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Interview: The Lazy Eyes
- Jack Montague
- 10 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Interviewed by Jack Montague
Gadigal/Sydney psych-rock band The Lazy Eyes’ second LP Cheesy Love Songs is a perfect continuation of their detailed, refined approach to pop melodies and sonic fuzz. Their debut SongBook, sets an ecstatic context for the band. Their influences in the pop realm are consistent and clear. Those who love Alex Chilton are as at home here as fans of Paul McCartney. And something’s in there for Courtney Barnett, too. It’s a fantastic first album. Which is what makes Cheesy Love Songs a glowing part-two. They seem to have acknowledged everything we loved about the songwriting and production in SongBook, gone for a think, and honoured it with something new. I caught up with the band to talk all about the recording process, collaboration, fixations, and what’s changed in the last four years.
You guys have been together since 2015. It seems like in that time you’ve tended to consider each project and take a lot of time with it. How do you find the process of filtering out what you want, and what you don’t want?
Itay: “For this particular album we came in with only two extra songs that didn’t end up making the cut. The reason behind that, was that this was the first album where we’ve gone into it with the intention of saying, ‘we’re going to make an album’. Because for the first album, we were halfway through releasing a bunch of the songs when we decided we could make it into an album. But for this one, yeah, we only had two extras that we didn’t record for it, because we felt that overall it would make the balance of the album too full of ballads, and we wanted a good variety. We wanted every track to serve a purpose on the album.”
What’s occurred for you creatively over the last four years since SongBook?
Itay: “Oh God. Well I will say that a lot has changed. I guess that’s one thing in some sense that we’re curious about, because it’s hard to tell being in the band and inside the project. But, to us the two albums are pretty different, and I think a lot of things had to change for us to be able to be satisfied with the new album. We kind of had to try a lot of things that didn’t work in terms of approaches with recording and production. And we had to fail a lot of times to eventually learn what did work, and you could call that an epiphany of sorts.”
Harvey: “I think in comparison to the first album, we pretty much changed everything. In terms of the new one being a lot more minimal with the arrangement. The first album had layers upon layers, and this new one is pretty much most of the time just the four band members playing their instruments and two voices. Just the same as we would play it live. I feel like we had some goals when we were mixing that we wanted to achieve. The songs do have an inspiration from old 60s music and that type of songwriting, but we didn’t necessarily want to mix it like a revival band or something. We still wanted the recordings to have a timeless element. There are bands that recreate the exact tones of the Beatles and so forth, which is cool and a fun challenge, but I think for these songs we didn’t really want to pigeonhole it into that sound too much."
One for you Harvey. When you’re figuring out a song, maybe if you’re stuck on a song, what do you fall back on for inspiration?
Harvey: “I think the way the songs come is that they just come out. But if there is an idea that’s getting stuck, sometimes, maybe a few months will have to pass before something comes along and it un-stucks that idea. And then it might come out. Or sometimes they just stay stuck and never get done, and that’s probably just an idea that doesn’t make it, you know.”
What about the experience of being a creative person, generally? I’d love to know how things perhaps outside of music, day-to-day or mundane things, fuel the inner-energy and help you complete your work.
Itay: “We just finished building our studio recently. And I think something I’ve noticed is that even in day-to-day life just with little things like doing emails or arranging a room, we treat everything with an eye for detail, and we really just choose to enjoy the little things. There’s a beauty to being creative about the things you wouldn’t always view creatively, if that makes sense.”
How has growing up in Sydney shaped your sound and your experiences as musicians?
Harvey: “I guess you only know what you know. We’ve all grown up in Sydney and there would be a million different ways that it’s influenced us. I think being exposed to the wholeness of it. The layers of Sydney are something that have really shaped me. Sydney is not really one particular thing. Some places are super beachy, some places are super futuristic, but Sydney has all of that in one, wherever you go. Can can go to the beachy part, of the city part, or anywhere in between. So, I feel like that’s influenced us in terms of wanting to be a broad band and not just do one thing.”
What’s the biggest A-Ha moment you’ve had with writing or recording recently?
Harvey: “One just came to mind that was really a nice, ‘grateful for our partnership’ type moment. In the song Always In The Back Of My Mind, when I showed the boys and showed Itay, there was this tiny little gap in singing that I couldn’t get over, and I knew there needed to be some instrumental response to the singing line. But I never landed on exactly what that melody was. And without even saying I picture a response line here, Itay just came up with this melody on the guitar where was like, yeah, that’s exactly what I was looking for. I was like wow, Itay, you finished my sentence, musically.”
Itay: “Yeah, and we are able to have those moments in studio because everyone is narrowed into their interest and really feels comfortable to focus on their instrument within the greater sound of the band. It’s funny, for example our drummer Noah, whenever we finish a rough mix or something, he literally just listens to the drums. But, it is very helpful, because he’s got that extreme focus on the drums and he picks up when tiny things are a bit rougher than they need to be, or a cymbal should be louder, or whatever it may be. Things that we wouldn’t notice. And I do feel lucky for the four of us in terms of our tastes and what we focus on. I feel like it all overlaps and we can hear something and cover all of the bases which is awesome.”
Something that I really love with both your EPs and also the albums is your cover art. How did the album covers come to be?
Itay: “Thanks. They’re actually very homemade, to be honest. The SongBook one is a photo of a collage that we made. Like we cut together some photos and different materials and took a photo of it. And the new one is a Photoshop situation. So far it’s been the music where we’ve had to just do it ourselves to be happy.
Harvey: “Yeah, I was gonna say it feels very similar to our music making process where it exists in the mind first, and if we both say ‘Oh yeah I can picture, blah blah blah” and the other person agrees, then we’re onto something and we can try to make that real.”
It’s so true as well that working on the band you end up being everything else that isn’t the band. The graphic artist is a kind of implied duty sometimes.
Harvey: “It’s great, you end up with so many skills. We have learned so much non-music stuff by doing the band.”
You’re plunging into a tour soon. What are some of your favourite memories from touring the east coast?
“We were in a rural town, called Kyneton, and we played this tiny venue called Majortoms. And before the show we went into a record store and the guy running the store started chatting to us, and we were getting along and just nerding out about music. And I can’t remember if he was already coming to the show or if we invited him, but he was at the show. And I think he knew the owner of the venue, and he was like, Do you guys wanna stick around and hang out after the show, in the venue? We were like, sure. So they closed it to the public but it was just like us, the record guy, and the guy who owned the bar. So we just sat in there having drinks and talking about music, and the owner was telling us all these cool stories from when he used to tour with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. That was a fun night.”
The Lazy Eyes' brand new album 'Cheesy Love Songs' is out now
Available to listen he/re
