Dan Brodie Ponders Casting NoShadows With Beautiful Crimes

Mon 7th Mar, 2005 in Features

“I took a really long time to make this record. It took this long to get the songs together – songs that I was happy with anyway.” Dan Brodie is speaking of his new release Beautiful Crimes, which was recorded and a produced in a way so estranged from his Broken Arrows days that upon first listen you second-guess who, in fact it is, you’re listening to.

The songwriter took two years out when the Broken Arrows effectively dissolved and in that time kept busy writing and living in about a dozen differing locales, many lending direct inspiration to the tracks which appear on Beautiful Crimes. “I’d like to say that I could find beauty in the squalor. It just leads to frustration – I mean I couldn’t pick up a guitar in one place. I was stuck living with Chris [Dan’s brother], who kindly let me stay with him and his girlfriend, but I certainly make it easy on them. I was a bit of bastard really to live with because I’d just complain all the time. I mean you couldn’t play your guitar in this place without someone next door- in another tiny flat, coming in and telling you off. I mean I just wanted to fuckin’ scream half the time – and that two year break of mine, you know, I look back on it, and in a lot of these songs it’s in a response to trying to create an environment that’s perhaps in a sunny disposition, and create and alternative world for myself. I find the thought of someone listening to me creating the work – I can’t do that – I find that an abominable situation.”

This ‘abominable’ situation illustrated just one of the places in which Dan was living during the time the record was being written. But there were further changes that lent creative fuel to the Dan Brodie writing demon. One being the challenge to go pop. ”As a writer, like with anything, I want to challenge myself and explore new means of expression, so I sort of became interested in harmonies and big choruses and soaring melodies and backing vocals – I guess in a bit of a response to a lot of that garagey stuff that everyone is recording on analogue equipment…I really didn’t want it sounding like that,” as Dan explains, “a way around that was to go down the Phil Spector road and throw as much stuff on it as I possibly could think of.”

With the help of Barry Palmer, Dan Brodie feels he has achieved this – moving away from the formula of stripped back ‘rootsy’ sounds found on his past two efforts with the Broken Arrows: “I found that most of the stuff I was writing would probably fit on the first two records, but the ones that really excited me were the ones that perhaps were a little less folky. There’s elements of that on the last album that I was kinda aiming for – there’s a song on the last record You Fell From the Sky and There’s To Much You In My Head – those are to me the more interesting songs on that album. That’s kinda what happens when you’re making records, there’ll be a couple of songs where you can hear what you’re going to do next, and so I just focused in on that side of things, more so than the Jesus Try and Save Me side of things – which I really love, I still love playing that song. It’s stuff that comes quite naturally to me, and I wanted to try stuff that didn’t come so naturally to me.”

And while the typical wordsmithing of Brodie is evident in stridently personal lyricism, he maintains that there is always some secrecy in the singer/songwriter stance. Especially when challenged with new technologies, and committing personal experience to tape. “A friend asked me that the other day, and I had never thought about it. Ever. I was saying to her ‘I couldn’t stand having an internet guise, how can you stand exposing yourself to other people?’ and she replied, ‘Well what do you think you’re doing?’ And I had actually never thought of that.”

And what do you think of it? “A lot of it is cloaked – and a lot of it is real. The thing that would be bad for me is that if I exposed the characters, or told you what was true and what was false. And what I would find the most terrifying is discussing my life outside of music, so that would be a terrible situation. Anyway as soon as the record is released the songs become public domain, and that’s cool. I don’t hold back. The people in my life, who maybe some of the songs are about, know exactly what I am talking about…and all that other stuff is strangers. I don’t know ‘em, so there not going to be affected by it… I think.”

Beautiful Crimes is out now and you can catch Dan showcasing his new tunes along with the old gems, later this month and throughout April, here:

March 31, Ballarat Karova Lounge
April 1, Melbourne Prince of Wales  
April 2,  Geelong  National Hotel  
April 7, Coffs Harbour Plantation Hotel  
April 8, Brisbane The Zoo  
April 9, Gold Coast  Trocaderro  
April 10, Byron Bay The Great Northern  
April 13, Canberra Green Room  
April 14, Wollongong Oxford Tavern  
April 15, Sydney The Annandale Hotel  
April 16, Newcastle Cambridge Hotel  
April 20, Adelaide Gov Hindmarsh  
April 21, Bunbury Prince of Wales  
April 22, Margaret River Settlers Tavern  
April 23, Perth Rosemount Hotel  
April 24, Fremantle Swan Basement