Kingswood have hit the road off the back of their acclaimed album After Hours, Close To Dawn, which features the recent fuzzy upbeat single Atmosphere and the sexy, slow jam, Golden.
Known for heavier tracks such as Ohio, Kingswood have since taken a musical turn toward the blues/rock direction and the gents have just blown crowds away with confetti cannons at Splendour In the Grass, and made a heavily lauded soulful cover of Destiny’s Child single Say My Name for Triple J’s Like A Version.
When they’re not onstage the guys love being on the road.
‘When we started touring Australia, one of the first things we did was buy a 98 HiAce and take all the seats out, except for the four, and put all our gear in,’ laughs Alex Laska. The guys are leaving Cairns after their gig there the night before. They’ve just been bungee jumping.
‘They emailed us and asked if we wanted to do it. It was incredible. Exactly what we needed to do! It’s the best wake up!’ laughs Laska. ‘We should do it every day.’
The guys do love a challenge. Their sophomore album After Hours, Close to Dawn was recorded in Nashville. They kept the cameras rolling even when the tape wasn’t, to capture a unique insight into how a band creates an album. The band are huge fans of watching documentaries, so it felt like the natural thing to do, to capture the journey of making their album.
‘Recording is a really interesting process,’ says Laska.
‘Sometimes it’s really easy and other times it’s really hard. Sometimes you can hear a song fully formed and the sonic landscape is very apparent in your mind and other times not. Although I try not to do that you because when you get into the studio if you have already made your mind up about how something is going to sound, then you don’t have that creative freedom. When you have the shell of something, then you can really create something in the recording process.’
This show sees the band on the road with backing vocals. In fact they have 12 people in their touring party; it’s quite a show!
‘We are doing a mess of both albums,’ says Laska.
‘To be honest our whole live set feels new at the moment because we have a drummer filling in and his take is just slightly different so it makes things a bit different. It’s like changing a critical ingredient, but it makes things really interesting.’
Kingswood bungee jump into Byron this week, playing the Hotel Great Northern on Sunday.
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