Wolfmother: The kick in the ass that rock needs

You’re keyboard set-up is pretty custom, isn’t it?

CHRIS: Yeah, part of our sound is that it’s pretty minimal, but it’s all kind of specific. Which is kinda the same approach that we took to recording. Instead of laying things on a trying to fix them in the mix, we said, let’s get it right from the start – and this applies to recording and your life set-up – by the time you get to the end sound, you don’t have to do anything cause it’s all right. I kinda use this minimal, valve-drive, tube, pre-amp pedal which just warms the organ sound up and really pushes it, then I’ve got this stereo, memory-man delay pedal, which just totally wigs it out as well, but they’re both really nice pure tones.

Yeah, the minimalism seems key to your sound.

CHRIS: Yeah, Andrew, quite readily just throws his guitar away, so the sounds gotta be ready to step up and fill the gap. It’s all in the way that you play it. I can play it kinda secondary, but you can also step it up so that it’s enough on it’s own. They’re good, powerful tools.

I’ve heard a lot of people compare you to other bands; like, this song sounds like Zeppelin, that one sounds like Sabbath and that one sounds like White Stripes. Is Wolfmother influenced by any of those bands?

CHRIS: We really listen to f--king anything. We definitely like those types of bands, but I don’t think we set out to emulate them. It’s just kinda the sound that we play together and really worked for us, and we just went, this feels really natural and let’s just go with it. Let’s let things take their course. It just worked for us.

Well, it has worked. You guys blew up in Australia pretty fast, right?

CHRIS: Well, we’d been hanging out jamming for five years, but we hadn’t done any shows. We were just playing at home. I was working at home doing web-stuff, and Myles and Andrew would kinda goof off and come hang out and we’d all end up doing no work and just jamming. And that was pretty much it for a few years. On and off. There was no real agenda, but we were all kinda jamming. But when we started playing out we were totally comfortable playing with each other. So it was like, OK, how can we engage people some more and let them have some fun. So it mainly has been about playing live for the last two years. Cause we could already play together.

Is it more difficult playing these US shows, ‘cause people aren’t as familiar?

CHRIS: It’s interesting, because we’ve just come off playing festivals at home for, like, 50,000 people, and then we come to these clubs playing for like 200 people. But it’s fun to see the new excitement in people, where back home we’re playing to a crowd that knows us and they’re already in our hearts and vice versa.

They know right when to raise their lighters?

CHRIS: Exactly. But over here, you can just see the excitement in their eyes, then watching them going, WOW, like this is all new to them. It’s really nice to see people up front just lose their inhibitions.

Have you ever rocked you synth out onto someone in the audience?

CHRIS: I did once on a live TV and radio thing in Australia. And I went through all this trouble to make this nice custom stand and it was all chrome and it looked really cool. But it rocked differently and just went right over and BAM.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentleman.

CHRIS: Yeah. Luckily it did it at a point where I could just switch over to bass quite easily. Whoops. So that’s why I’m using those crappy, standard stands. Cause they work. I get a bit excited, so I worry about people out the front sometimes. If they wanna get that close to it, though, then do it.

How’s it being on the road?

CHRIS: We had it a bit soft at home, ‘cause we knew what we were doing. But it’s all a bit confusing over here at the moment, ‘cause we’re kinda flying. I don’t think bands do that here. It’s all about driving. Back home we fly. So, all the people at the airport these days are like, “My god, what are you doing with all this stuff?” So, we’re a bit all over the place right now. I had pizza and coke for dinner at 4 AM this morning and then for breakfast at 12 o’clock I finished the rest. It’s pretty dodgy at the moment. But we’re coming back for a tour in April and it’ll be a driving thing and we’ll get back into a routine.

Yeah, once the album’s out — ‘cause it’s all over in Australia. I was seeing it in Petrol Stations over there.

CHRIS: That was one of our ambitions, actually. You see all those crap CDs in Petrol stations. We wanted to help people, so they could at least listen to something that we like when they’re driving. Yeah, we’ve had fans for ages in Australia and we really wanted to give them something new, so we just dropped the album on ‘em right away. But it’s different over here. We haven’t really connected with anyone yet, so let’s get out and get comfortable with people before we thrust something down their throats. Form a relationship before you get married.

We Americans like our mail order brides. You can always return ‘em.

CHRIS: With us, it’s for life.

 

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