The Brag

Howling Bells
On The Road
By Alasdair Duncan

Bands often say that their music is inspired by life on the road, but in Howling Bells’ case, you get the feeling this is really true. The Aussie rockers, known for introducing elements of the gothic to their sprawling indie pop, wrote The Loudest Engine surrounded by the desert of the southern United States – and listening to it, you can almost picture singer Juanita Stein emerging from a dust storm, her dark hair whipping dramatically in the hot desert wind. “We spent a lot of time in Nevada, and it was amazing,” she says. “Anybody’s initial experience with Las Vegas is The Strip, but the city goes far beyond that. It was cool to experience that. The desert landscape, the locals, the ghost towns we visited – all of that seeped into our music in really unexpected ways.”

In musical terms, Las Vegas is best-known these days for being the hometown of The Killers, and there’s a connection between them and Howling Bells. The two bands toured together, and got on so well that Killers bassist Mark Stoermer stepped behind the boards for The Loudest Engine, his first ever effort as producer. The first thing you notice about the album is how much more menacing it is than their previous LP Radio Wars, which was soaked in keyboard and production sounds. This was an effect they worked hard to achieve with Stoermer. “We made a huge effort not to overplay things on this album,” Stein says. “We all had the same vision, which was for a really honest, stripped-back album and, luckily for us, Mark shared exactly the same vision, so working with him really was a breeze.”

I ask Stein how it is that Howling Bells and Mark Stoermer actually ended up working together. “He mentioned a couple of times before that he’d like to break out of playing and say something different,” she explains, “so when it came time to think about who we’d like to work with, he seemed like an interesting choice.” Though he was inexperienced as a producer, Stein insists that Stoermer took to it like a pro for The Loudest Engine. “He’d done a lot of research, read a lot of producer autobiographies,” she says with a laugh. “His bible was the complete guide to The Beatles’ production history, which was always sitting on the production desk. He’s a watcher by nature, if you know what I mean. He stands back and watches. He’s a very quiet guy. That dynamic worked perfectly.”

The Loudest Engine, with its bold pop choruses nestled inside dusty desert rock production, reminds me a lot of The Killers’ own Sam’s Town. I ask if this particular album was a touchstone. “Other than the fact that we recorded in their studio in their hometown with their bass player, we weren’t making a conscious effort to reference The Killers,” she replies, somewhat sheepishly. “I mean, we loved that record, and we can see the similarities. The climate, the heat, and the desert – all those things seeped into our music without us even realising it.”

There are many stories on The Loudest Engine, but none more intriguing than the title track, which was inspired, believe it or not, by the tour bus that the band travelled around in. “That particular song began its life in the back of the bus. It was a long drive that just took hours,” Stein says. “It started as a poem I’d written the night before when I was lying in the bus, unable to sleep. I wrote this poem about what I believed to be the soul of the tour bus. I thought it was really romantic to think that we’d spent so much time in this vehicle, but so many artists had been there before us, experiencing all kinds of ups and downs in their careers and their personal lives – and maybe even having trouble sleeping, like I had.
“I believe tour buses, like houses, carry the ghosts of previous tenants,” she continues. “That’s where the lyrics came from, and then Joel [Stein, Juanita’s brother and lead guitarist] really took that idea to heart instrumentally.” I ask for a little more information about this bus. “Well, she didn’t have a name,” she laughs, as though this is obviously what I was fishing for, “but she was an old tour bus, and there were all kinds of things scratched into the walls from bands who’d been there before. I watched my bandmates going through intense things and not-so-intense things on the bus, and started feeling really connected to the space.”

Howling Bells have spent a fair bit of time lately mixing with rockstar royalty – in addition to playing shows with The Killers, they played a series of shows around America with Coldplay, which, according to Stein, had a great effect on them as a band. “It was absolutely breathtaking to watch them do what they do every night of the week,” she tells me. “You can’t help but be in absolute awe of what that beast is – and it is a beast. It involves a whole crew of dudes, and it’s a production on a scale I’ve never witnessed before. It was inspiring to watch it all go down, then see them come off-stage and be really nice and level-headed afterwards. It was just a really great experience, and it taught us a lot about ourselves as a band.”

What: The Loudest Engine is out now through Shock
With: Step–Panther & Steve Smyth
Where: The Standard
When: Saturday December 10