Cable Ties on how they’ve developed their sound for their new album Far Enough
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Cable Ties on how they’ve developed their sound for their new album Far Enough

“You live in your band a lot more,” Cable Ties bassist Nick Brown reflects on the way their band’s sound developed between their first LP, and their upcoming album Far Enough.

“On the back of the first record, we’ve done so much playing and touring… Ideas had time to percolate – not just over the time of recording, or the time of writing, but the time bout on the road before that.”

The Cable Ties sound we know and love is one of razor-sharp post-punk… rock n roll riffs being ridden into oblivion while singer Jenny McKechnie burst through the dirt with a wail that swells into every corner of the room, commanding your attention while she delivers lyrics wrought with a passion for challenging the status quo and giving anthems to the outsiders.

Their new album Far Enough starts a little unexpectedly with Hope. McKechnie sings soft and delicate, bringing the listener in close she uses poignant and visual storytelling to lament on the current political climate of the country, and on whether there is hope for the future, before the temperature on the track rises a couple of minutes in, with the band’s familiar anger bursting through.

“I think the dynamics on the record is one of the things that really sets it apart from the last one,” Brown says of the new twists on the Cable Ties formula. “I think we really thought about those arrangements and thought about what we want to do. I guess the classic kind of, Cable Ties physicality of sound, kind of like, grab people and just absolutely go for it from beginning to end… we’ve done so much of that, that we wanted to do more on top, and I think we developed that ability to pull back a little bit, or to wind things down and then jump up into that, like, big grinding sound.”

As well as learning to use the negative space in their songs to their advantage, Brown also talks about their overall sound becoming stronger. “The band’s sound grew pretty significantly between the recording of the first record and second record, we became a much bigger and fuller sounding band. A little bit less on that skittish, early post-punk kind of sound and we kind of took it along in a big, glowing amp stacks kind of sound of like mid-70s hard rock as well.”

Earlier this month, the band unveiled the second single off the album, ‘Self-Made Man’, with an accompanying video by Oscar O’Shea.

“’Self-Made Man’ is really a song about the myth in capitalism that the people who are successful, do so completely under their own steam and are the sole people responsible for their wealth generation, and if you just work hard and stop being so preoccupied with helping each other or asking for things to be fair then you would also be a successful rich person, which is just total garbage.”

The clip features the band playing on an old-school television set, with people watching and reacting to the song, as if they were in their own living rooms.

“I think that most people – particularly as teenagers but throughout your life, you have these really personal connections to music which are a product of listening to it on your own; whether that’s listening to the radio in the car, or while you’re doing the dishes, or sitting in your bedroom, and you have a very personal response to them, and I think that’s how so many people, myself included, develop such strong connections between the music that they love, and themselves, and their lives.

“And I think that Oscar really put that into that clip, that music isn’t kind of this like, this art to simply be kind of consumed through discourse, reviews, public performance, music festivals… like all those things are great and important, but also one of the places that so many of us have built such a strong connection to our music is alone, and that’s a really intimate connection, and I think that Oscar really nailed that in the video clip.”

Cable Ties immediate and grimy sound juxtaposed against their impassioned and honest lyrics have seen the group rise to become one of Australia’s most formidable young rock bands, and their momentum is bound to speed up when the rest of the new album, Far Enough, is released on March 27.

The release will come during Cable Ties upcoming international tour, featuring appearances in America at iconic festivals Burgerama and SXSW, “We’ll be in New York for the release date which is really exciting,” before moving on to their first run of headline shows in Europe, “We’re super excited for the opportunity, to go away, play your music every day, meet lots of people… we’re so bloody lucky.”

Cable Ties are set to perform at The Corner Hotel in Melbourne on May 2. Tickers via cornerhotel.com

Written by Liam McNally
Photo by Lisa Businovski