The Grates

Within months ofDream Team’s release, frontwoman Patience Hodgson gave birth to her first child with guitarist and husband John Patterson. “We recorded the album while I was pregnant, in the final trimester,” she says. “Then we had her in February.”

Having a child overhauls one’s entire life – personal desires take a back seat, and all available energy goes into caring for the newborn. With this in mind, it’s somewhat remarkable The Grates have already jumped back out on the road. However, this tour was originally slated to happen sooner.

“In the beginning our management were like, ‘You guys should do a tour in May,’” Hodgson says. “I remember at the time I was like, ‘Yeah, OK. We’ll do that.’ They were like, ‘Alright, we’ll announce the tour in January.’ That felt weird for me – the idea that we’d be announcing our tour before I’d even had a baby and then I would be doing a tour with a baby. That freaked me out heaps.”

Understandably, as her pregnancy became more conspicuous, Hodgson’s priorities started to shift. That said, she doesn’t believe her daughter’s imminent arrival had a major influence on the writing and recording of Dream Team.

“It was just business as usual, except I was pregnant,” she says. “The only thing I thought about was that they say sometimes you can lose your breath. So I was like, ‘Crap, I don’t want to have lung restrictions,’ but that wasn’t a problem. I think it sounds better than ever.”

Indeed, while Dream Team arrived nearly four years after The Grates’ third album, Secret Rituals, the record is armed with a vibrant sonic immediacy. There are no bells and whistles adorning the performances or the production, but it’s also not a scrappy affair. “Depending on who you talk to,” Hodgson laughs. “Some people are like, ‘It’s very scrappy.’”

Well, at least it’s not scrappy in a gimmicky sense. The Grates haven’t roughed things up so as to disguise half-baked songs. On the contrary, not only is the record packed with lucid songcraft, but it conveys a sharp feeling of purpose. It makes perfect sense that Dream Team was produced by Owen Penglis of Sydney band Straight Arrows. With his own band – as well as the likes of The Gooch Palms, Royal Headache and The Frowning Clouds – Penglis has excelled at harnessing a gritty live sound, which pays no mind to perfection.

“He’s one of those people that have amazing taste,” Hodgson says. “You always want to work with someone who’s better than what you are. We just have so much faith in him. There’s guys he listens to that I’ve got no idea who they even are, but he would show us and say, ‘How about this as a drum sound?’ And it was always good, so we just went, ‘Yeah.’”

The Grates might’ve been happy to let Penglis handle the production specifics, but they stood by one fundamental aim throughout the album-making process. “It was just about being quick,” Hodgson says. “That was the only thing –we just wanted it to be fun and fast. In the past, there’s always been a huge gap between recording an album and releasing it. This was our quickest turnaround. When we recorded our last album, I think it was about six months. And that’s not unusual – that happens to so many bands.

“I also really just wanted to prove that it could be done,” she adds. “I just feel like there’s so much faffing about with record labels sometimes. Everything just takes so long. So we did it all really quick.”

The Team Work Makes The Dream Work tour rolls into Sydney this Friday night. Reports on The Grates’ return to the stage at Splendour have featured nothing but high praise. However, there was a moment when it looked like the tour wouldn’t go ahead after all. In early July, Patterson had a nasty fall during one of his regular bicycle rides around Brisbane. The accident severely damaged his left wrist – the last thing you want when you’re the sole guitarist in an energetic pop-rock band.

Determined to not let their onstage abstinence carry on any longer, the band recruited stand-in guitarist Jack Richardson of Superfeather. “Jack’s killing it,” Patterson says. “He’s playing my guitar, which I believe holds alltheenergy forTheGrates.” The live personnel is completed by drummer Ritchie Daniell and Penglis on bass. At this stage, Patterson’s still in the midst of recovery, but to make himself useful, he’s switched over to keyboard duties.

“I’ve got an array of tablets to take,” he says. “Thoughthedoctors will only prescribe me a week’s worth of drugs at a time. I guess I look likethetype of dude who’s going to abuse them? They’re probably right. [In] my first band, I sung and played keys. So it is kind of nice to return to that. But I haven’t done it for like 12 years, so it definitely feels new – like a rebirth.”