The Panics have not only made the album of their careers in 2007, but they’ve had it recognised by the tastemakers – the five-piece’s third album, Cruel Guards, has won the coveted J Award, as voted for by the boffins at national alternative station Triple J.
It’s an endorsement of the risks the former Perth group took in the making of Cruel Guards – they left their home town for the colder climes of Melbourne, and departed somewhat from their former sound. Cruel Guards embraces a more expansive sound, eschewing the droning qualities found on their debut album and the meandering sound of sophomore effort Fits Like a Curse for a sunnier, more musically positive vibe.
“I think there’s always been a bit of summer in our records,” counters frontman Jae Laffer, “but perhaps this one just suits it more because it feels less bleak. To me it’s a more positive record – to me there’s a lot of sunshine on the record.”
It’s certainly a much more direct record – there’s pop melodies on show from the minute Get Us Home opens it with its Motown stomp and a swirl strings. “Pop is a strange word: my idea of a great pop song is a mid-60s Rubber Soul [thing] – a very complete three minutes. I don’t mind a catchy tune; I grew up on them and I guess that’s what I’m trying to do, trying to write a really great three-and-a-half minute tunes. I don’t think we’ll ever be flogged on commercial radio, but I do like a direct, in-your-face simple song at the end of the day.”
It sounds like it was a deliberate step for the band to take – rather than focussing inward and further invoking comparisons with the likes of Ride et al, the Panics of 2007 are a lot more compact and deliberately focussed. “With a bit of retrospect and having done a bunch of records,” he explains, “I was sick of being so mid-paced a lot of the time, and playing live that way. I have a lot of energy to burn, and sometimes I wouldn’t mind something more uplifting – I’m a very positive kind of person!
“There was a certain consciousness in trying to do that,” he says of the band’s alteration in sound and delivery of it, “but at the same time there’s only so many decisions you can make. I certainly wanted to step up the energy a bit and be ambitious with the sounds that we chose on the record, and I think the record sounds pretty unique to me. We’re just trying to create our sound if we can, and drift away from the influences that we’ve worn, and hopefully people can hear one of our songs and recognise it as the Panics – that’s all we’re really going for.”
The change in sound not only incorporates a widely different delivery, but also a whole new array of instrumentation – there’s strings, there’s horns, there’s all sorts of sounds…yet there’s more space in the sound of Cruel Guards than there has been in any previous album by the band.
“I guess we’re getting better at knowing what to take out as much as what to put in,” Jae proffers. “I don’t think it’s a confusing record to listen to – every instrument or piece of string or trumpet is very direct and supposed to be that way.
“Before we have had it as a bit of texture,” he says of the additional instrumentation, “and it’s a bit hard to avoid when you’re in the studio because you want it to sound as big as you can, but the way the record starts I love that it kicks in with a big string line. We love the old driving Motown kind of stuff, and we just want to be ambitious basically, and create an atmosphere that sounds orchestral and massive.”
The challenge is then to not make it sound over-the-top or over-produced, and to help rein them in the Panics worked with Scott Horscroft, who is developing quite the reputation, having worked with the likes of the Sleepy Jackson and Silverchair in recent times.
“We liked the idea,” he says, “of working with someone who was excited about your music and wanted to use that as well and would work really hard rather than applying their tried-and-tested formula. It’s nice to be around someone with a passion for music. To do it here [Australia] rather than going overseas meant that we could still afford to travel overseas to mix the record.”
The band worked with the brilliant ex-pat Victor Van Vugt to put the final touches on Cruel Guards, and one of the things that most stands about the album is that there’s a sense of timelessness to it; where other records released in 2007 will sound dated in all likelihood in less than a year’s time, there’s something about this release that makes it sound like it could have been released any time from the mid-to-late 1960s til now.
“I think the timelessness of it is something cinematic in the sound,” he agrees. “It’s really hard work to create a record where a) you don’t sound like your influences, and b} it can’t be dated to a particular time. In some ways it feels like a movie soundtrack that doesn’t have a movie – if you think it’s timeless then it’s a great thing for me to hear, but I’m very involved in the subjects of the songs, and it’s nice to hear people say that they hear a timeless nature to it.”
Cruel Guards is out now
