Ghosts of Electricity are a white-collar punk trio from Auckland. Critic caught up with frontman and principle songwriter Tim Fowler recently to discuss their great new album Trolls, the current New Zealand music climate, and trying to sound like Lana Del Rey.
Tell me a little about the formation of your band.
There are these websites, kind of like dating sites, but for musicians. I found the drummer, Patrick, on one of those. I’ve played with a lot of drummers, mostly met on muso dating sites, and most of the time the first little while is hard work, but we found a groove pretty quick and got to writing new material in the first or second practice. It was originally going to be a two-piece, but then I remembered a friend of mine, Peter, played guitar. I have a terrible history of trying to convince guitarists to be bassists, but in this case it worked great.
What was the creative process of Trolls like?
I can only really comment properly on my contributions, but I read a really great book called How Music Works by David Byrne of Talking Heads. He talks a lot about his own process and, after a lot of reflection on mine, I decided the process I had been using was spending too much time on the wrong things and I had a big re-jig of my approach. I wrote Trolls a lot faster than I usually would and just trusted that the first thing I come up with is probably going to be the best in a lot of cases, without much reworking of tracks. I also left some room to work out parts in the studio. The lyrics for “Parle Blanc”, for example, were written, but I’d never sung it, and I only had a vague idea how I was going to. It took quite a few takes, but I think that approach worked for that particular song. In terms of the writing, there’s still the false narrator writing style I’ve adapted from Randy Newman, but a lot of things happened in this last year which required a lot of personal reflection, so there is a lot more of first-person writing than I usually do.
Your music is undeniably punk in nature, but some of the influences you name definitely don’t belong to that genre! How do you explain this stylistic disparity?
I never intended on being in a punk band per se, I was originally trying to do a folk-rock crossed with Joy Division sort of thing … but from a whole bunch of songs, we picked our best ones, and it just so happens the songs we liked meant people called us punk. Also, playing fast and distorted is really, really fun.
Because your musical interests go far beyond the confines of punk music, can you see Ghosts of Electricity significantly mixing up their formula on your next album?
Maybe. I’ve written the backbone of another album now. I’ve got about 30 demos at various stages of completion, and probably five or so are straight-out punk songs. I bought a bunch of cheap instruments off TradeMe, with the intention of trying to be Tom Waits. I failed miserably at that. I also bought a fuzz pedal so I could sound like St Vincent; I was even worse at that. I’m currently trying to work out how to sound like Lana Del Rey, and I can take a stab at what that’ll be like. But in trying to push my own writing to sound like someone else’s I mistakenly stumble on something I can use which isn’t exactly like what I was trying to do. So from this and some other experiments, I’ve got a bank of songs, some atonal spoken word tracks like “Pohutukawa” but slow and largely percussive, some pop songs, some mutant funk, as well as the usual punk suspects. I mean, maybe the band will decide the experimental stuff is shit, and we’ll do another punk album, and that’s fine too. We’ll have to wait and see.
Your lyrics tap into a culture of young, disillusioned Kiwis. Have you had any inspiration from the recent protests against the National government and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Not specifically. Because a lot of my lyrics are conversations I may have overheard, most of the political content of my songs tends to reflect things I hear and get angry about. Because emotion and logic aren’t the same thing, I often end up focusing on an issue that isn’t necessarily the most important or urgent, just the one that happens to cross my mind at the right time.
Is success important to you? Would you want to “make it” in the same way an artist like Lorde has?
A: Fuck. Yeah. If I could only work out how to sell out, I would in a heartbeat. I don’t think I would like fame specifically, but I would like doing music all day. Lorde’s done so well, and if anyone is going to be a pop star, I’m glad it’s her. I work with her uncle. He’s a real nice guy and is as proud as you’d expect.
If you could have any one superpower, what would it be?
When I was young, I used to say that I wanted to be a bad robot when I grew up, as Decepticons are way cooler, so I guess the ability to transform into a jet and have a theme song.
