The vagabond four piece Howling Bells haven’t been in the country much since their collective birth. The demise of Waikiki may have come as a shock to many people, but Juanita Stein, the alluring front woman of Howling Bells, recalls “in my mind I was already in another band maybe three quarters of the way through Waikiki. We would be playing on stage and I was in another band in my head. I would go home and write different songs, and I was listening to music that didn’t sound anything like the music that we were playing at the time. I think we felt obliged to live out Waikiki to the point where it was ready to finish”.
The notion of destiny and doing what feels right is a constant theme throughout my chat with Juanita and drummer Glenn Moule, who looked rather dapper donning a cowboy hat. Both the dissolution of Waikiki, and the Howling Bells’ subsequent relocation to England, weren’t preconceived plans for the group, but more acting upon intuition. “We consciously decided that we loved what was going on in the UK and Europe and it suited where our heads were going musically and our ambitions,” explains Glenn. Recording the album in the UK with acclaimed Coldplay producer Ken Nelson, their self titled debut record is a much darker, introspective affair than anything that was created by the group’s previous incarnation.
For Juanita, who was the main songwriter on the album, it’s definitely her most personal record ever. “I felt like I was absolutely ready to put it all out there and if you didn’t like it you could get fucked, that’s really how I felt,” she says in an assertive tone. “I was filled with so much frustration and anxiety, and… I was very, very frustrated. I felt trapped in a particular form and I really wanted to break out, and felt that I had so much more to offer and prove as an artist and musician, and that can push the songwriter along. That took me a long way plus all those personal experiences – meeting someone, falling out of love with someone and those things – push the songwriting process along.”
I asked Juanita if it was a relieving, cathartic experience recording the album, and this was a notion she wholeheartedly agreed with. “Me and Glenn had the similar thought that after we’d made the record we were in a bar one night and I think I’d said to you [Glenn] as a passing thought, ‘This sounds really ridiculous, but if I got hit by a truck tomorrow and died, I’d be happy that we’d made the record’. And you were like, ‘I thought exactly the same thing yesterday!’”
But despite many successful tours of the UK, and their self-titled album coming in at number 11 on NME’s Best Albums of 2006 poll, the Howling Bells have yet to make a significant impact on the Australian music market. Despite sharing the stage with bands such as Placebo, and on the eve of supporting Snow Patrol, both Juanita and Glenn say that there’s been a lot of hesitancy from Australian music fans in accepting the band. “The musical climate in England, I feel, connected with our album immediately,” says Juanita. “There was no difficulty in understanding what we were trying to say. There were no preconceived notions of who we were or what kind of music we used to make. I think that’s very hard when you have to reintroduce yourself, which is what we’ve had to do here.”
It’s been tough work for the band, as many people’s memories of Waikiki are still fresh in their minds. Juanita believes that Australian audiences are having a difficult time accepting Howling Bells for who they are. “People find it hard to believe – it’s inconceivable to some people – that you could possibly develop or mature as an artist or musician. I feel like once you have one incarnation, that’s your name for the rest of your entire life, and how dare you want to change and how dare you want to develop and mature musically; it’s not allowed.”
Currently based in the UK for touring, the Howling Bells are planning to launch their attack on Australia later in the year when they come back to tour the world’s largest island. Glenn echoes the band’s desire to gain acceptance in their home country just as Waikiki did, but with the strength of Howling Bells, it shouldn’t be too long before they find their home back where they started.
