HALCYON DRIVE // Dissect New Single, 'The Birds'

Learning to live in this world is hard enough, let alone working out how to do it with someone else by your side. Such were the thoughts no doubt running through the head of Michael Oechsle, frontman of Melbourne electro-rock trio Halcyon Drive, when he penned the band’s recent single The Birds.

An uplifting slice of electronica fused with rock pop, the song signifies a stylistic shift for the band ahead of their debut album, the details of which will be announced soon.

Drawing influence from the popular Song Exploder podcast, we sat down with drummer Max Pamieta to reflect on the songwriting process, where the band is at musically and why he won’t be changing his typically aggressive drumming style any time soon.

HYSTERIA: Where do I find you today?

MAX: I’m just sitting in the car park outside my day job bro. I’d prefer to be elsewhere, but when I’m not playing the drums I’m an industrial designer. It’s in the medical field, so I work at a place where you design diagnostic instruments. It’s quite a different life to playing with Halcyon Drive.

Do you like Birds? Where did the name for this tune come from?

Mike is the lyricist in the band and ironically, he doesn’t like Birds, so I don’t know why he sings about them, but he chose to so it probably has something to do with experiences when you wake up in the morning and you hear birds chirping away. It’s kind of signifying that new beginning. We have no fetishes for birds! If anything, it’s quite the opposite, it’s just a cool lyric.

How do you personally relate to these lyrics?

I’m more of a musical contributor, but I can draw upon what we chatted about in the past. It’s more of an insider observation when you get into a new relationship and start to get to know someone and you have to change your lifestyle. It’s not so much a beautiful love story as much as its an observation of how you have to change to adapt to the person that you’re with. At times it can be a bit confronting because you get to learn about them, but you grow together. Sometimes it’s good to have your own time as well, you don’t want to be too caught up in things that you can’t take some time out for yourself. You might be someone that operates a little bit differently so that’s the crux of the story behind this song.

Musically speaking, I’d usually try to avoid this question, but how was it written? What process did it go through?

The genesis of the ideas come in rehearsal. Mike and I go clean slate into the rehearsal room and we just play through ideas. We self-asses the day after, and that’s usually the spark that influences us to move on with an idea. At times, Mike does generate melodies at home, and this was one of the cases. Generally, though, it really comes about in rehearsal. You just play naturally and hopefully, a cool idea will come about, and that’s when you start demoing it up and exploring different avenues from there.

What did the initial demos sound like?

Generally, it might be a beat and then Mick builds upon it. Then we take that into something like Pro Tools and build upon it with synths and percussive details. That’s where we build it up to a place that we are happy with before we then take it into the recording. That’s something we learnt in the past, that when we go into a recording session we want to have that confidence. We don’t want to be caught out with something we aren’t happy with the studio. With this song, the demo was almost an exact replica of what you hear in the recorded version. It was maybe a few minor details that changed, but the demo was very close to what you eventually hear.

When did you realise this was a track you could carry on with?

This one came right at the end of the reviewing process. We had a whole bucket of songs and an additional month of writing to knock out a few more, and this popped up in the rehearsal. The cool thing is that it’s a little bit different to what we’ve done in the past. This is a far more electronic track which was reminiscent of the new songs that we will be sharing in due time. It signified a little bit of a change and along with that the melodies were super strong and they connected with people, so it was the right song to give it a shot.

The electronic influence is very apparent on the new material, especially on this track. What’s your own relationship with that music style?

It was interesting because it was only on the last EP we bought a Moog Synth, which just has so many parameters and options to explore, that you’re kind of forced to learn it all. From that, it spurned more interest in terms of possibilities and doors. We started buying more things, I bought a synth and it was exciting because of how fresh it was. Because of that spark, we worked that more and more out of the songs. We’ve had the acoustic drums and guitar for such a long time, but it’s good to extend the tentacles and trial some new things.

What electronica are you into personally? What influences are now coming out into the band’s sound from your end as far as that genre is concerned?

I’ve always been into electronic dance, so bands like Justice…that dance stuff and the sounds that come out of it are edgy but still danceable. Those are the sorts of sounds I dig. Stuff with grittier is what I have always been interested into, so that’s maybe coming into the songs now.

It’s certainly a lot hookier than other stuff the band has done in the past. Do you think this is the catchiest song the band has written?

I think it’s way more on the poppier side, so that might play into that, but it’s more personalised. For me, there are other songs that I think are catchier, but it depends on what you’re into personally. It’s certainly up there with the other stuff that we’ve put out, so hopefully, it gets stuck in people’s heads.

As a drummer, does this new style change the way you’re approaching playing the skins? Are trigger pads starting to play more of a part?

Absolutely not. I don’t change the beats to fit a certain genre. Generally, the beats just come in during rehearsal, so it could just be me playing something that works with what’s happening on the guitar front. However, because there are more samples working into the songs, I do have to adapt more in a live sense, so I have pads that I use to trigger sounds. So I have three bar triggers on my snare and floor, and they’ve become more integral to the live show. It challenges me because triggering percussive sounds can also aide the melody and have a note to them. In terms of direction, I haven’t changed anything when it comes to the core beats themselves.

You guys worked this track with Joel Quatermain. How did that relationship influence the final product?

We had never worked with him because on the last two EP’s it was the same person, Steven Tram, so this was a whole new working environment. He very much came from a songwriter’s perspective, so we did a lot of prepro in terms of him offering his two sense on how our demo is working,and it was just a few tweaks. He was the voice of the audience, so if something was sounding non-processable by the human brain he would say ‘Ok, let’s change this…we can alter this.’ We listened to some of these demos a bazillion times so it was good to get that new perspective. He’s also known as the melody nazi, so he offered his two cents on tweaking, he was very into the character of the vocals, and that really helped us refine the songs.