Yellow Brick Road

Goodbyemotel are not a band that do things by halves. After slogging it out on the local scene for a number of years, the Melbourne locals decided enough was enough, making a leap of faith and relocating to New York to record their album with Grammy Award winning producer Kevin Killen. Six months later, after an epic period of self discovery, they were finally done. They now hold in their hands a top notch opening salvo with their record If, an effort adorned with artwork by the late, great Storm Thorgerson.

“Gustaf [Sjodin Enstrom, vocalist] had just joined the band before we left so we were kind of like a new band going over to New York,” guitarist Tom Marks explains with the distinct benefit of hindsight. “Our drummer walked out a week before we were about to leave too, which was stressful when we were on our way there but when we landed it was all new and fresh. We almost could've changed the band name it was so different.

“The process was amazing,” he continues when pressed on working with such a renowned producer. “We've met a few unfriendly people in the music industry but Kevin was just the total opposite. He's worked with some pretty amazing people like U2 and Peter Gabriel, so we were just putting our trust in him… We recorded it in Brooklyn in Mission studios over six months, living in Bed-Stuy for a bit under six months, which was a pretty notorious place. We didn't pick the best and safest area to live in but it was pretty eye opening.”

To decamp from home and move in together in The Big Apple certainly was a brave move for goodbyemotel but, as Marks explains, the co-habitation only served to add to a growing bond between the newly re-established band. “Gustaf, Scott [Pioro] and myself all lived in the one place which was quite testing at times,” he admits. “We hadn't lived together before and it was probably jumping in the deep end a little bit because Gustav was new and we didn't really know him all that well so it was pretty full on. It was probably a really good thing because we got to know each other very well. The energy in that city is pretty incredible – it really helped us a lot with songwriting and everything.”

When the time came to put together the artwork for If, Marks continued this theme of approaching the world's best. Specifically, German artist Storm Thorgerson – sadly recently passed – who produced classic pieces of cover art for the likes of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Genesis. “It came about as I was just trying to do the cover art and ideas by myself,” Marks says of this incredible coup. “I was on his website and got really inspired so I hit the contact button and wrote him a weird poem. He actually called me but I didn't believe it was him, I thought it was just one of the band guys doing an accent and taking the piss. It was actually him though so when we were playing a year or so ago in London we went and caught up with him. He grilled us intensely about life and what we were into and our music and that was his way of then coming up with a design for us – which was a pretty special thing.”