Switching Instruments & Recruiting 'Wonder Man'

Lowtide's music is often described in terms of movement and action, as much as sound. It drives and shifts, glistens or broods, swirls and drifts. Their dense walls of sound conjure powerful-but-often indefinable emotions (although "melancholy" pops up a lot) and the translations they attract reflect their blend of almost-physical texture and engrossing ambiguity.

It's a feeling they manage to communicate before you even open their second album, Southern Mind, with its striking diagonal clash of clear green water and filthy brown sea foam on the cover.

"I had someone ask me today if it's wool, or an oil spill - all these different types of things," says vocalist and bassist Lucy Buckeridge, "which we kind of like. And I think it works with the music that we make, which can be ambiguous and, you know, the lyrics aren't always out the front. You can't always hear or understand everything we're saying, but it's open to interpretation.

"I really like the calm next to the sort of explosive foam and the way they sit next to each other, and I think that's really indicative of the music that we make. We've always been really interested in a quiet versus loud dynamic, and exploring that, and I think that's pretty evident in a lot of the songs that we make. And I just feel like that image, to me, sums up the calm - the calm versus the storm and how they can coexist."

On Southern Mind, they also explore ideas of change, and space and direction, particularly in Australia, although Buckeridge says that it was only once the album was well underway that any loose motifs began to emerge.

"I mean for me Southern Mind, the lead track, when I was writing the lyrics for that it was about a lot of different things. It was thinking a lot about where we live geographically; the landscape, the vastness. Also, some of the things that are happening here, what was happening overseas. Distances, but also how close things are.

"It's nothing that we were doing intentionally, it sort of was more in retrospect looking back at all the things that we'd written and what was interesting to us when writing it all seemed to have a particular connection, if that makes sense. It's hard to talk about sometimes when things are just not specific, because it's just a feeling and it's just something that you're not so conscious of either when you're writing."

Despite the oblique concepts that arose from Southern Mind, Buckeridge found the writing and recording process was more direct than ever, sharing that "writing music together has become a really natural thing" over Lowtide's ten years together as a band.

"I felt like it was a lot quicker to identify the ideas that we all liked and wanted to work on, and [we] just sort of followed those paths wherever they would take us. Some things we'd jam on and we just wouldn't get a vibe and we'd just leave it... I felt like that was a lot easier this time around."

Sonically, Buckeridge says, the biggest difference on Southern Mind was co-vocalist Giles Simon's shift to a custom Fender 6, Buckeridge and Simon employing dual bass lines on previous releases. With the switch to guitar, Simon's compositions moved into a space between Gabe Lewis' guitar and Buckeridge's bass, rather than opposite it, opening "a whole new sphere" to explore melody in.

"It was really exciting, 'cause we all of a sudden felt like we had a lot more scope to explore than we did previously. But, it wasn't really a conscious decision that we made either, [Simon] just decided to get the guitar made and then it sort of fit in perfectly with the way that Lowtide works, especially with Gabe's guitar. Gabe's playing so much, he's got three outputs, you know, he's working with a lot as it is. So, especially in the live setting, being able to have another melody line ringing out really strongly as well just - it was really great."

Shortly after completing the album, Lowtide quietly announced Simon's departure, with The Zebras' Jeremy Cole filling in on vocals, bass and Fender 6 on their Euro/UK single tour. "Jez is kind of like Wonder Man," laughs Buckeridge, "you can basically ask him to do anything and he can deliver it." 

In the past, the pair's shared lyricism and harmonies have been a sort of trademark, along with their overlapping bass. The band have always maintained the conjoined role was a natural development rather than a gimmick and, having already moved away from that last aspect, we wonder if Simon's departure will create another distinct creative shift or whether someone like Cole will continue to stand-in.

"We are performing all the songs the way that we would," says Buckeridge, "so [Cole] sings all the same parts. And I guess when it comes to writing again, that’s something that we’ll look at. We haven't done any writing in the last few months, since we finished the record, just 'cause we've been getting everything set up.

"I’m sure we would work with the same kind of idea. On this record, Giles and I wrote a lot more separately," says Buckeridge. "We would sort of allocate songs where someone would take the lead, and then the other one would come in and flesh out the bits together at the end, but it was a lot more sort of singular a lot of the time. But there are definitely some songs on the album too where it was a full vocal collaboration from start to finish... I think we just haven't hit that point yet, so I haven't thought about that too much. But it feels like it would be a natural way to approach it moving forward."