Simon Jones - The Holidays (27/06/2014)
Capturing Australia’s attention back in 2010 with the release of their debut, ‘Post Paradise,’ The Holidays have returned this year in full force with their second album ‘Real Feels.’ The 59th Sound was able to catch up with the band’s front man Simon Jones about their upcoming east coast tour, the loss of band member Will Magnus, and Jones’ travel log across the world and production process behind ‘Real Feels.’
Wrapping up their regional tour, The Holidays will begin a cascade of shows in cities across Australia’s east coast. Relaxing and touring for two years after the release of Post Paradise, The Holidays had built up a steady resume of festivals under their command. Playing shows at SXSW in Austin, Texas, The Great Escape Festival in Brighton, UK and Australian festivals such Groovin’ The Moo, Laneway, and Splendor In The Grass, The Holidays have expressed an intense and enthusiastic spirit at touring Australia’s major cities again.
“It’s good, I mean the last tour we did. The usual all over, kind of hitting Western Australia, Tasmania and all the other spots. This time we’re just doing the east coast major cities but we’re doing bigger shows. So it’s kind of exciting because we’re playing the biggest rooms we’ve ever played really. Like the Metro in Sydney and the Hi Fi in Melbourne, so it’s pretty exciting.”
While to some audiences, shows are just shows. In the touring sense, bigger shows offer larger spectacles essentially creating a greater effect to infuse the sense of awe behind any band’s music. Simon spoke on the difference between their regional shows and what to imagine from their east coast tour.
“The regional ones are good to hit occasionally, but I feel like those sort of places you can’t just keep going back all the time regularly because there’s only so much audience there. But when you go to places like Hobart or Perth where we don’t go often, is really cool because people are generally really excited to come to the shows since they haven’t seen you before or haven’t seen you in a long time. But I think when it comes to places like Sydney and Melbourne; you really just got to keep at it. Like keep getting bigger rooms and getting more people since the markets are just so much bigger that you just got to trust the people and the new people hearing the record and hope they’re going to come."
Jones went on to explain the planned atmosphere they expect to bring to their major city shows.
“We got a bit of a light show going on now. We’re still getting to the stage where its bigger rooms and we can put on a show-show, which is really cool. We’ve got a really good sound guy and everything has been sounding nice, pretty, detailed and clear which is good for our sort of music. With the kind of music we make, we spend a lot of time on the record making things really intricate and with each sound the best we can make it. Like when you’re playing in a club, it’s hard to recreate that sound and detail. It’s just like a blunt instrument where it’s loud and not really defined, but once you get to small theatre side shows, you can really make things sound as good as the record if not better.”
Since playing at major festivals across the globe, such as SXSW and The Great Escape. The Holidays have traveled internationally across the globe carrying out their initial dreams before forming the band.
“It’s been awesome. We did SXSW, we did a couple of things in Vegas and New York, and we did The Great Escape in England, which was really cool. It’s a good experience; I mean it’s the kind of thing you dream about when you start a band that you don’t think you’ll get to do. I remember the first time we arrived in New York to play a gig at Bowery Ballroom, which is like a legendary venue. It was just so cool, it was pretty surreal and I just remembered thinking what the dream was originally, but you got to be happy about that."
“Now with my dream, I’m really interested in the production side of things. I think the more I made The Holidays music, the more I honed my skills and really become more excited about sounds, recording and just experimenting really. So I’m not sure exactly what the dream is now. I kind of want to branch out to other styles a little bit, whether as The Holidays or something else, I might record other projects maybe.”
Formed in late 2006, The Holidays began after Simon Jones and Will Magnus attended high school together. Conceived as a four-piece band originally, The Holidays became a three-piece after the departure of Will Magnus during their last ounce of touring and the production Real Feels. While most fans would find difficulty in adapting to the sudden change, The Holidays instead brought two more additional members for their shows to sort out the missing holes Magnus left behind.
“We always had an extra player live, who was Dave our percussionist who would play the percussion stuff live. What we did when Will left was replace him with another processions guy, our friend Ed who’s basically doing all the things Will used to do. So we’ve kind of filled the spot so we can still do all those things. But it’s just a different guy now, so it’s slightly different, but not heaps different.”
Real Feels itself was a different departure from tropical indie that concocted Post Paradise. A four-year break allowed The Holidays to hone their technical and creative skills as a band, surmounting to new songs with a polychromatic visualization. With a couple of reruns of the record complete with buoyant guitar kicks, flowing lyrics and a dreamy fixture, The Holidays released Real Feels for a summer blockade.
“I think the production process was similar to our first album in that we made it in bits and pieces all over the place. It wasn’t a studio album really, it was a moving set up where I can record all over the place and then we go into the studio at the end and clean up bits that needed be done. But for the actual writing process was different because this time I was really experimenting with a few things, a few sounds that I really liked. I think it was more of a process of choosing which ones I liked. Pretty much writing heaps of songs and choosing the ones that we liked and finishing them. So we had quite are big collection of ideas to choose from and then we narrowed them down and choose the ones to work on.”
During the band’s stint between albums, Simon traveled across Europe and Asia, trekking across cities such as Berlin, Paris, London and Tokyo. Cut from the world, Jones’ experience essentially shaped his writing process creating a worldly and knowing attitude. Carrying this new demeanor to The Holidays’ music during the production process of Real Feels, Jones explained how each song plays homage to his travelogue of the world.
“I think it was kind of like a search for inspiration in a way. Not anything really specific or obvious but just a general attempt to gain some sort of story to the album, some sort of vibe that I could pick up from traveling. The idea of traveling alone really opens your eyes. It really is a different experience; it’s not the same as being on a holiday. You notice a lot more and you feel a little bit isolated from everything, you kind of have a different perspective on things. I think that’s what the album is really about. It’s not a travel log per se but every song in my mind when I was writing it I had this mental image, like when I was in Berlin by myself or when I was in Tokyo by myself. I pretty much used that as my inspiration for the sound.”
Upon it’s release, Post Paradise won a string of awards with many citing a change of pace from other respective acts. Since it’s release the album had been shorted listed for the Australian Music Prize. With the release of Real Feels, The Holidays were indifferent to how their fans would critique their second album as Post Paradise surpassed their initial thoughts.
“It’s hard having perspective on your own work. I think Post Paradise did better than we expected. Maybe not in terms of sales but in terms of just how far it got and how many awards it received, we never expected that. You kind of reset your expectations even if you don’t know it. So when it came to making the second album, I wouldn’t say you really think about that, but you feel like there’s a precedent that you have to strive to. It kind of stops you from putting out just any sort of songs that you think ‘Oh, it’s a bit vanilla but it will be fine.’ We kind of didn’t want to do that at all, we wanted everything to have its place on the album. There were no cheap songs or none that didn’t measure up to that level. But it’s very hard when your making new music, you just got to go with your gut. So you can’t really think if this song is going to do as well or is this going to get awards because it’s really a different game.”
Simon continued to elaborate on how The Holidays sound evolved since their beginning.
“Its interesting because if you look at Post Paradise, it had a whole tropical vibe and lots of percussions and stuff like that. But it also had a fair bit of electronics on it and I think that a lot of reviews and people said that with the second album it’s more electronic. But in my mind, the number of electronic sounds isn’t a lot more; instead it’s more of that character. So I kind of see it as a transition between more of band sound to something a bit more electronic.”
The role of record producer is often underlined as a music mediator. Often overseeing or managing the music, the record producer virtually supervises the mixing and mastering of the record. Working with producer Malcolm Besley who’s past works include Gold Fields and Jakubi. Besley entered the production stage of Real Feels after the songs had been written; buffing the final parts of the album before its release as Jones explained.
“Mal came in after the songs were written and basically was the guy who helped us get it finished. Because we kind of stalled to the point where the songs were almost done but not polished enough. He was great in telling us what needed to be cut, what was good, what we needed to work with. Rerecording some things to make them sound better and really just having a good set of trained ears on everything. He also did the mix, which he did a really good job of. So he kind of came in and rescued us from getting stuck at ninety percent. So we probably couldn’t have finished it without him since he really had a good perspective. We had these songs for so long that we had lost touch on what we needed to do to finish them.”
In comparison to their last album, Post Paradise was a self-produced album. Jones elucidated the difference between working solo and working with a producer on Real Feels.
“Its hard, since music is also hard to describe and to talk about. So when you got a sound in your head, it’s really hard to convey it to someone else, unless they’re a person that you know is on the same wavelength. That’s why I’m quite hesitant to work with producers, especially ones you don’t know. You don’t know if they’re going to get your references, you don’t know if they’re on the same page as you. Often you’ll be working against each other in different directions. So I think if you can find a producer that you know shares the same ideas and taste as you its really good. Otherwise you have to be someone who can describe what you’re after and with references, which is difficult. So I might say ‘I want drums to sound like a real seventies live type drum kit’ and that could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. You can’t produce the song and sound exactly how you want, it’s very hard to do.”
Jason Cheung
Wrapping up their regional tour, The Holidays will begin a cascade of shows in cities across Australia’s east coast. Relaxing and touring for two years after the release of Post Paradise, The Holidays had built up a steady resume of festivals under their command. Playing shows at SXSW in Austin, Texas, The Great Escape Festival in Brighton, UK and Australian festivals such Groovin’ The Moo, Laneway, and Splendor In The Grass, The Holidays have expressed an intense and enthusiastic spirit at touring Australia’s major cities again.
“It’s good, I mean the last tour we did. The usual all over, kind of hitting Western Australia, Tasmania and all the other spots. This time we’re just doing the east coast major cities but we’re doing bigger shows. So it’s kind of exciting because we’re playing the biggest rooms we’ve ever played really. Like the Metro in Sydney and the Hi Fi in Melbourne, so it’s pretty exciting.”
While to some audiences, shows are just shows. In the touring sense, bigger shows offer larger spectacles essentially creating a greater effect to infuse the sense of awe behind any band’s music. Simon spoke on the difference between their regional shows and what to imagine from their east coast tour.
“The regional ones are good to hit occasionally, but I feel like those sort of places you can’t just keep going back all the time regularly because there’s only so much audience there. But when you go to places like Hobart or Perth where we don’t go often, is really cool because people are generally really excited to come to the shows since they haven’t seen you before or haven’t seen you in a long time. But I think when it comes to places like Sydney and Melbourne; you really just got to keep at it. Like keep getting bigger rooms and getting more people since the markets are just so much bigger that you just got to trust the people and the new people hearing the record and hope they’re going to come."
Jones went on to explain the planned atmosphere they expect to bring to their major city shows.
“We got a bit of a light show going on now. We’re still getting to the stage where its bigger rooms and we can put on a show-show, which is really cool. We’ve got a really good sound guy and everything has been sounding nice, pretty, detailed and clear which is good for our sort of music. With the kind of music we make, we spend a lot of time on the record making things really intricate and with each sound the best we can make it. Like when you’re playing in a club, it’s hard to recreate that sound and detail. It’s just like a blunt instrument where it’s loud and not really defined, but once you get to small theatre side shows, you can really make things sound as good as the record if not better.”
Since playing at major festivals across the globe, such as SXSW and The Great Escape. The Holidays have traveled internationally across the globe carrying out their initial dreams before forming the band.
“It’s been awesome. We did SXSW, we did a couple of things in Vegas and New York, and we did The Great Escape in England, which was really cool. It’s a good experience; I mean it’s the kind of thing you dream about when you start a band that you don’t think you’ll get to do. I remember the first time we arrived in New York to play a gig at Bowery Ballroom, which is like a legendary venue. It was just so cool, it was pretty surreal and I just remembered thinking what the dream was originally, but you got to be happy about that."
“Now with my dream, I’m really interested in the production side of things. I think the more I made The Holidays music, the more I honed my skills and really become more excited about sounds, recording and just experimenting really. So I’m not sure exactly what the dream is now. I kind of want to branch out to other styles a little bit, whether as The Holidays or something else, I might record other projects maybe.”
Formed in late 2006, The Holidays began after Simon Jones and Will Magnus attended high school together. Conceived as a four-piece band originally, The Holidays became a three-piece after the departure of Will Magnus during their last ounce of touring and the production Real Feels. While most fans would find difficulty in adapting to the sudden change, The Holidays instead brought two more additional members for their shows to sort out the missing holes Magnus left behind.
“We always had an extra player live, who was Dave our percussionist who would play the percussion stuff live. What we did when Will left was replace him with another processions guy, our friend Ed who’s basically doing all the things Will used to do. So we’ve kind of filled the spot so we can still do all those things. But it’s just a different guy now, so it’s slightly different, but not heaps different.”
Real Feels itself was a different departure from tropical indie that concocted Post Paradise. A four-year break allowed The Holidays to hone their technical and creative skills as a band, surmounting to new songs with a polychromatic visualization. With a couple of reruns of the record complete with buoyant guitar kicks, flowing lyrics and a dreamy fixture, The Holidays released Real Feels for a summer blockade.
“I think the production process was similar to our first album in that we made it in bits and pieces all over the place. It wasn’t a studio album really, it was a moving set up where I can record all over the place and then we go into the studio at the end and clean up bits that needed be done. But for the actual writing process was different because this time I was really experimenting with a few things, a few sounds that I really liked. I think it was more of a process of choosing which ones I liked. Pretty much writing heaps of songs and choosing the ones that we liked and finishing them. So we had quite are big collection of ideas to choose from and then we narrowed them down and choose the ones to work on.”
During the band’s stint between albums, Simon traveled across Europe and Asia, trekking across cities such as Berlin, Paris, London and Tokyo. Cut from the world, Jones’ experience essentially shaped his writing process creating a worldly and knowing attitude. Carrying this new demeanor to The Holidays’ music during the production process of Real Feels, Jones explained how each song plays homage to his travelogue of the world.
“I think it was kind of like a search for inspiration in a way. Not anything really specific or obvious but just a general attempt to gain some sort of story to the album, some sort of vibe that I could pick up from traveling. The idea of traveling alone really opens your eyes. It really is a different experience; it’s not the same as being on a holiday. You notice a lot more and you feel a little bit isolated from everything, you kind of have a different perspective on things. I think that’s what the album is really about. It’s not a travel log per se but every song in my mind when I was writing it I had this mental image, like when I was in Berlin by myself or when I was in Tokyo by myself. I pretty much used that as my inspiration for the sound.”
Upon it’s release, Post Paradise won a string of awards with many citing a change of pace from other respective acts. Since it’s release the album had been shorted listed for the Australian Music Prize. With the release of Real Feels, The Holidays were indifferent to how their fans would critique their second album as Post Paradise surpassed their initial thoughts.
“It’s hard having perspective on your own work. I think Post Paradise did better than we expected. Maybe not in terms of sales but in terms of just how far it got and how many awards it received, we never expected that. You kind of reset your expectations even if you don’t know it. So when it came to making the second album, I wouldn’t say you really think about that, but you feel like there’s a precedent that you have to strive to. It kind of stops you from putting out just any sort of songs that you think ‘Oh, it’s a bit vanilla but it will be fine.’ We kind of didn’t want to do that at all, we wanted everything to have its place on the album. There were no cheap songs or none that didn’t measure up to that level. But it’s very hard when your making new music, you just got to go with your gut. So you can’t really think if this song is going to do as well or is this going to get awards because it’s really a different game.”
Simon continued to elaborate on how The Holidays sound evolved since their beginning.
“Its interesting because if you look at Post Paradise, it had a whole tropical vibe and lots of percussions and stuff like that. But it also had a fair bit of electronics on it and I think that a lot of reviews and people said that with the second album it’s more electronic. But in my mind, the number of electronic sounds isn’t a lot more; instead it’s more of that character. So I kind of see it as a transition between more of band sound to something a bit more electronic.”
The role of record producer is often underlined as a music mediator. Often overseeing or managing the music, the record producer virtually supervises the mixing and mastering of the record. Working with producer Malcolm Besley who’s past works include Gold Fields and Jakubi. Besley entered the production stage of Real Feels after the songs had been written; buffing the final parts of the album before its release as Jones explained.
“Mal came in after the songs were written and basically was the guy who helped us get it finished. Because we kind of stalled to the point where the songs were almost done but not polished enough. He was great in telling us what needed to be cut, what was good, what we needed to work with. Rerecording some things to make them sound better and really just having a good set of trained ears on everything. He also did the mix, which he did a really good job of. So he kind of came in and rescued us from getting stuck at ninety percent. So we probably couldn’t have finished it without him since he really had a good perspective. We had these songs for so long that we had lost touch on what we needed to do to finish them.”
In comparison to their last album, Post Paradise was a self-produced album. Jones elucidated the difference between working solo and working with a producer on Real Feels.
“Its hard, since music is also hard to describe and to talk about. So when you got a sound in your head, it’s really hard to convey it to someone else, unless they’re a person that you know is on the same wavelength. That’s why I’m quite hesitant to work with producers, especially ones you don’t know. You don’t know if they’re going to get your references, you don’t know if they’re on the same page as you. Often you’ll be working against each other in different directions. So I think if you can find a producer that you know shares the same ideas and taste as you its really good. Otherwise you have to be someone who can describe what you’re after and with references, which is difficult. So I might say ‘I want drums to sound like a real seventies live type drum kit’ and that could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. You can’t produce the song and sound exactly how you want, it’s very hard to do.”
Jason Cheung