In Search of Inshalla
May 8, 2009Eskimo Joe weren’t built for rock ‘n’ roll stardom. Multi-instrumentalist Joel Quartermain tells MAG’s Dan Rule that post Black Fingernails, Red Wine, new album Inshalla takes things back to the home front.
There comes a point in the rock game, reckons Joel Quartermain, when that ‘game’ threatens to become reality. The trappings of success – the virtual world of tours, adoring fans, PR appearances and image consultation – don’t always concur with a healthy sense of perspective.
“If you pretend to be something you’re not for long enough, you may just become it,” he says, pausing for moment. “We got to a point with A Song is A City where suddenly it went double platinum. We knew with the next one, there was a chance to go to an even higher platform.”
That platform, of course, was 2006’s brooding Black Fingernails, Red Wine, which went on to sell nearly half a million copies domestically. It established Eskimo Joe as one of the country’s biggest acts.
“We decided that we’d embrace that success, and have a bit of fun,” continues Quartermain, today chatting from his home in the Perth suburb of Leederville, on the eve of Inshalla’s release. As serious as Black Fingernails sounded, we just kind of wanted to act like a bunch of spoiled rock stars for a couple of years,” he laughs. “We thought it would be fun, you know, and it was.”
The notion seems a world away from the group’s humble roots in suburban Fremantle. After forming in 1997, the trio – Quartermain, singer/bassist Kav Temperley and guitarist Stuart MacLeod – seemed the epitome of indie incorruptibility. Their debut EP Sweater was a picture of raw pop naïvety and saw them become Triple J favourites. The shaggy hair and faded trainers remained on debut LP Girl, released to rising acclaim in 2001. By the time they’d released A Song is A City – Temperley’s earnest ode to his hometown – in 2004, the band’s home-grown appeal had reached a new level, with the record peaking at No. 2 on the ARIA album charts and pushing the maturing group into the public eye. But it was the ominous pop tropes of the self-produced Black Fingernails… that really thrust Eskimo Joe into the international limelight. The record gave them their first US release and went four-times platinum in Australia, its darker, more angular sound and the group’s matching public countenance garnering comparisons to early-era INXS.
“Being children of the ’80s and ’90s, we were influenced by what U2 did with Achtung Baby,” offers Quartermain. “You know, coming back with this new record, completely reinvented, and having fun with the trappings of rock stardom.”
They enjoyed the ruse while it lasted, but it couldn’t go on forever. “At the end of the day, that line between your onstage self and offstage personality becomes really blurry and if you go too far into that, the line disappears altogether. With this record, we decided to really pull back and be ourselves again.” He’s right. Inshalla couldn’t be further removed from Black Fingernails, but that’s not to say it’s any less challenging. Recorded with luminary British producer Gil Norton (known for his work with Pixies, Triffids, Patti Smith, and Foo Fighters), the expansive album sees the group completely re-imagine their approach. The album’s first single (and opener) Foreign Land, for example, revolves around a sample of a Turkish folk band.
“We wanted to deconstruct our writing process, and do some songs backwards, starting with the drums and groove, rather than starting with the song as such,” explains Quartermain. “With Foreign Land, Kav found a CD of a Turkish folk band where there’s this one age-old song that goes for 45 minutes. So we took out eight seconds of it and turned it into a loop, so in essence it’s us jamming along with this Turkish folk band,” he urges, “and it was really exciting because it sounds like nothing we’ve done before.” But there’s more to Inshalla – an Arabic word loosely translating as ‘God willing’ – than experimentation. Indeed, perhaps the record’s most striking sensibility is its optimism, and as Quartermain explains, there’s a damn good reason for it. Both Temperley and MacLeod have become parents. “There are more major chords on this record,” he laughs. “It’s just brought a really positive energy to the band.
“You could take yourself too seriously – or take the band too seriously – and then Kav will walk in with his bub and it’s like, ‘You know what? Who cares! Let’s hang out with this little guy’. “Everyone’s lives are in different places; it’s not like we have to try too hard anymore,” he pauses. “We just do our thing.”
Inshalla is released May 29 via Warner. Visit: eskimojoe.net
