Sodastream - Chamber-pop in miniature
interview by
Lorenzo Righetto (new interview), Francesco Amoroso
First of all, thank you for your time and for your music. So, I was probably a bit hasty in writing that if someone reversed your discography chronologically, few people would notice. I admit that before “Little By Little” I mainly knew “A Minor Revival”, so I had to catch up a bit on your discography. In the end I was surprised by the intensity, the passion and the urgency that “Little By Little” gives off, and that's how that thought came to me as I was writing. Am I talking nonsense (it's possible), or do you recognize yourselves, at least a little, in this assessment of the new record?
Karl Smith: [laughs] Yeah. We don't follow trends at all, so I guess you could easily reverse the order of the records and nobody would notice. When we make an album, we just try to follow the songs, rather than a new concept or a new arrangement style. One thing we've always agreed on is giving the songs enough space to let them speak for themselves. They need room to breathe, so they can work together to create something unique. My favourite records are still the ones that focus on the songs, rather than on a new sound, a new musical texture. Those are the records I go back to most gladly – “Nebraska”, “Blonde On Blonde”, “Our Mother the Mountain”, “Songs Of Love And Hate”, “Pink Moon”, “Bakesale”, “Comes A Time”… The list goes on.
And, yeah. I see what you mean about the album. Actually, intensity and urgency are two words that a lot of journalists have used to describe the album. The last few years have been a very intense time for me and Pete, so it doesn't surprise me that it comes through in the music.
The stories in our songs are always influenced by and drawn from what we're personally going through. Getting older isn't easy, and family life doesn't just bring joy, it also brings a new level of complexity into your everyday life. That, combined with the precarious political situation we're living through globally, means there's a lot of energy and emotion swirling around us as we play.
An obvious question has to be, after so many side projects and a solo album, what brought about the reunion and this new record, after a six-year hiatus and more than ten years since your last release as Sodastream?
It was actually a pretty strange thing... Pete and I started playing together again back in 2010, I think, but for another band – a five-piece called Lee Memorial. We were working on our second record, but the other members kept being too busy to show up to rehearsals, so in the end it was just me and Pete playing. We thought: “This isn't normal, this definitely sounds more like Sodastream than Lee Memorial”, so we put down the electric instruments and picked the acoustic ones back up. We played the songs from our unfinished record and that's where it all started. Fast forward three and a half years, and we're finally sharing our new work with the world.
What was it like going back into the studio together? You can feel a special energy in the record.
It was a beautiful feeling, going back into the studio with Pete and our longtime collaborator Marty Brown, who produced the record. When you make music with friends for a long time, there's a total effortlessness to the process that you don't get with new projects. You don't have to talk through every little detail... You all just know when things are working and when they're not. I don't mean to say there aren't hard days, but there's a real joy in the creative process even when you're facing challenges.
I also think that getting older makes you appreciate the process itself more. It's not just another record. It's a moment to stop and embrace a shared creative vision. You let go of everyday life so you can focus on the stories in the songs and, together, bring them to life as best you can.
Were the songs written specifically for a Sodastream record? It was interesting to see how you explored a completely different sound and style for your solo album, while this one sounds totally Sodastream.
All the songs were written with Sodastream in mind, and since Pete and I have an established working relationship, I can bring him ideas even when they're in a very embryonic stage. Sometimes we start with the complete structure of a song, but more often we work on the song together. And as the arrangements develop, I keep refining the lyrics and the vocal melodies.
I also think that sticking to acoustic guitar and double bass (or sometimes piano) during the writing stage makes sure the backbone of the song is strong enough to stand on its own, without the extras. That way, when we add instruments, everything is built on solid foundations, rather than created to cover up flaws and inconsistencies.
There are at least two nods to European tradition, the Latin nuances of “On The Stage” and the Eastern European vibes of “Habits”. Is that a deliberate combination?
It wasn't entirely intentional, but all the sounds of our lives creep into our songs. We haven't spent much time in Eastern Europe, but we both love their folk traditions, as well as those of southern Italy and Spain. “Habits” is part gypsy, part American folk, while “On The Stage” is about travelling, so it made sense to have a few extra sounds... Marty plays a marimba, which here is mostly associated with island music. So it all plays into the idea that if you leave the songs enough room to breathe, people can attach their own meanings, their own stories, to them.
What do you think makes the Melbourne scene so recognizable, and what's your relationship with the new generation of bands?
Melbourne has always had a lot of great bands. It's one of the few places in Australia with a strong musical culture, with an abundance of live music venues. At the same time, it's a very broad and varied circle, and our musical peers only make up a marginal section of the scene. So I wouldn't say there's a Melbourne sound. We just see people with the same attitude, and sometimes we play shows together.
And what about the younger bands, what can I say? I like what they're doing. It's nice to see new ideas and a reinvention of old traditions. Oddly enough, there are quite a few bands playing in a style that reminds me of the Nineties, but with a fresher angle. For instance, Finks are making great records. The way they combine the everyday with the poetic is really compelling.
There's undoubtedly a close relationship between Sodastream and the Italian audience. You've announced the release of the album in Italian too, and you've put out a live album recorded at Barchessone Vecchio, a rather peculiar venue in the Po Valley. What do you remember about that show? How did this relationship come about?
Wow… that happened a long time ago. We ended up making that album through some new friends we'd made while touring, it seemed like an exciting and fun project when they suggested it. We were happy to be part of it. It was a very small show in a converted barn, out in the countryside, a really beautiful setting. We've always tried to make our shows memorable in some way, and that was one of them; a great moment I still remember fondly.
We've always felt a special affinity with Italy, ever since the very first time we played in your country. Pete's mother's family is from Randazzo, in Sicily, so there's a strong connection there, and the guys from Locusta Booking are like brothers to us. I think our first show was in Gorizia, way up in the far north, and from that moment on we've always been made welcome and made some great friends. We've played everywhere, from Turin and Milan in the north down to Catania and Lecce in the south, so we've spent quite a bit of time in Autogrill service stations.
What can we expect from your live shows? Do you feel you've changed since your last tour, in the way you play together and how you feel on stage in general?
We can't wait to play in Italy. We'll be doing a lot of songs from the new record, as well as a selection from our back catalogue… and maybe a cover or two. We'll see. We're still working on the setlist. After such a long break, we'll be coming back with plenty of fresh energy to put into the shows.
In the previous interview on our site, there was frustration about not being able to make music a full-time job. Do you think anything has changed today for younger bands?
We struggled to accept it for a while. It's always been hard to earn enough money to survive as an independent musician. But at least you could always sell records. I don't know how kids manage today. You don't make much from streaming, and now only a tiny percentage of people pay for LPs or CDs.
I don't know what it's like in Italy, but in Australia fewer and fewer kids are coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. The kind of support needed to get through the years of unpaid gigs and practice required to make it just isn't there anymore, so there's an increasing percentage of upper-middle-class kids, even in independent music. It's a real shame, because there's a whole section of society that we know less and less about. And with ignorance comes growing fear and judgment. It all adds to the unstable political climate we're living in today.
How do you manage today to balance family commitments and your passion? How do you see the future of Sodastream?
Life is always a circus and, although sometimes I wish I could play full-time, I'm really very happy with how things are going. Music is a reflection of life, and I believe that if you don't live outside of music, you'll never have anything very real to express. If you retreat too deep into music, it becomes increasingly insular and disconnected from the world. And of course, on a practical level, if I don't have to rely on my music to put food on the table, I can be completely honest with my music and with myself.
***
| Interview from 01/10/2012
Australia's Sodastream are a duo behind a tender, fragile music with an indefinable aftertaste, at times sweet, at times a little bitter. Their acoustic, emotional sound has developed across four full-length albums and a good handful of EPs, and they have often captivated Italian audiences with honest, engaging performances. We met Pete Cohen (the duo's double bassist) just ahead of the release of their fourth record, and the long conversation, virtual though it was, opened the doors to a world where music is still seen as an absolute, all-consuming passion, even if, unfortunately, it often has to reckon with reality and the logic of the market. First of all, I'd love to know something about the new album… I'm glad to announce that the new album has been finished. We recorded it ourselves and, despite numerous computer problems that made us lose almost all the material, we finally pulled it off, and the result is the ten songs that will be collected under the title "Reservations", which is also the name of one of the tracks. It'll come out in May in Australia and shortly after in Europe too (in Italy it was released in October on the Homesleep label).The EP "Take Me With You When You Go" shows a lighter touch in your songwriting and, perhaps, a bit more cheerfulness. Will the album follow this mood or will it be very different? Actually, our last EP was lighter and more cheerful. A lot of the songs were written while we were staying in the US, and recording an EP is also a good chance to experiment with new sounds and solutions. The new album, though, won't bring any radical changes, but if nothing else, I think it'll be our most laid-back album. There are some songs that were written a long time ago and were just waiting for the right record to come out on. Was the decision to release the EP only in Australia driven by specific reasons, or was it just down to circumstances? The EP hasn't come out in Europe yet because, right now, it's a difficult format for labels to work with, since they have to sell it at a reduced price and can't invest in promotion. Still, we're in touch with various labels about the album, and I hope whoever puts it out in Europe will do the same with the EP. Will the album's release be supported by a tour? Will you also come to Italy? Watching you play live, one gets the feeling that connecting with the audience is essential for you. Is that true? Playing live is a fundamental part of what we do. Personally, the experience of playing in front of people who genuinely care about our music runs much deeper than simply getting up on stage and singing or playing. Sometimes it's as if, for an hour, I close my eyes and think of nothing but the songs we're bringing to life that night. It's hard to put into words what I feel without sounding overly dramatic, but I hope you get what I mean. I expect there'll be a tour for the new album, but honestly, it's getting harder and harder to put one together. Prices keep going up and there's less and less money around. For the previous tour we spent 13 months "on the road" and it was great, but in the end the lack of money becomes exhausting, and we're getting older and starting to worry about things we never used to think about at all. Still, I'm sure we'll find a way, and of all the places we'll make the biggest effort to organize something for, it's definitely Italy. Live, your songs gain in immediacy and come across even better. Are there tracks you prefer to play live? I don't think I have favorites. There are tracks I love for different reasons. Pop songs like "Blinky" can be fun if the crowd's in the right mood. I fondly remember a show at a squat in Milan where people went wild and started dancing and clapping when we played "Meals" from our first album. It's very rare for us to get that kind of reaction, and it was a great feeling. But in any case, maybe I prefer playing the songs with more musical dynamics, like "Wedding Day", "Horses" or "Constant Ships", where I can really show what the double bass can do, going from a quiet, gentle instrument that carries the melody and rhythm, to one that can scream and screech with pain and sorrow. That's exactly what I love about my instrument. Over time your technique and your skill at composing and playing have clearly gotten sharper. Do you think that affects your music? Do you have a classical background? Our music is made up of simple structures and it's never complicated or convoluted. But obviously, the more confident you feel with an instrument, the more ideas start coming. And that's the problem with work, with getting older, and with being increasingly busy: there's less and less time to play and let ideas come. As in every field, you always need time to prepare to create, before you even get to the time for creating. Of course, there's also greater maturity that comes with time, and that affects the music we write too. We notice it especially in the studio, where we've produced the last two albums ourselves: it's no coincidence that recording music is called "engineering" — it really is a science, and there's a lot to know and learn. Personally, I started playing double bass at eleven and studied classical music until I was 17. Then I moved on to playing hard rock with an electric bass, until I started doing folk-pop. I loved playing in an orchestra and I miss it a lot, but I'm not good enough to do it. How do your songs come about? Do you go into the studio with the ideas already worked out, or with just a few chords and some sketched-out parts? We usually write the songs and play them live for a while before recording them. We rarely go into the studio to develop ideas from scratch, partly because we can't afford that luxury. But it's also because we don't want there to be too much of a gap between the live sound and the recorded one. In my opinion, our strength lies in the fact that the songs are born out of two instruments, and even though other instruments can be added during recording, that's always the foundation. Still, sometimes it's exciting to let a song go somewhere you didn't expect. We also like our collaborators to have the freedom to do their own thing when they come into the studio and bring a fresh perspective. Songs like "Heaven On The Round" were very different before the drums were added. Have you ever thought about dream collaborations? Naturally. Having Thalia Zedek on our latest EP was a great honour. We'd love to work with her more in the future. It would be great to collaborate with Lambchop and with Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And we'd also love to work with sound engineers like Mark Nevers (Lambchop) or Paul Oldham (Palace Brothers) or the great Steve Albini. Maybe one day… Do you listen to a lot of music? And is music still a passion, or is it just your job now? Do you love any particular band or artist? And do you follow Australian music? I don't get to hear all the music I'd like to, but I think I still keep up with the scene quite a lot. In any case, music isn't a job at all – in fact, right now, it's not a job in the slightest. At the moment I really like Herman Dune, Okkervil River, The Strugglers. And Bonnie "Prince" Billy, of course. I can't help keeping an eye on the Australian "scene", but there aren't many interesting bands around at the moment. Mostly pointless punk-rock. You should check out Grand Salvo, Deloris, Art of Fighting and Machine Translations, though. Even though your career is by now fairly long and studded with successes, both with the public and with critics, being a musician isn't your only job. Is that a deliberate choice, or does music simply not allow you to get by? It's a sad story. Music doesn't give us anywhere near enough money to survive, let alone to build a future. Of course it gives us thrilling experiences, it's very rewarding, and it gives us the chance to meet people from all over the world. But the financial side of things is crushing us. And living in Australia while trying to sustain international tours is extremely difficult. Travel costs are sky-high, and we have to do very long tours to pay them off, but spending so much time away from home makes it impossible to hold down a steady job. Everything is just so hard. To be honest, I think we know this is the reality, but we don't want to accept it, and we still hope for a miracle. In every review, maybe out of laziness, or to make things easier for readers to understand, influences and similarities with other bands get mentioned. Do you feel any kinship with other groups? Is there anyone who has influenced you? It must certainly be hard to be a music journalist and have to find something new and interesting to say about a band every single time. But I do find this "lazy journalism" frustrating. The music we write comes from a place I can't really describe, and we certainly don't take notes every time we hear music just so we can steal ideas from other musicians. At most, though, we do listen closely to the recording style or the guitar sound on a certain album, or the drums or the viola. And we draw courage from artists like Will Oldham to do what feels right and true to us, without worrying about reviews or radio play, or about looking prettier in photographs. Comparisons can be useful, if they help listeners make their choice, especially since it's hard to translate sounds into words. Nowadays, though, it's getting easier and easier to listen to music, and thanks to the internet, listeners can make their own choices more consciously. Current events are pretty worrying; the global situation keeps getting more complicated, and there isn't much to feel cheerful about, nor much hope left to hold on to. In your opinion, can music only serve to distract us and keep us from thinking about the ugliness we have to face every day, or is it possible that, even just by lifting our mood and our state of mind, it can actually help make things better, so that human relationships, at least on an individual level, can become more relaxed? Since you started making music, have you ever asked yourself why you do it? Have you ever set yourselves a goal? That's a very deep and complicated question, and of course the state of the world is worrying and sad. In any case, I understand what you mean with your question, and it's a thought that haunts and confuses me every day: making music that people appreciate should be one of the best experiences you can have. And the chance to play live and travel, meeting people and bringing them a bit of joy, is simply the best feeling there is. Putting stories, images and feelings into people's heads that can't be put into words, and letting people know they're not alone in their joy, their sorrow or their pain, is important work. These are some of the reasons, selfish and not, why we make music and why we've devoted a significant part of our lives to doing it seriously. The conflict right now is that I can't afford to do it full-time, just like most musicians. One of the things I appreciate most about Europe, and Italy in particular, is the way musicians and bands are respected there. Nowhere else in the world have we been paid and welcomed the way we have there. If only things were the same in the rest of the world, there would be more possibilities.
Ride the wave of great musicAdd OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed. This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Francesco Amoroso, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti. Sodastream on OndaRockDiscography
 Milestone Recommended by OR
Latest News
original design & development by
Edoardo M. Cappuccio redesign by
Gabriele Brombin Anna Quaranta
|
