With the release of their new album Punchbuzz, Husky’s Gideon Preiss spoke with The Echo about recording the album and the release of their indie rock-styled single, Ghost.
‘Ghost is upbeat, it’s fun. Something I love in music is finding a bittersweet balance. My ultimate band for that is the Beach Boys. They wrote these seemingly happy fun light songs but deep down they were hard going. Maybe we touched on that a little with Ghost. It’s a simple song in a melody and chord progression; we tweaked that and then we started on this minor chord that gives it the bittersweet quality.’
Shaped by the duo’s recent experiences, Punchbuzz sees the band swapping their signature folk sound for streamlined indie rock that lopes ahead with widescreen atmosphere, dark lyrics, and newly muscled melodies. Sharp, lean, and driving, the album more than lives up to the dynamic imperative of its title.
‘The songs are quite different, the feel and the sound are quite different from what we have done before. You change over time and hopefully you are evolving,’ say Preiss. ‘You are listening to different music, you are reading different things, and all that informs the songs you write.’
Although this time was different. Punchbuzz was the first album on which Husky used a producer.
‘We worked with Matt REdlick. It was fantastic. We were just a couple of days into the process and we hit it off. He is a very curious, interesting and creative guy.
‘It was a leap of faith for us to use a producer. Matt is like an explorer, a sonic explorer, and he is up for going anywhere, and we were up for folioing him. He would start in the most random place and I would think this is mad, we won’t make music like this – but he had a way of bringing things back. It was a journey down the rabbit hole with him. You could talk in abstract terms. You could say, ‘I want the bridge to feel like misty morning dew as you slide down the clouds’ and he would go, ‘Ah yes, I have just the thing for that’.
The band are looking forward to taking their new album on the road, translating the music made into the studio to a live set.
‘It’s always a challenge – and something I tend to work on a lot, ’ says Preiss. ‘Taking new recorded material and bringing it to the stage. It’s a very very textured layered album, so when you play it live you are limited to how much four people can do with a limited number of hands, mouths and feet. So translating it is part of the process that I really love. We are working on it at the moment. Jules, our bass player, has this half-guitar half-bass – three guitar strings and two bass – so he can do guitar and bass at the same time!’
The Punchbuzz tour will see Husky perform in full band mode at Bello Winter Music, in an opening night gala with Epizo Bangoura, Jack Carty, Hello Tut Tut and MC Mandy Nolan – Bello Winter Music Gala Opening Night Thursday 6 July, Bellingen. Tickets $55 (adult) $28 (youth) $16 (child) www.bellowintermusic.com.
