Combining classic song structures with Pink Floyd-esque production is a rarity in electronic dance music today, where the prevailing trend is to replace choruses with bird noises.
Canada’s Jimmy Vallance and Tom Howie, known together as Bob Moses, have created in Days Gone By a personable and immersive record that reflects no end and no beginning to the creative process.
“I love that you say bird noises – we say that all the time! ‘Dude, have we got any bird noises?’” laughs Vallance. “We call them ‘spicy noises’. We are fans of songs and equally fans of really cool-sounding instrumental productions. Marrying the two together made sense.”
Howie adds: “It’s kind of hard to relate to bird noises on a personal level. When there’s a story in a song, there’s more to grab onto, more to relate to. Bird noises are cool and they are OK when you are at the forefront pushing forward. After a while, it gets old – ‘How do you make the coolest bird noise?’”
Bob Moses’ storytelling, inspired in part by Tom Petty on the track ‘Tearing Me Up’ (which the duo recently performed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show), touches on a classic trope: pining for a girl on a night out. The song is not entirely autobiographical, but written from “experience and extrapolation”.
“We prefer to take the initial spark of the situation and try to tell a universal story,” says Howie. “A lot of times, when you are writing, you start in one place and you don’t know where it’s coming from, then it takes on a life of its own. You go with it. The lyrics ‘If you’re a joker then I’m a fool’ came out, then we wrote to clarify those images – we sung the verse in a cool, almost spoken Tom Petty vibe. At the end of the song, we couldn’t decide whether or not we wanted to leave the story open-ended. You know, maybe you’re not supposed to get to the end and find out what happens.”
Vallance and Howie’s simple goal ahead of Days Gone By was “to write really great songs” and “[try] to find our own unique voice” – an achievement that can be tough in the super competitive world of underground dance music.
“Our production and writing is so tied together, it’s hard to delineate,” says Howie. “All these ideas percolate and come to the surface as they call to be worked out. Maybe if a jolt of inspiration comes up, you run with it, but because you’ve gone through the experience of writing that, you look back on what you’d done previously and it informs the creative process.”
One of the album’s strandout cuts, ‘Keeping Me Alive’, actually had its genesis back in 2014, but Bob Moses’ signing to the Domino label both hampered and informed the creative process moving forward – something Vallance is happy to discuss.
“It was one of the last songs to get finished. It’s really funny, we started it and then finished that song in the same studio almost a year later. We hadn’t worked on it in all that time. Signing was really daunting. [We wondered,] ‘How indie should our record be? How much do we focus on songs or production?’ The opportunity created insecurity; we had to adjust to the situation. It took us writing a lot of other songs to see that song in a different light – and how well it would work.”
Domino remained a stoic supporter of the band during the making of Days Gone By, and Vallance and Howie couldn’t be happier with the freedom they were given.
“They were chill, they let us do our thing,” says Vallance. “We didn’t show them any music for seven months. I can’t imagine how they were feeling. I’m glad we waited, though. We knew we’d have these insecure feelings, offering caveats and explanations and excuses – that’s always annoying to have to do that. It’s better to show them 90 per cent of the picture rather than 40 per cent.”
Bob Moses recently triumphed at Coachella, and Howie says being onstage at the festival is “the best view in the world. It’s the greatest office ever!” There was even a chance meeting with Radiohead production luminary Nigel Godrich, as Vallance recalls.
“We had this little bonding moment at the bar after waiting forever to get a drink – meanwhile, I was trying not to freak out that that guy had produced some of my favourite records of all time.”
At Coachella, the duo surprised audiences by rocking up with a drummer for the live set. The extra member won’t accompany Bob Moses on their forthcoming Australian tour, but a ten-second moment of panic onstage at the festival gave the boys a great spark of inspiration for the future.
“On the second Coachella weekend, second-last song, there’s this big build-up,” Howie explains. “The way we rehearsed it, one of us came in one bar early, which meant we had to play an extra chorus – and doing the last chorus as just guitar and vocal, it created this super amazing end to the set, which wouldn’t have happened just between the two of us. It challenges you as a musician and it was really fun. Now even when it’s just me and Jimmy playing together, the distinction [between live and electronic] is starting to blur. It’s all just tools and instruments – it feels natural to us.”
Bob Moses’Days Gone By out now through Domino/EMI. They playtheGreenwood Hotel for S.A.S.H on Sunday May 15, and are supporting RÜFÜS at the Hordern Pavilion on Wednesday May 4 and Thursday May 5.
