|
|
October Wish from Melbourne, Australia |
|
Sarah Gurry and Matt Leffanue from Melbourne, Australia comprise the
musical duo October Wish who just released their first album
Grief And Grace. If you are
looking for a reference point for their music you are going to find that
a little more difficult genre wise, because they do an excellent job of
blurring those lines, while keeping the songwriting and the music at a
high level. There is a little bit of Blue Rodeo’s “Try,” in their music,
a touch of Matchbox Twenty’s “3 AM,” a dash of another Melbourne,
Australia band, Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” and a smidgen
of Coldplay, reflected Gurry and Leffanue’s songwriting.
The production quality on Grief
And Grace is excellent with producer Michael Oliphant at the helm.
Oliphant who is also a superb keyboardist, singer and songwriter is
well-respected by those in the Australian music community.
Sarah Gurry talks
about their music, “Because we took so much time (the album was recorded
over three years) and we weren’t scared to take time with it we didn’t
race any of the songs over the line. I think it has a natural breath
about it and sometimes it opens up into orchestral moments that really
just showed us what they wanted us to do.
Probably one of the best examples is the song that we just
debuted as a clip (“Caught Up In This Lie”). Going into the recording
process we thought we would have to rewrite it. Matt at one point wanted
to ditch it. My partner Johnny was saying that’s my favorite song.
You’ve got to keep it going. We got to a point where we said it is what
it is and let’s not touch it. Let’s record it exactly how it is and
let’s have fun with it. By letting it breathe it became its own thing
and I think it showed us that you just have to trust it. The songs will
guide you a bit and so stylistically I think it has orchestral feels
about it and not necessarily that we formulated it or that we tried to
create it.”
Matt Leffanue
joins the conversation “I think it is relatively earthy and there is a
sense of rawness about it still. I also think that it hails on some Folk
and Celtic roots at times. We fiddled around with structures and formats
and bits and pieces, but generally the songs are what we were playing
during our gigs. We (now) have added guitars and drums and strings and
more complex orchestral arrangements.”
“Roughly half of the album is derived from ideas of Sarah’s and half of
the album is derived from ideas from me. We came together with more
ideas and we developed them. We didn’t set out to make certain songs
acoustical or certain songs rocky or certain songs orchestral, but I
think we were also conscious that we wanted to bring different flavors
to the album. This is our
first album and we were experimenting.
We were trying to find exactly what worked for us.
I was conscious that our album has various sounds and various
influences, whether it was a soft acoustic track or guitar or violin or
orchestral arrangements. I think as a listener it is a lot more
interesting to listen to things that vary, because you might not like
one song, but you might like another song.
Everyone has different preferences and different ways of liking
music,” says Leffanue.
“Caught Up In This Lie,” begins with Gurry’s gentle piano, accompanied
by an understated guitar accompaniment. Leffanue leads with vocals,
before being joined by Gurry and they harmonize beautifully. Matt
Leffanue has a bit of a gravelly tone to his voice and when juxtaposed
to Sarah Gurry’s more ethereal soprano vocals, the result is magic.
“The initial seed for “Caught Up In This Lie,” probably started with me
when I took up the guitar again in the mid-2000s. It is the combination
of two songs that I developed. You notice those three quarters of the
way through the song when there’s a bit of a different extended back
end. The words flowed quite well. The theme of being caught up in a lie,
regardless of what you are doing in life resonated pretty well with
things I was experiencing at the time and activities in my life,” says
Leffanue.
The opening track “Emile’s Song,” is a beautiful and sad song that also
celebrates the life of another. Leffanue and Gurry’s vocals compliment
each other so well, with Gurry taking the lead. The guitar work by Matt
Leffanue and Ken Butler is splendid. The song is deeply personal to
Gurry, as it talks about the loss of a friend.
She talks about the song, “I started writing this song when I was still
in my family band. There was something in me that said it’s not ready to
give over or it’s not ready to record. I knew it was missing a chorus
and I knew it was missing a big piece. I just kept working away at it.
This was one of the great moments for me in my collaboration with Matt.
When I brought it to him I knew Matt was the person who was going to
honor the song and the song wasn’t going to be about anything else.
I said I’ve got some verses, but I don’t know where to go with
the chorus. Within an hour Matt had come up with a chorus and I couldn’t
believe how he developed it so quickly.
He just got it. It is one of my favorites that we did together.
I’ve always believed that Matt has this subconscious way of delivering a
message and he doesn’t even realize that he is doing it. All of a sudden
I had a framework. When I went back over what he was singing about and
when he consolidated all of the lyrics that he was coming up with I felt
like it was my friend talking back to me. I felt like it was Emile
talking back to me.
The gorgeous thing about that song is Emile was a Lebanese man and he
has some nephews that live in Melbourne and I still stay in close
contact. Once the album was done I sent it to them. I said I finally
have this album done and I dedicated it to Emile. They sent it straight
over to Lebanon and they sent me some footage of their nieces who would
be six or seven singing along to these songs. The whole family could not
believe that the first song was about Emile. They asked me for the
lyrics and all of the rest of it. I got to tell them the story too. I
felt like Matt had come back with some answers.
It was a true show of when you collaborate with the right person and you
are on the right page, you just want to trust them and when you do have
that trust it comes back. It is like you could never have written a song
without them. It took it to a whole different level for me.”
“I guess I provided the counterpoint to Sarah. Certainly when Sarah came
with this song it was piano based and it had the bones about it, but it
just didn’t have that next piece. I think by adding that counterpoint it
just had a really good question and answer and feel about it,” says Matt
Leffanue.
As for the title song and the title of the album
Grief And Grace, Gurry says,
“That was actually a song that I had written about my best friend
(Emilie) who passed away eleven years ago now. When you have gone
through a heavy grief you also know when other people have gone through
a heavy grief. (At the time) I was in a very bad way for about three
years with the grief.
Lyrically I couldn’t move past that line, which is why I chose to repeat
it. There wasn’t really anything else that I could add. There was that
space that I was absolutely in and I knew there was going to be a great
gift to myself when I came out of the grief. I didn’t know where it was
and I didn’t know how long it would take me. That song was written maybe
a year after my friend Emile died. I felt like I had opened up a gift
about three years afterwards, realizing the incredible lessons and the
incredible strength and the rest of it you can really achieve out of
grief. The song “Grief and Grace,” was about that journey from grief and
then into the grace period,” says Gurry, in a quieter more reflective
voice.
“Sarah’s songwriting is really thoughtful and in-depth and reflective,
so if I feel I can tune into that and add to that it is great. If I
can’t add anything to it and it is still a good song then we are still
going to do it,” says Leffanue.
While laughing Sarah Gurry says, “With Matt’s songs I just hold on for
dear life and I hope that I can keep up.”
Grief And Grace
began as a five song EP and over time became a ten song album.
Gurry explains, “We had about five songs and we thought let’s put
something down. As Matt said you go through the process and you get to
the point when you are writing the songs and you think can we do
something else with them? The next part of the process was to go into
the studio and we had four or five with the idea that we might do an EP
and start from there. We got to
about the fourth or fifth song and we realized we had outgrown the idea
of the EP.”
Producer Michael Oliphant concurs, “They came to me as I had already
done some producing work with Sarah on some songs which she thought
might make a solo album for her. Circumstances lead her to meeting up
with Matt and they hit it off musically. She brought me in and
introduced me to Matt with the idea of working on an EP for them. That
went so well that when we got to recording on about the third or fourth
track they started talking about turning the project into an album. It
just sort of grew into what it is now.”
Gurry picks up the conversation again, “Once we finished the EP it
didn’t feel right to me to throw out three or four songs. They were
quite elaborate songs and it didn’t feel like it was a three or four or
five songs EP. We happened to press on and the great thing we happened
to be doing at the same time that we were recording was we kept up the
songwriting. We agreed to push on and even Michael Oliphant said I think
this EP has outgrown being an EP and I think we have to do an album. All
three of us agreed to keep pressing on, not knowing that it would be
another three years. It was
worth it. When you take your time and you are patient and you let the
process drive you there is a level of reflection when you are grateful
that you took your time.”
“Sarah and I took it slow, because we wanted to give it the right
treatment, but it was frustrating as well, because we wanted to get
something out. For various reasons life gets in the way, so we had to be
patient with it. We made the album something to be valued and to be
proud of,” says Leffanue.
The album Grief And Grace is something that both Sarah Gurry and Matt
Leffanue should be proud of. It is a strong testament to good
songwriting, excellent musicianship, having a strong producer by your
side and more importantly, as Gurry would say, not racing it across the
line.
Please
visit the website for October Wish and you can
watch the video for the song “Caught Up In This Lie,”
here.
|
“We
trusted the influences that brought us here, rather than trying to sound
like anyone or (wanting to) get on the radio,” says Gurry, before
continuing, “We just sort of knew… (she pauses) we really did trust that
we would come up with something. There was never a point where we were
listening to albums saying let’s make this bridge sound like this or
let’s do it this way. In some ways that was a great comfort to me. I
always knew it would come out sounding like us and it wouldn’t be of a
particular genre, a particular sound or of an era. It was just going to
be the summary of all of our influences over the years.”