TIME OFF
Issue 942, October 6th 1999, page 32.

Partners in Rhyme by Lawrence English

WHEN WE LAST HEARD FROM Angie Hart, she was about to leave Australia for the greener pastures of America.  It was in the US that her new act Splendid was born, an outfit that finds Hart working with her husband, American Jesse Tobias.

The pair have just released their debut album Have You Got A Name For It both here in Australia and Stateside.  As Angie explains, the biggest problem so far has been putting together a band line-up to take on the road.

“The one big factor for us not being able to settle on a line-up so far has been that some of the people we’ve worked with haven’t been able to tour,” Angie says.  “They have other commitments that keep them from being able to give up a lot of their time.  That’s practically been the largest hurdle for us to get over.  Also democracy is a tough thing when you’re trying to create a vision.”

“People have to realise that Angie and I are the songwriters in the group,” Jesse adds.  “It’s always been that way, so at the moment we want to keep it like that.  Obviously this could change if we got together with some other musicians who were in tune with us or whatever, but at the moment we are writing the songs.  It just makes sense for us to do it because we started the band and we know where it’s going and all that.  We are the core of the group.  The band situation is not what we need at the moment, it’s more difficult for us to be working outside of each other.  As Angie said, we are trying to create a vision and that means sometimes having other people’s input only clouds the matter.”

“When we started off with this incarnation of Splendid,” Angie continues, “that was four of us sitting in a room saying ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’.  And that got us nowhere fast.  We needed to step up and take control a little more.  We needed to be bossy and be the bosses.  It’s weird, you know, because people join bands for different reasons.  Some people respond better when they are part of the team rather than having to make all the decisions themselves.  I think some people really enjoy being part of a team that has a vision and a place for them in it.  Other people like the responsibility of carrying the vision, you know?  We don’t like a lot of responsibility, but we have such a strong vision for the music that we need to take control.”

Have You Got A Name For It is a combination of sweet acoustic-based pop songs with a strange underbelly of honesty and vague insecurity.  Recorded in Los Angeles and New Orleans, the album has a wide range of rich sounds and feelings represented on it.

“I think this album is a reflection of us,” Angie comments, “because we are the only songwriters and because we spend a lot of time together, the album really took on that kind of aspect.  Like if we picked up a record that we liked, then you would hear some of that coming through in the music we were writing.  It would just be because of the influence of the music, you know.  So we like to keep it flexible and that works best, I think.  There’s nothing worse than being in a band where people expect you to follow the same set patterns.  That’s crazy, I think.  Like with any form of art you really need to be able to go where it takes you.  There’s no point to doing it if you are going to limit the outcomes from the outset.”

Jesse says the personal nature of the album makes it a special recording for both he and Angie.

“This album, is definitely something that we are both deeply involved with.  We’ve managed to really stay wide open to anything that comes along.  We wanted to make a record that reflected where we were and how we were feeling.  We wanted it to be an open album in terms of the production as well.  So when it came time to record we made sure that the tracks were all recorded in a way that would leave a bit of space on the record.  I think we were both interested in making the album open and airy.  There are too many records around at present that sound closed in.  You can’t explore the inside of them, you know?

We really wanted to record an album that had a good thick sound, but still breezy.  I think we did it, too.  If you listen to how [the producer] Craig Ross put everything together you can get a good idea of what I mean.  It’s like you can get around inside the album.  There’s enough room to move and go into the album.  Angie has been listening to a lot of that Neil Finn album and Lucinda Williams.  I’m really into the Los Lobos album.  So there’s a lot of different sounds going into this band.  That came through on the record too.”

Splendid’s debut album Have You Got A Name For It is out now on Mushroom Records.

Courtesy of Time Off