'You Bet Your Arse We Bought Enough Cheese': Polish Club On The Making Of Their New LP

The vocal booth is such a weird combination of being both super isolated but also incredibly invasive. You’re shut away from everything, the whole room feels like your brain, you can almost hear yourself think. And then, suddenly a button clicks and the entire population of the mixing room is shouting directly into your ear, piped straight through to your brain. It can be jarring, but once you let yourself get comfortable communicating with people who are seemingly so detached from your physical position, it becomes second nature.

It’s always a big decision to make, whether you want to record locally, or go somewhere out of town and really get away. For our first few releases, we recorded in studios that were close to home and would come and go as needed. But for much of Iguana and all of Now We’re Cookin’, we were living at the studio at The Grove Studios up in Somerset. 

It’s a totally different vibe, you're basically are on a working holiday, you have to pack, you have to set up a new routine, and you have to buy groceries and figure out how to feed everyone. Fortunately, we’re pretty good at the latter. We’re great at the big shop. And you bet your arse we bought enough cheese.

And this is a big reason why we made the decision to get out of Sydney to record the album. On one hand, it can be hard to not be able to go home and get away from the studio at the end of the day, but it’s also pretty fucking great to be able to take a break and step out into bushland and know you can go as late as you want and not have to worry about getting home or missing out on anything in the studio.

For me, the singer, there is nothing more stressful than finishing and finessing lyrics before and during vocal sessions. I can never seem to get a lock on final lyrics until the very last minute. I guess that’s how we work as a band in general. We like a tight deadline, it makes us focus on the bare necessities and get to the point. I hate slaving over things with no end goal, so while coming into a studio with things up in the air is often super stressful, it makes what is forced out at the last minute super organic and genuine. That piece of paper sitting on that music stand always inevitably ends up with chaotic scribbles and crosses throughout. It’s for the best.

Then there’s the other room. The one where the fun stuff happens I guess. You can kind of get vocals and guitars done anywhere. They’re not at the mercy of acoustics like drums are. For me, live drums are arguably the most important thing to get right on a rock record. You can’t fake that. You can’t do anything with a bad drum take. You can’t slap on some Melodyne or hide it behind copious amounts of reverb. Fortunately, JH knows what he’s doing. 

There is still that weird disconnect but also intimacy while tracking some live drums. Sat with his back to us, trying to chat through stuff while being piped into his headphones. It’s strange, but with the luxury of time thanks to staying on site at the studio, we’re just afforded being able to sit in silence and let JH try everything he needs to and narrow down what we need.

Fortunately, we mostly track main drums with rhythm guitar and a guide vocal, live in the same room. So more often than not, we’re just playing the song as full as we can, at the same time. Then we go over it, and over it, and over it again, filling in the cracks. And all of a sudden, now we’re cookin’. Hey, that’s the title of the album.

Now We're Cookin' is out tomorrow, 13 August. For updates regarding Polish Club's upcoming tour, keep an eye out over at theGuide.