all the time being inside and at home meant that we watched a lot of horror films and thrillers of the 70’s and 80’s. Really when we got in deep on those kind of films, and because that’s what we were consuming, that’s where we went with lyrics.
Ezra: We were looking for movies that we could get inspiration from. It was quite…
Gussie: On the nose? [laughs]
Ezra: Yeah. We were searching for the really weird and creative movies that sparked imagery and worlds that we could kind of create from there. I thinks that’s the main why that the pandemic influenced the record, is that we had time to really nerd-out on lots of horror flicks.
Looking at your music videos for this album, it looks like that was quite an effective way to spend your time! Out Of This Hell, which was shot out on rugged West Coast beaches and remote locations, is so beautifully shot and edited by Levi Cranston. Apart from the compelling soundtrack, the imagery truly captures those kind of vintage horror genre of the 70’s and 80’s.
Ezra: Yeah, we just wanted to bring in some of those film tropes that kind of tie in with the music and create a little vibe out on the coast. It was super fun.
Gussie: Yeah. I think we really like the folk-horror genre where a lot of those horror films are set in the daylight, and they are often at these really brightly lit natural locations. I’m thinking of like The Wicker Man, and we had a lot of those references. We had a lot of those shared film references with us and Levi, and then we had access to this amazing location, and that house. It was a bit of a gamble that it would work, like whether the mood would be dark and sinister enough in these sunny days, because we had perfect weather. That’s where I think Levi’s editing and a lot of the colour treatment really made it spooky, but in a fun way.
What do you think are they key differences between Great Haunting and Floating Being? Do you feel that there has been an evolution of sound or approach to song writing since your first album?
Ezra: I think it definitely sits in the same world in terms of song writing, part from the themes. You can pretty easily split them apart, in terms of themes, as Floating Being is the sci-fi album, and this is the horror one. But I think where it differs is this is a lot more high energy; there are a lot faster songs. There are some that are even more towards a punk-rock feeling. This album is just faster and more upbeat.
Gussie: I think that we have just become more intentional with the song writing, and we really spent a lot more time on the structures of the songs and we wanted the whole record to be in-your-face, high energy, which now playing live, we were like “wow – we need some more chill songs”. [laughs]
Ezra: Which does work with the German audiences because they are used it. We are playing to pretty rock crowds over here, so we feel like they are up for it. But when you are playing 20 shows in a show it does get quite exhausting. But nothing that a few days rest won’t fix! [laughs]
How do German heavy rock audiences compare to playing to an arena full of Queens Of The Stone Age fans?
Gussie: Ummm… [laughs]
Ezra: So our booking agency over here is very genre specific; they are kind of in the psychedelic-stoner rock world. So it feels like the crowds that we are playing to over here… obviously these niches aren’t so fleshed out in New Zealand, so if you are playing at Spark Arena or whatever you are playing to the general public. Over here these people into this specific genre, they consume it… there are shows multiple times a week, within this bubble. So they have set expectations from bands, and I think it works in our favour, because we exist within the genre, but we also have some other weird New Zealand things going on. A lot of people come up to us after the shows and say ‘what a surprise!’.
Gussie: That’s the main thing we hear really; “wow, such a surprise!”.
Ezra: I think that’s what we really find so rewarding about being over here is that a lot of the shows that we are playing over here is also supporting bigger bands. So people generally haven’t really heard of us, but we are playing to full rooms so there is a lot of… we have to prove ourselves to people who don’t really know us.
Gussie: That’s the same with the Queens Of The Stone Age shows. That did a lot for us, as most of the audience would have been people who don’t go to Whammy Bar or San Fran on a weekly basis, but being able to put our music in front of them they were into it. A good amount of them were into it.
Did you get any feedback from the Queens themselves?
Gussie: We did, from Troy van Leeuwen the guitarist. We had really good chats with him. He was quite enamoured with our sound and what we are doing.
Ezra: We had big chats with him about our pedal board and stuff like that which was really cool.
I have found that the singles that you released prior to the album dropping are incredible catchy, you have some great ‘earworms’ on Great Haunting. And the vinyl release is a fantastic ghoulish green and black?
Gussie: There are four different colours, and the colour that is in New Zealand is a green and black splatter called Green Demon. It’s amazing; just to have the records in time is a huge achievement. I just feel lucky that people that like our music are record people, so it’s a good feeling to know that they are going to be buying it.
Earth Tongue’s new album ‘Great Haunting’ was released today, and is available on both CD and vinyl from all good record stores, as well as streaming services if you’re that way inclined. Either way, get yourself a copy and turn it up loud – you can thank us later!
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