Art vs Science

Only now, as their second album is arriving, does it click that we’re looking at over four years between long-players. Thankfully, the trio has made up considerably for lost time – Off The Edge Of The Earth And Into Forever, Forever picks business right back up, with the band continuing to bubble, blend and blur genre lines to the point where they are leaving even those paid to write about their music lost for words.

“I was talking with another journalist who’d just heard the album recently, and they wanted to know what genre to call it,” says Dan McNamee, the group’s primary vocalist, keyboardist and guitarist who goes by the alias Dan Mac in order to differentiate from the band’s other Dan, drummer Williams. “They were like, ‘What do you call this? What genre is it? I don’t know how to describe it!’ It was weird at first, and I didn’t quite know how to respond. It got me thinking, though – this album really isn’t one genre or one style. I don’t think we’ve ever been like that, really. I think it’s a culmination of everything that we listen to – we don’t worry about whether it will fit a certain mould. If it feels right, we just go for it. Thankfully, the journalist liked the album, so it wasn’t too awkward.”

Piecing together extensive jam sessions at Bondi Pavilion and recording with noted producer Paul McKercher (who has previously worked with acts like You Am I, Eskimo Joe and Sarah Blasko) at Oceanic Studios, Art vs Science were grounded in their native Sydney during the creative process. They even took further recording and overdubs into their own home recording spots. Not that this meant the trio – McNamee, Williams and keyboardist/vocalist Jim Finn – were at all lazy or lacking ambition. Rather, as McNamee testifies, it was more to do with seeking out what makes them happy – not putting pressure on following up The Experiment, but rather letting the direction come naturally.

“Fun was the crucial ingredient in making this album,” he says. “It takes itself just seriously enough, but it can also get a little camp and a little goofy. Take the album title – it’s a bit sci-fi and a bit grandiose. You can read it in a lot of different ways, too – so if someone just sees it as a bit of a gag, I can go along with that, or I can kind of get a little deep on it if someone sees it as philosophical or properly meaningful.

“There’s always a bit of a wink to what we do – you can take a lot of our more silly moments as very tongue-in-cheek. There’s a song on this album called ‘Bongo Plan’, which is quite possibly one of the silliest and funniest songs we have ever done. That arose straight from the band room to the tape – more or less a straight-up jam session. It’s the sound of us really having fun, and I’m really glad it made its way onto the album.”

Of course, Art vs Science have hardly sat idly by in the years separating The Experiment and Off The Edge Of The Earth. Finn founded a solo project, Vydamo, which earned him considerable radio play and a well-received LP, Becoming Human. Williams, meanwhile, took up with his former band, Philadelphia Grand Jury, undertaking a reunion tour that ultimately led to the writing and recording of a second album released at the start of the month. Even McNamee mentions his desire to get back into playing guitar along with DJ sets. “That literally used to be my job,” he says. “I’d moonlight with a few different people, soloing along to whatever they were playing across bars all around Sydney.”

Of course, all the while the band members were busying themselves with other creative avenues, no-one was pestering them over whether Art vs Science had broken up. They always made a point of playing together every year, whether at secret shows or through small runs of club dates. It was never even in question that the trio would come back to one another – after all, as they say, it’s absence that makes the heart grow fonder.

“Our time apart has become way more important than I actually realised,” says McNamee. “I was kind of against that idea of going off and doing my own thing for a long time – I was kind of set in my way that Art vs Science was my project, that it was all I needed. I think that attitude was a bit stressful for the other guys. I started bringing in influences and different things that they pretty clearly weren’t vibing on. After a while, I realised that having time away from one another to go off and explore the other things that we like actually helps us to get along a lot more. It allows us to be who we are around each other, which seems to work. We’re listening to one another a lot more.”

[Art vs Science phooto byAngelo Kehiagos]