Joshua Cunningham is sitting on the building site of his new house on the New South Wales coast as we begin to chat about the welcome return of The Waifs.
Beautiful You was released a few weeks ago, and sees the band hit the mark once again with its trademark storytelling from years of time on the road. It’s been 23 years, in fact, since The Waifs burst onto the Australian music scene with their debut cassette (which would later form the basis of their self-titled CD), and they haven’t looked back since.
Touring internationally throughout America and Europe in the years after their 1996 debut, the success that has followed The Waifs is down to their ability to write endlessly relatable songs. Everybody has their favourite Waifs album, but it all took off properly for the band on the back of Up All Night, released in 2003 with hit singles such as ‘Lighthouse’ and ‘London Still’. In the aftermath of Beautiful You, Cunningham’s voice is full of excitement for the months to come around Australia playing with Sal Kimber and Mia Dyson.
“The tour is going to be fantastic,” says the multi-instrumentalist. “It’ll be great to head out to both regional towns as well as busy city centres. We’ve just finished playing in the US and the songs are really taking off in the live set, I feel. A lot of the time, the songs off an album, it’s not until a tour or two later that people start to request them after they have had time to live with the record in their lives.
“This batch of songs seems to have an instant resonance with people, and we feel really positive about that. Sometimes you make the album and you won’t play the track before you hit the road, and they take a while to settle in. I feel we are in a really positive position heading into this run of shows.”
Beautiful You sees Cunningham and his bandmates Vikki Thorn and Donna Simpson head into different territories. Musically, it’s the most expansive and adventurous thing they have done to date; however, when it came to the creative process required to make things interesting, the band turned to different techniques to produce the album’s final 12 tracks.
“Up until now, the three of us have individually written songs for an album and brought them to the table to work on,” Cunningham explains. “For a change and to spice things up a little, we decided to try and write some songs all together.”
Part of the collaborative plan was getting each member to name the worst song they’d ever written. “It created an uneasy feeling and tension and allowed us to try some different writing exercises,” says Cunningham. “It didn’t really work, though, and we ended up reverting back to how we have written since the early ’90s.”
Heading into Studios 301 in Byron Bay, The Waifs looked to Nick DiDia – who has worked with the likes of Powderfinger, The Living End, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Train and Rage Against The Machine – to capture the classic sound they have worked on tirelessly over the years. The result is a raw and emotionally charged record that focuses on delicate and honest songwriting, referencing the band members’ old home in Western Australia and their new abodes throughout the US.
“[DiDia] brought a new lease on life to the songs and took them in a direction that we may not have explored had he not have produced it,” Cunningham says. “I think DiDia’s real emphasis is on rhythm sections and guitar. I spent a lot of time with him working on guitar parts and what fitted into which part of the songs. I think that was important to create a stronger album, where I would have just overdubbed a guitar solo here and there previously. DiDia’s really into getting a vibe and an energy to the music, and really thinks we hit the mark with Beautiful You.”
Having formed in the early ’90s in the city of Albany when Thorn and Simpson were touring around the country in an old Kombi van with their acoustic duo Colours, it was a ten-minute jam session that sealed the deal on the budding Waifs.
“It was a welcoming atmosphere right from the very beginning, and we never really had any ambition to do anything with our music when we first started playing,” Cunningham remembers. “We were young hippies in a van travelling around the country instead of picking fruit or working behind the bar. We never had an expectation or a vision for anything to happen. Initially we sold a six-track cassette to raise enough funds to record our debut. We felt that we had reached the pinnacle of success by having a real CD to our names. We feel really humbled by every opportunity that has come our way since.”
More than two decades on from their formation, and looking forward to the future, Cunningham reveals that a new home studio at his soon-to-be-completed East Coast dwelling will allow The Waifs to self-produce their next LP. Unlike the gap between Beautiful You and its predecessor, Temptation, we’re reliably assured there won’t be a four-year wait before The Waifs’ eighth album. Having settled into their groove, there’s no reason to stop.
[The Waifs photo by Jarrad Seng]
Beautiful You is available now through Jarrah/MGM, andThe Waifs appear at theEnmore Theatre on Thursday November 5, withMia Dyson along for the ride.
