Initially a trio of Jonnine Standish, Nigel Yang, and Sean Stewart, they recorded their first album with gloom icon Rowland S Howard before leaving Melbourne for Europe. There, in their brooding way, they blossomed.
Midway through making their second album Stewart passed away. Standish and Yang pushed through the loss to finish the record, 2011’s Work (Work Work), and returned to Australia. Their new album Psychic 9-5 Club is their first as a duo. It’s less solemn than previous releases with songs that reference love and, on one, even sunshine.
Over coffee in Standish’s apartment they’re candid about subjects like getting high and how it has shaped their music. On paper it could all seem perfectly clichéd: a stint in Berlin, death, drugs – but it’s not. Intelligent and thoughtful, HTRK are on a journey of experimentation rather than redemption. And what they’re interested in, it seems, is life.
HTRK seemed almost fully formed from the start. How important has image been to the band?
Jonnine: We’ve got an unspoken idea of what we want to come across to the public. We always thought there should be a sense of mystery, but it was a connecting mystery, not a detached one. It was ‘you can enter this world’, not ‘we’re untouchable’.
Some of your band photos are bleak but also kind of funny in an odd way. Do you think it’s necessary to have a bit of humour in music?
Jonnine: Humour is certainly something that has helped me. Without it the voice inside your head that’s taking you under will win. Humour completely deactivates that voice and so, for me, it’s a weapon. And playfulness is a weapon. And curiosity is a weapon. If you are telling a story of loss or pain or of just being pissed off and can infiltrate that with the weapon of humour I think you’re doing something really interesting.
Since working as a duo has your relationship changed?
Jonnine: We’ve had a similar relationship since we moved to Berlin. We started spending more time together there because Sean was being super fabulous and picked up German in two weeks and knew everyone. Nigel and I were losers and so we spent more time together—
Jonnine and Nigel [in unison]: Trying to learn German on speed!
Jonnine: We thought that way we’d pick it up really quickly, not knowing that you don’t retain any knowledge.
Nigel: You can only recall that knowledge if you’re on speed.
Jonnine: We’re probably fluent on speed.
How important was your time in Europe to the evolution of the band?
Jonnine: All Australians need to do that still. We’re geographically challenged. You really have to leave so you can play in front of strangers. You can do that in Newcastle to an extent but it’s not the same. You have to completely strip yourself of who you are so you can be liberated. London really embraced us, which was unexpected. More so than Berlin maybe.
Nigel: London was interesting. When we’d do a show we felt really Australian, even though it never dawned on us that we would feel like that. We felt way tougher than anyone over there.
In what sense?
Nigel: Just in our approach to playing and attitude. It was like a magnified version of playing in Australia to an unresponsive crowd but over there you had to fight extra hard to get a show or a reaction. But if you did get it, it was a whole lot more exciting.
Jonnine: Australians also have a lot more sexual energy than we realise, which could be the toughness. Australians go over there, their instruments are dropped a little lower, everyone’s a little more loose and people are like ‘whoah!’. And we had that without knowing.
So how did you find making an album completely straight?
Nigel: Drugs are an easy way to get to a place. You can still get there without them but it requires a lot more mental energy.
Jonnine: We were experimenting with different time frames to create. Like playing in the daytime rather than night time. I was trying to write lyrics at sunrise to see if there was this other being of creativity that would hold my hand. Which it did! [laughs]. It does exist! The morning became otherworldly. Before, you only ever saw sunrise when you were up all night with your friends on a roof telling them you loved them. But you can actually access that on your own, every day.
You also tried fasting?
Jonnine: Fasting felt a bit extremist at times. I had some shakes one night. I think my glucose dropped too low. [laughs] I took it too far man! It wouldn’t carry on for more than a day at a time, but trying to be creative in that period where your body’s in trauma mode… we found that… pleasant.
Nigel: To push past the hunger, it is like you’re high.
Some people just make albums normally, would you say you’re extremists?
Jonnine: [laughs] I don’t think we’re extremists. We just like to think a lot. We just push thoughts as far as we want to go with them.
Nigel: It’s about getting different feelings. New feelings are what we’re interested in. So whatever will help us get there –
Jonnine: – without killing us. That’s a really big thing. Staying alive is a big thing.
Credits
Text Hannah Brooks
Photography Heather Lighton