aT moe pach asad ne ag oe SM

SST apie yeaa

 

 

 

 

 

PUREAFUNALIA...

Tara Meiklejohn - The songs on your
most recent release, Pureafunalia,
seem to contain an underlying sense of
spite and anger as well as a complete
flip side that’s happy and upbeat. Is
there a specific message you're putting
out?

Jordy Birch (vocals)- You've hit right on
it. That's exactly it. Sometimes, if you listen
to the song Blast, you'll hear this really
positive message like ‘it's a blast to be alive’.
I'm not saying life is grand and life is
happy. If you get over all the hurdles and all
the bullshit in life, it can be fun.

TM - The record twists and turns in so
many directions. Is there any one song
that wraps up the whole album for
you?

Mark Henning (keyboards)- My favorite
song on the album is the song Pure. There's
a lot of reasons for it. Musically, it’s by far
the most diverse and has an incredible
impact. It's also the song that has the most
story around it for us ‘cause it's the song
that got us signed. Our demo of Pure

ended up going on the record. We tried re-
recording it but we couldn't even match the
mood that we had done on this little cassette
8 track. We ended up transferring the 8
track onto a 2 inch analog tape to a 24 track
where we re-sang the vocals, added new
keyboards, added some overdrip guitars
then transferred that onto a half inch 48
track digital so we could mix it down and
add all the fancy stuff to that again. It all
came from this little, tiny 8 inch wide
cassette 8 track demo. Then, it's a brilliant
song on top. Everything about the song,
musically, lyrically, the melody, the whole
mystical feel of it is so strong. It was the
first song that we wrote that had real drums
and clip tracks to it. I wrote a percussion
part on the keyboard, tambourines and
claves an stuff. Then Leigh (Grant,
drummer) totally changed his field. He was
letting the machine play along with him.
Now we constantly combine the

Leigh's drumming with the tightness of the
machine and it creates this really heavy,
dense, percussive sound that has become a
big part of our style.

JB - Pure would probably sum it up quite
well but in my world, Zen is basically what
sums Pure (the band) up for me.

TM - When writing, were you inspired
by personal experience?

JB - Wow is actually based on a personal
experience. It's about this girl who lived in
the alley, out back of where I lived. She cut
herself with a butter knife and she was
really happy at the same time. That's
probably where I get this happy/sad thing
from. I would sit and talk to her ;
She never really killed herself but one time I
said ‘You know, you should just do it or get
a real life because it's getting a little boring
always having to tell you not to kill
yourself . She used to dance around so I
wrote the song called Weird O Waltz.

TM - What about Pure or Blissful Kiss?
Were they written about anyone in
particular?

JB - Pure is actually about a friend of
Holly’s. It's a hypocritical song about these
people who (went) to church who were very
hypocritical. They had this little girl who
was the epitome of perfection and the family
was too, su ly.... They would laugh at
her (Holly) for wearing jeans. One day, the
girl in the family... got pregnant. She was
very young...the family threw her out of
their home....The song's about the krypocrisy
of it all.

ae
: :
AVE HADLEY / bass and —

  
 
  

   
 

oO gitar. '
simi ns .

 

TM - How many songs did you have to
choose from for the album?

MH - Only about 16 songs. We're really,
really, really picky. We demoed a lot off
stuff and basically it became a very simple
procedure...There was never any debate,
never any question.

TM - What's the significance of
Pureafunalia’s front cover?

MH - ...This irony that is always existing
in this world. No one can be pure. There is
no absolute. Everything is gray and that's
kind of what the cover is depicting. It has a
real sinister tone but then there's this
happiness...The sort of evil looking clown
handing the little girl an ice-cream cone. Is
it really the girl that's the evil character or
the clown, because you don't know the
background of either of them.

Sf oy

 
       

ee aft /
TM - What about the album’s title?
MH - That came as a joke. We were down
in LA., the first time we met the (record)
company. We were talking about (needing)
to make T-shirts, stickers and stuff. We
needed to get parifunalia’ . I think it was
Todd (Simko, guitar)that said ‘we need
some pureafunalia’ . When it came time to
name the record, we already had a great
name.