Ball Park Music’s new albumEvery Night The Same Dreammight not see the Brisbane indie kids diverge from their infectiously poppy roots, but it does feature more musical risk-taking than they’ve explored in the past.
Tracks like ‘Peppy’ see the band launch into psychedelic trips, with that track in particular featuring an epic three-minute instrumental that wouldn’t go astray on a Brian Jonestown Massacre album.
“This record is probably the first record where we’ve focused on just trying to sound like ‘us’,” says guitarist Dean Hanson. “On our previous records we’ve always had a bit of pressure, not from anybody in particular, but just from the making of the record that forced us to push our songs into particular territories. It’s subliminal at the time, but you look back and think, ‘I wish we had have put a few more riffs in these songs, or didn’t play it so safe for the sake of trying to please some subliminal thought.’ This record was very much about not really giving a shit about what we thought other people wanted to hear, and more about the record that we wanted to make and how we wanted to portray ourselves.
“I think if anything, this record sounds the most like Ball Park Music than any of our other records. I know that’s a really vague statement, but it seems to make sense to me.”
The Queensland quintet took some time between their third and fourth albums to tour Europe, and then have a break from the band completely, which wasn’t an easy thing to do for Hanson.
“We’d planned to start making the record in June last year, and then we started writing and it hit a bit of a wall, so we decided then and there that we were going to put it off for a certain amount of time. At the time it was a bit ‘wow’, because there was five of us sitting there going, ‘We don’t know what to do for the next few months.’ That wasn’t the best at the time, but in hindsight, we’re really happy we did it because you don’t realise you need a break until you have done so. But definitely at the start it was like, ‘Oh shit, I better go and start a car wash at my house or something.’
“This has been the longest in between records for us – as far as the whole thing goes, it’s been about two-and-a-half years. It’s felt like a lifetime, to be honest.”
Hanson recounts the story of how Ball Park Music came to record their latest album in a small studio in Castlemaine, Central Victoria, after their frontman Sam Cromack discovered the space via Facebook.
“Sam stumbled across it because one of his friends liked their Facebook page. It caught his eye because it’s a completely analogue studio – there’s no digital recording equipment, and it’s all these tape machines. We decided to challenge ourselves a little bit and record all the instruments down there to a four-track tape machine.”
It’s said that recording with a four-track allows the listener to hear a somehow more authentic version of a sound, capturing the intricacies (and mistakes) that are often silenced with software. Some famous albums that have been recorded to four-track include Elliott Smith’s debut Roman Candle and Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. This begs the question: why this approach for a band like Ball Park Music, whose sound is so energetic and expansive?
“I think our desire for this record was to limit ourselves to only have things that we could record ourselves live on, and to capture the energy that we normally have live,” says Hanson. “It was a bit risky, and a lot of the people in our team were a bit apprehensive about us doing it that way, but they trusted us and I think it worked out pretty well.
“We’ve recorded to tape before, but that was with a 16-track tape machine. The producer we worked with, Matt Redlich, who produced our first two records, went out to the studio to check it out, and he said that the tape machine in the best condition at this particular studio was a four-track. When we heard that we were like ‘Ooh, ouch’ – only four tracks to work with, and obviously we have many more instruments than that. It was obviously going to be a challenge, but Matt said he was up for it. In the end it felt really natural, and after the first day of recording we never really spoke about how limiting it was, which was nice.
“The results we’ve had in the past with Matt have been great. I think in music you can sometimes try and do things differently, but really, if you’re trying to fix something that’s not broken, sometimes it can be detrimental. We have good chemistry with Matt, and we knew he’d be up for a bit of a challenge.”
The original title for the new album came from a track called ‘Inner City Loveless’, which never ended up making it onto the record. Eventually, the band members found they had lost love for the first title chosen – something not uncommon at the end of a recording process.
“We tossed a few names into the hat, and we had one name which we had settled on for quite a while, which we ended up falling out of love with. One day I was sitting down with Sam, working on the album artwork, and he just punched the record title [Every Night The Same Dream] into the Photoshop file, and it just looked really nice. I asked him where it came from, and it turns out it’s a lyric from a song that he’s had kicking around for ages but has never used. The title really seemed to resonate.
“We always come up with the album name last, which I guess seems a bit funny because you end up having to come up with a name that encapsulates the entire journey and all of the songs you’ve written.”
Ball Park Music recently played one of the prime time afternoon slots at Splendour In The Grass, kicking off what will be an extensive campaign for their new release.
“Splendour was amazing – it definitely outdid my expectations,” says Hanson. “Our new record wasn’t even out yet. I guess you lose perspective of how many people like your band or want to come and see you. We were on at the same time as Sticky Fingers and At The Drive-In, so I was sitting there going, ‘Oh well, no-one’s going to come and see us.’ Then we got up onstage and the tent was absolutely packed, and the feedback we got afterwards was amazing. Splendour kicked things off in a really good fashion, and hopefully that momentum remains for the rest of the tour.”
Ball Park Music play at Snowtunes Festival 2016, Jindabyne on Saturday September 3, thenthe Enmore Theatre on Friday September 30 and Yours & Owls 2016, Stuart Park, Wollongong on Saturday October 1 – Sunday October 2.Every Night The Same Dream isout Friday August 19 through Stop Start/Inertia.
