Bio

WA trio Eskimo Joe has come a long way since their humble beginnings as much-loved indie rock kids in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Through the early EP's, Sweater and the self-titled Eskimo Joe, they endeared themselves to kids country-wide. The EPs were closely followed by their debut album, Girl. Using striking visuals with cutting edge video clips and artwork, the band impressed the public and critics alike with a gold selling collection. Their experiences as a band progressed them musically into their second full-length album, A Song Is A City, produced by Paul McKercher and the band. The single "From the Sea" launched them to a massive double-platinum selling success and a spoke of what was to come.

2006's Black Fingernails, Red Wine, was the culmination of all their previous works in a cohesive and pounding shot of dark rock that hit straight at the heart of Australians. Debuting at number one on the national album charts and four-times platinum sales later, the three-piece, which now have two extra touring members, hit the road in the US, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Korea and the UK to support releases internationally.

Inshalla, their next musically diverse and internationally flavoured fourth offering delivered a Led Zeppelin tinged, middle eastern flavoured single in "Foreign Land", which earned the band the most played Australian song on radio in 2009, along with an APRA award for "Best Rock Song".

Eskimo Joe’s new album ponders what happens when that acknowledgement does indeed take place. “Ghosts Of The Past" is about what ghosts we choose to leave behind and what we learn to live with,” says vocalist/bassist, Kav Temperley. “It's about looking into these different moments in my life from a positive place, but a positive place that is always threatening to unravel, trying to work out at what point the ghosts are going to rise up and shatter everything that is good in my life, while what the ghosts are probably actually telling me is let go relax and enjoy the ride.

“But somehow I find that so hard to do and I keep replaying the different episodes in my head, trying to work out where I went wrong and where I got out of a bad situation at the right time. These are those stories.”

Talk of a new Eskimo Joe album had started while the band was still on the European leg of the Inshalla tour in 2009. Even so, with Kav being busy with the Basement Birds project and guitarists Joel Quartermain and Stu MacLeod overseeing the construction and development of the band’s new Fremantle studio, The Wasteland, the demoing process didn’t start until October, 2010.

It was at this point when Kav, Joel and Stu headed to Wave House in WA’s South-West. There were a few firm ideas, but it was mainly a time for the old friends to re-connect as musicians. Over breathtaking views and the odd Tequila sunrise, they’d play together in a room, then individually walk off to various points in the house, returning to evolve the idea they were working on together.

These moments resulted in When We Were Kids, a reflective song that gave birth to the overall theme of the Ghosts In The Past album. The songs are somewhat like vignettes, marking a certain coming-to-terms with what is in one’s closet, be it photo albums, hats or skeletons.

Interestingly, the lyrical themes emerging in songs such as When We Were Kids, Gave It All Away, Echo and the album’s title track, mirrored what the band were going through in terms of a reconciliation with their own musical past.

“We’re referencing ourselves now,” Stu says. “In the past we’d felt that if something sounded too much like Eskimo Joe we shouldn’t do it,” echoes Joel. “This time if we thought it sounded like Eskimo Joe we’d go, ‘yes, let’s do it’.”

This approach was consolidated with the decision by Eskimo Joe to produce the album. The band had honed their working approach to a fine degree on 2006’s Black Fingernails Red Wine. In order to avoid mere cruise control for Inshalla, Gil Norton stepped aboard as producer. It was a dream come true for the trio work with Norton, but with that dream came the realisation that they are best left to their own devices (or perhaps in this case a lack of them).

“We’ve built up a dynamic over the last 14 years ago where we bounce ideas and generally work quite quickly with each other, so that having an extra member in there kind of slows the process down,” explains Stu.

“We’re generally on the same wavelength and if we’re not we know how to interact with each other to get what we want. The great thing that I’ve noticed is that experience has taught us to play less.”

Armed with some bare-boned demos and a commitment to reigning in the production, Eskimo Joe recorded Ghosts In The Past at The Grove studios on the NSW Central Coast. It was the shortest amount of studio time the band had ever booked for an album, yet likely the most creative they’ve ever been while standing in one.

“We used to demo records to within an inch of their life,” states Joel, “where every little note was already preconceived. Not doing that allowed more interesting things to happen in the studio. Those magic moments that can happen in the studio when you’re making the record, they used to happen in demos for us and sometimes it was hard to get it back.”

“The whole idea of what we were doing is that we just wanted to have something really lean and that had intent to it,” Kav says. “Like with a band doing their first album, you don’t have the plethora of guitars and bits and pieces – you work with what you’ve got. We were trying to take ourselves back to that and what ended up happening is that everything has a more aggressive feel to it because it isn’t saturated with extras. It’s all very, very lean.”

The moods are varied, yet consistent across the album, from the forlorn passion of opening track, Gave It All Away, to the seemingly detached, yet deceptively emotional Ghosts In The Past, the menace in the meaning of Words Of Avoidance and the beauty of Sky’s On Fire, built upon a simple, yet breathtaking, ascending piano line. “It kind of just seemed to spring up around us,” says Stu. “It was a real surprise that song and something very different for us.”

The undeniable pop flavour of Love Is A Drug is a real ‘Eskimo Joe moment’, interestingly, as it was initially conceived as a bridging song, a track to break momentarily from the intensity of the others.

“We were working on it and it was clear that it had too good a chorus to waste as a bridging song, it had the potential to be the best tune on the album,” Joel recalls. “It literally took five minutes to turn this little, incidental track into exactly what it is on the record.

“A lot of people say it and it’s a cliché, but they’re the ones that often connect best. That song will hopefully be one that people get really sick of (laughs).”

Ghosts Of The Past finds Eskimo Joe taking time to recognise moments that have gone by and create new ones to remember. Their label, Dirt Diamonds (with its signings in The Chemist, Steve Parkin and Kathryn Rollins) is paving the way for a new chapter in production and songwriting for the band, as does The Wastelands studio – a new home for new ideas.

Times have changed and life goes on, but this is still the band that so many fell in love with over a decade ago. Toast the past and look to the future.