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Children Collide
In 2005 Children Collide released We Three, Brave And True, a six-track EP that didn't so much announce the group's arrival as kick the door down, featuring the brilliant We Are Amphibious, the little b-side that could - and did, turning, reinvigorated, into the a-side of 2006's equally impressive Glass Mountain Liars EP. Now it's 2008 and the band is pleased to present their debut long player, The Long Now.
This is a record that crackles with smarts and buzzes along with the undeniable sense of a band that knows where it's going, a band that sees your lazy references and questionable stylistic decisions and raises them - into another stratosphere - as Johnny (vocals/guitars), Heath (bass) and Ryan (drums) create a tumbling maelstrom of rock in excelsis. It's a record with its eye on the future and its feet in the present and its imagination crossing astral planes throughout it all.
There's the single, Social Currency, a barnstorming disco-political frenzy that observes the perils of cool, like a wallflower sitting on the side of the dancefloor with an Uzi in her purse. "Musically I felt like it channelled the nu-rave and electro-clash stuff that has been surrounding us for the last couple of years so I had to take the piss with the lyrics," explains Johnny. "So, it became about bandwagons and self-appreciation societies and people who make art to get blow jobs and keeping your finger on the pulse. Which sounds like a bit of a sook, but it’s not." Far from it, in fact - the song has more dynamism in its pealing opening riff than a whole clubload of cool kids could dream of.
But if looking askance at hipsterdom isn't for you, perhaps you'd prefer a trip to another planet (Farewell Rocketship)? Or maybe you'd like to muse about the future of mankind and take the question of Bowie's Life On Mars to its logical conclusion (Brave Robot)? The Long Now might seem like a futurist paradise, but Johnny seems to think it was just the collective unconscious creeping up on him. "It’s amazing to be able to encapsulate whole millennia along with all kinds of feelings and myriad other ideas into one record. This fits neatly into the title, The Long Now. Most art is in itself a long now, being that it attempts to defy time and become a moment within many, many moments. Brave Robot is a funny one as I wrote it a long time ago after seeing a doco about a space lander that was being sent to Mars to drill into the polar icecaps. Then, just after we finished recording the album, I turned on the news and the Phoenix Lander had, well, landed and begun the main part of its mission." It's not all spaceships and robots, though - witness Cannibal, the sweetest love song about a meat-eater falling for a vegetarian you're likely to ever hear, or the guttural rattle of Skeleton Dance, which feels like a lost missive from the New York of 1977. These are but a sampling of a record that offers something new to the listener upon every airing.
With Dave Sardy (a veteran of such varied sessions as LCD Soundsystem, Wolfmother and Oasis) taking on production overlord duties, the album encompasses the many facets of the band's sound, all the while tying the songs together with a common thread, whether sonic or thematic. Far from backing the band into a corner with a ProTools rig and a tight schedule, Sardy became an equal collaborator as The Long Now came into being. "We wanted to work with someone who 'got' us," recalls Johnny, "and on the first meeting with Dave we realised he did. The bands he mentioned - Suicide, Neu!, Spacemen 3, Einsturzende Neubauten - and way he spoke about the direction he wanted to take this in gave us confidence."
Sardy had confidence in his noisy charges, too - he sent us the following thoughts on the band via smoke signals earlier today: "Lost then found somewhere between Melbourne, Brooklyn and Manchester. Spinning in a way only Children Collide can. Fearless screeching and pink. Brutal. Delicate hammer, Words at the edge of a transfusion. Beaten and raw, a speaker pushing thru a broken basket. Rattled. YES"
When asked what he hopes listeners will absorb from The Long Now, Johnny replies, "Maybe some kind of ear infection. Or a curious interest in the lost science of phrenology. Maybe they’ll think twice before they fill their cars up with petrol and try running on milk instead. Perhaps they will become better people and start dedicating their lives to some philanthropic obsession after only one listen. Possibly people will hear this record and decide it is time to move on the governments of the world and stop the senseless mining of Martian polar icecaps."
Phrenology aside (it's the pseudoscience of reading a person's skull to determine their personality, don't you know), Children Collide have created an album that is as much a coming together of everything they've been working towards as it is an introduction to the band - which is precisely how the band wanted it to turn out. "We really wanted to treat this debut record as an introduction to the band," says Johnny. "We had to try not to be selfish about it. There were a lot of songs we wrote right before the album that didn’t make it, not because they weren’t great songs, but more so we would have somewhere to go afterwards and so the songs on the album could compliment each other and provide a doorway into what we are about. So yes, welcome to remedial Children Collide, study hard and you’ll graduate to general Children Collide on album #2."
