Overview
If you weren't listening to Jonathan Boulet in '09 and missed the follow-up boat in 2012, there's a whole new Boulet chapter to wrap your ears around. With riff-heavy tracks that rarely skimp on the gnarl, the Sydneysider's sounds supersede your average post-punk howls — and his latest album Gubba proves he's only getting grimier.
Boulet made his way into earholes Australia-wide with his self-titled 2009 LP, before giving hungry fans the highly-praised We Keep The Beat, Found the Sound, See the Need, Start The Heart three years later. Since then, he's shared stages with Mumford and Sons, Tame Impala and Kate Nash, done Splendour, Falls and SXSW, then last year he packed up, jetted off and found a new home in Berlin for a brief hiatus.
Now the multi-instrumenalist is back, with a leather-laden Dad on one side and third LP Gubba on the other. The album's already been praised as brutal, sneering and showing new degrees of maturity — not in a "I pay my own rent, dammit," sense, but rather in terms of musical complexity.
We had a chat to Boulet ahead of his nationwide tour about Gubba, the evolution of his unique sound and the coolest motorbike gang you might ever see.
You've had a super busy 2014 so far with the release of Gubba, what's been a particular high?
It's been a pretty good start, I reckon. Pretty energised and elated to have finished another album and have it out so quickly after the fact. I think just having this album released already is the high. It's only downhill from there. No, not really. Touring will be the only thing to trump the joy of having a new release. That and the cocaine.
It's been two years since the release of We Keep the Beat, Found The Sound, See The Need, Start the Heart, does that mean Gubba has been a solid two year project?
No way. Two years?! My attention span is not that durable. Only after we were completely done touring that last record, I started to consider what may or may not lie in the future. I had already been working on some riff ideas by the time we landed in Berlin, but most of them were thrown out and replaced by younger, tastier and more seductive riffs.
Gubba is a hell of a sporadic album — it bounces from grizzly to get-up in a matter of tracks. Why do you think there is such a change of pace in Gubba from your previous works?
I think that before I was attempting to write an album entirely consisting of singles. This time I had a lot of fun making small musical things, little ditties and such to help break up the consistently high levels of loudness. Whether they are effective in actually breaking up the album is completely irrelevant.
When you started piecing together the tracks, was there any overall style or plan you were working towards?
Initially, the plan was simply 'balls to the wall'. Energy. And it began to take shape in a rock context. After a while I learned that for something to sound loud, it needs to be next to something that is quiet. So I sought to introduce more depth, dynamics and points of interest. It all continued to blossom and flourish from there.
The Hold it Down clip is pretty solid — excellent ratio of leather-to-wrap-arounds. Tell us a bit about filming the clip. Is your dad really the star of the video?
My good friend Jack Saltmiras filmed it with a bunch of our mates. And yes, my Dad is the mad dog in charge. He said after shooting the scene where he was doing burnouts and thrashing the bike, it started to run smoother than it ever had before. It's the coolest motorbike crew I've ever seen and I'd give anything to be in a gang like that.
How do you think your decision to uproot and head abroad has influenced your music style? Do you think a change of scenery has had a pretty significant effect on this album?
I don't think it has much at all to be honest. I think the change of scenery has had an effect on me as a person and therefore possibly that has effected the music. It's hard to say. I think I would have made the same thing whether I was in Australia, Berlin or Antarctica. Although, if I made it in Antarctica the album would be called, Fuck You, Cold.
For those who've missed the boat on your other music projects, tell us a little about Top People and Snakeface. Do you have any other projects in the works at the moment?
Top People is a project I do with Zacc Abbott-Atchinson (ex-Halal, How Are You? singer). It's basically slow, loud music with hilarious lyrical content. Good fun if you ever get the chance to come to a show, if we ever play another one. And Snakeface is what started as a thrash band that more and more of our friends have become involved in, up until we made the album Oberon. A punk band, with as many varying influences as it does members. If you are of the heavy music persuasion, I implore you to check out both.
If you gave Gubba to someone to listen to for the first time, what would you hope they respond to or take away from it?
I would hope they would frame the record, dip the framed record in gold, then compress the gold-dipped, framed record into a golden crystal to be worn around the neck and passed down from generation to generation until they forgot what it was actually made of, then pawned it for cash and bought a cheap puppy with the money.
Gubba is out now via Popfrenzy.
Jonathan Boulet National Tour Dates:
Friday 15 August — Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
Saturday 16 August — Pirie & Co Social Club, Adelaide
Thursday 21 August — Goodgod Small Club, Sydney
Thursday 28 August — Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane