While their foray into spacious, over-blown rock suited them to the ground, Eskimo Joe are getting back to basics on album number four. Recorded in Byron Bay with legendary producer Gil Norton, Inshalla marks a band in a very happy place. Nick Milligan spoke to guitarist Stu MacLeod and singer Kav Temperley.
If you were one of the many record buyers that sent Eskimo Joe’s third studio album Black Fingernails, Red Wine, to four times platinum, then you’ll be familiar with the brooding rock stars that the Fremantle three-piece had become. This public perception led to a revelation by singer and bassist Kav Temperley, while he sat in a small Egyptian café. The simple fact was that Eskimo Joe don’t have a lot to brood about these days.
“I was sitting there having a coffee and smoking a sheesha and at that moment I decided I was going to give up the idea of this rock-star persona I’d tried to create and almost sacrificed myself for,” says Temperley. “I was going to come back and just be me and see where I landed.”
“When we were recording the new album I was almost a bit wary that the songs were frightfully happy,” chuckles Eskimo Joe’s guitarist, Stu MacLeod. “It was a path that we haven’t tread since our first album. It was hard for me to go to that place because we’d had such success as moody bastards.”
Eskimo Joe decided that their new record would be an opportunity to reaccess their musical direction and be more like themselves. With Temperley and MacLeod both becoming fathers in the past 12 months, only a more uplifting sound would be sincere. “We wiped the slate clean in a number of ways. We wrote the songs differently to how we would normally write them, based around grooves rather than melodies. It was challenging at times, but really rewarding in the end,” admits Macleod.
“The album really was about coming back to a much more honest place, as far as where the songs come from and who we are,” adds Temperley. “On the last record we got to play those big shows and have laser lights and big screens behind us. That gave us the freedom to just relax and write some songs that came from a really honest place, that was just us.”
Part of Eskimo Joe’s reinvention was to hand some creative freedom over to a producer, a level of control that the band normally kept to themselves. But as they had secured the services of super-producer Gil Norton, who has been instrumental in creating albums by The Triffids, Pixies, Foo Fighters and Gomez, it seemed like the right time to share the driver’s seat.
“It was daunting to let go of the reigns,” says MacLeod, of working with Norton. “At the start we denied some of his ideas, and I think he was taken aback by that. He wasn’t used to that. It took the first two weeks of pre-production to establish how it would work. But every time you collaborate with someone you learn a lot, no matter who they are. We really learned a lot about tightening our rhythm section and using it to create more dynamics in the song.”
Eskimo Joe have named their fourth record Inshalla, which is an Arabic term that roughly translates to ‘God willing’. It’s a fatalistic phrase that was carried throughout the entire process of making their new album. “[‘Inshalla’] is a common sentiment in Arabic nations. It just means ‘What will be will be’. It really summed up the feel of the album, going to a different place in our lives that we had no idea about, having new family, coming at these songs from a completely different angle and releasing something that was totally different from the last album. There was a real sense of faith about it – what will be will be,” says MacLeod.
With their new material tested out via a secret show in Perth, an appearance at Sound Relief and dates across Europe, the three piece (which also features drummer Joel Quartermain) will be more than warmed up for the headline spot at Noosa’s all ages Ripe Festival. “We’ll be trying out some new material [at Ripe] for sure,” confirms MacLeod. “We’ve learned about half the album now. It’s really interesting, when we’ve translated these new, happy songs to the stage there’s been a real sense of joy in the crowd, rather than just excitement. It’s been a real buzz.”
Inshalla is out this May through Warner