Melbourne band Oh Mercy have just released their fourth studio album with tracks to spare. Front man Alexander Gow tells us about the process of getting ready to launch an album from an artist’s perspective.
The album seems to be getting a fantastic response. What’s the anticipation like when you’ve recorded it but people haven’t heard it yet and you know it’s about to arrive in everyone’s mailbox?
“It’s nerve-wracking and it’s a little confusing, I’ve written these songs (some of them over 12 months or more) and the albums been finished for about 6 months so I’ve had a lot of time to understand the subtleties of the album. It’s an album that’s gonna take a fair few listens for it to really sink in the way I want it to. It’s a nervous time for me and I can’t wait for people to spend quality time with it.”
I read that you wrote over 45 songs for this project! What happens to the other 33?
“They’re all saved! I’ve demoed them extensively which means I’ve made recordings of them and the recordings are pretty good. I’ve saved them all to various USB drives, in fact I gave one to my mum and dad, one to my brother and I was thinking about putting the third on a chain around my neck, just in case I get hit by a tram or something.”
How do you decide what gets cut and what doesn’t?
“There were a few different themes, if you will, in the songwriting over those 45 songs. If I’d only written 20 songs I might have been a little more heavy handed in picking which ones made the album but because there were so many, I was a little overwhelmed so I just employed the help of the people at EMI Records to guide me through the album that they wanted to hear. It seems like everybody was really attracted to these songs that were much more personal than the others.”
