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Vice Blog

AUSTRALIA - ST HELENS FIND OPTIMISM IN THE SHADOWS


Jarrod Quarrell and Hannah Brooks are seated in a Melbourne pub on a stretch of street famous for Vietnamese food, shady dealings and a Centrelink. It's the sort of bedraggled cityscape that could be straight out of St Helens' debut album, Heavy Profession. The record's cover—which features Quarrell and Brooks posed shirtless in a shadowy lodging—alludes to the moody tales therein of rented rooms, romance, dead ends and new starts as seen via the outcast vision of Quarrell, the group's auteur.

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Quarrell's performance history extends back to when, aged 16, he began gigging in pubs after being kicked out of school for his abysmal grades. "I told them I wanted to be a philosopher," he recalls with a self-effacing chuckle, "it just didn't go down well." His main musical project for many years thereafter was The New Season, who disbanded in 2005. After their demise he teamed up with Kes Scullin of folk outfit Kes Band and began tinkering with new song ideas. Part of his vision for St Helens was to sing with a female co-vocalist, ala country couplings like Johnny Cash and June Carter.

At that time, Brooks had recently formed swampy punk group Spider Vomit after her previous group, raucous femme quartet The Young Professionals, disbanded. She was reared in the hippie climes of northern New South Wales with a Dylan fanatic for a father. She remembers The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan as the first record that she truly obsessed over. "My mum tried to teach me guitar but I didn't want to cut my nails," she dismays.

It wasn't until forming The Young Professionals that Brooks began performing regularly. She cut a striking figure in the group, smashing out melodies on a Farfisa organ and howling Nico-esque low notes into the mic. Impressed by her chutzpah, Quarrell phoned Brooks and asked her to join St Helens. "I said, 'Sure, I'd love to hear your songs and see what happens," she recalls, "but I really had no idea because I didn't know The New Season and I didn't know Jarrod."

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The pair, who have since become lovers, clicked creatively and soon the group were recording their debut album with Scullin on guitar and bass (a post now filled by Ian Wadley), Lewis Boyes on guitar and Panel Of Judges' Paul Williams on drums (since replaced Damian Clarkson) . While Heavy Profession is, well, heavy listening at first, after proper degustation there's a creeping sense of hopefulness that begins to emerge. "It's been described as a winter album but I feel like it's more of a summer album," attests Quarrell. Perhaps it's just that summer is a bit more overcast in St Helens' world.

So you two didn't know each other before St Helens?
Jarrod: No, I felt I needed someone who could belt it out and not be shy and from seeing Hannah in The Young Professionals I thought she was really ballsy—I don't mean that in a bad way, Hannah—and that she had a really good rock'n'roll voice. Were you into the idea immediately, Hannah?
Hannah: Well, I didn't know what he was into musically, I didn't know anything. So I just went and luckily it turned out good pretty much straight away—we understood each other. What were you saying the other day? You had an idea of some of the music I was into, somehow.
Jarrod: Someone had taken a photo of you for a magazine and I'd been photographed for the same thing and they had asked, 'What are you listening to at the moment?'. You said you were listening to Tyrannosaurus Rex [pre-T.Rex Marc Bolan] and Ariel Pink, both of which I was into at the time.

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Heavy Profession is a pretty melancholic album at times but do you feel there's also a lot of optimism?
Jarrod: I feel everything I do musically is about my optimism; it's about me trying. I know I sometimes have heavy content but I want the bottom line to be about winning the fight. That's what life is to me, it's an often rough thing but I enjoy the hell out of it and it's beautiful and I want to represent that in the songs.

Listening to the album it feels like you're walking along with you and seeing what you're seeing.
Jarrod: Oh that's really good. I really wanted the vocals to feel like we were talking in your ear. Though the songs aren't so much about what's happened to me, more so what I see and my impressions of things.

There's also a really nice rhythm that pulls you along.
Jarrod: I wanted it to have a strong rhythmic quality. Even though a song like St Luke is really slow I feel like I almost wrote that for a couple to waltz to, it's got that kind of imagery to it.
Hannah: It's a very romantic song in some ways. But then some of them are more upbeat. We wish people would dance a lot more at shows. I think some of the songs are very romantic, not just in the lyrics but the mood to them.

You two are together, yeah?
Jarrod: Yeah, but I don't want people to think that the band is about me and Hannah being a couple.
Hannah: Because we weren't when it started. It's not like we were a couple and said, 'Let's start a band together'. It's really the opposite of that.

Do you feel like you 'got it right' with this album?
Jarrod: No, I don't. Maybe three fifths of the album I'm happy with. There're some styles on the album that I won't do again.
Hannah: I see it very much as the first step. Because we recorded it such a long time ago, we have moved on a lot. I think we've got so much further to go—anything could happen.
ADRIAN POTTS

Heavy Profession is out now through Remote Control. Check their MySpace for shows and things.