Jet Patches Up The Cracks & Crevices
By: Brett Hickman |
Sunday February 04, 2007 |
| Nic Cester interview |
| They were playing a radio show that night. They were the middle band on a
most unusual bill, sandwiched between the hip-hop rock of Gym Class Heroes
and the lite-jam of Guster, the most milquetoast bunch of white guys this
side of the Osmond brothers. None of this seemed to nag at Jet's lead
singer and guitarist Nic Cester, however. He had a new album that he and
his band members (brother Chris Cester - drums and vocals, Cameron Muncey
- rhythm and lead guitar and vocals, Mark Wilson - bass and piano) were
proud of, they'd seen the top of mountain, tested the excesses of rock and
roll and somehow didn't get swallowed up by it all. Best of all the band
was playing a gig that night, something that brings great stability to
Cester and the rest of the members of Jet: "Making sure that the shows
are excellent every single night, that's my job y'know?"
The band's latest album, Shine On is the follow-up to their fabulously received Get Born. But while Shine On isn't garnering the same love here in the States as its predecessor in terms of sales, it is the superior of the two. Sure, Get Born's four smash singles ("Are You Gonna Be My Girl", "Rollover DJ", "Cold Hard Bitch" and "Look What You've Done") are great tunes, but overall, Shine On is a stronger album overall. It is not, as a certain webzine suggested, the equivalent of a monkey pissing in its own mouth, not by a long shot. On songs such as "Bring It On Back" and the title track, the band finds themselves moving in far more interesting territory musically as well as lyrically. And, even though Shine On lacks that one key song like Get Born's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl", the impact is much stronger when listened to front to back than their debut's. Brett Hickman: So how are you doing tonight? How is the tour going? Nic Cester: Touring has been good. We've got twice the amount of material we can play now. We've been enjoying a lot of success. We went to Europe (and did) some pretty good shows which has kept it exciting for a long period of time. In your opinion what's been the personal plusses and minuses, or the real differences between recording the first album and Shine On? I think this time around we just, I think we've experienced a lot more, we've (got) a lot more experiences in which to manifest themselves in songs. When we wrote Get Born we were all from small towns in Melbourne, Australia you're limited in the amount of life experiences you can have in that situation. In the last 3 years we've been from one corner of the world to the next 5 times. And we've had a lot of things to do in that period with dealing with successes and up-times and down-times and I think we're just a lot more savvy now, and we're better musicians, and we know what we're doing more. Was there anything you had planned out for the recording of the new album, or was there anything you purposely wanted to try to do differently? Well we left the first one kind of basic on purpose, because it would be pompous to fucking do the first album with strings and stuff. So we left it pretty sparse, but this time we were trying to layout a lot more and just kind of pushed ourselves to expand on the original things we looked at on the first album, I think. Was there anything different in your writing process for it? It was different because we knew the clock was running this time, where as the first time around we didn't. It's been 3 or 4 years since the first album and we didn't finish writing on the road. We lost a father in the meantime. It was a difficult process. We were pretty unhealthy by the end of the first album. Been on the road for 2 or 3 years traveling around the world...at least you get paid every night. So what was unhealthy about touring? Were you involved in anything you'd never thought about before? 
All of a sudden, every night's Friday night I suppose and you don't
know where the edge is. You try to know where the edge is by going there
and making a few mistakes along the way. But this time around touring is
different because we do know what the limit is now and we're not in any
hurry to get there.
Was there any conscious decision that things had been pushed a little too far? Was there any sort of incident or was it just a sort of maturation process? I think a bit of both y'know? What happened with our father and...cracks become crevices and then become canyons if you're not giving your all. You put all those things in the melting pot and it's reckless to put all those things together. Real bad. Did you have any sort of guidance from people that you toured with, any words of wisdom? Not really. That's not really how bands interact. And even if someone were to offer advice, there's a lot of ego that goes on between bands. You wouldn't be in a hurry to hear advice from someone else. That might be more of an American thing, or something that Bono might do perhaps. But I guess it's not maybe the norm outside of America, because it's more of a kind of self-help, new psychology kind of country these days. I think every person is different, every band is different, there's no set rule or way to navigate your way through what we do for a living. You just got to find what works for you and what doesn't work for you. So long as you're learning from your experiences I suppose, that's all you can really do. There's no rulebook, you just gotta keep your eyes open. How do you feel the album's being reacted to, being taken now that it's been out for a few months? To be honest, I don't really keep my eye on things like that. All we really ever concerned ourselves with was writing great songs, which I'm sure we've got now. And making sure that the shows are excellent every single night, that's my job y'know? Do you have any external or even internal pressure from anyone about charting or sales or anything like that? I'm not sure that existed, stuff like that didn't really happen. Are you able to have that kept out of the band's way? I just get stuck on that which relates to me I suppose. I just worry about writing great songs and playing them every night. How has everyone in the band changed personally? With the success and the release of pressure of not having to worry about money and being able to succeed at what you've always wanted to do, has that changed anyone in a positive or a negative way? We know what we're doing a lot more y'know? I think it's a bit more professional. We've got a lot more equipment this time. The newer songs are a lot more complicated so we got new applications and sounds. We had more money to buy more...well, money's not really the issue I suppose, but just a desire to get our hands on more equipment and better amps. And just keep improving I suppose is the goal, that's what drives us, to continue to improve. Like I said before the goal has always been on being the best band that we can be, writing the best songs that we can and doing the best live shows that we can, and that's never really changed. I suppose the only area that's changed is that we're confident now that we have the tools around that will make that possible. Have you felt like the band has improved on this tour? I think anyone who does shows is going to get better. The only time that that logic starts to fail is when you start to do too many, and then you need to stop for a break. Y'know we love what we do for a living and it's never really a chore playing music. Did that happen on the first tour? You guys were on the road a lot that first tour. It did. It's more the down-time that gets difficult. The playing is never "not fun", but there's a lot of sitting around waiting and that becomes real boring, and that becomes a real chore. But we love what we do and we always manage to find something to do. Obviously we're not machines and you have the odd sloppy show every now and again. What do you do to fight the boredom for the slow-time? There's a lot of comedy. There's a lot of camaraderie. I think that comedy's great way to combat boredom, we spend most of our days laughing our asses off. You've been to America a bunch of times. Was it an initial culture shock? Or was there anything peculiar that you found amusing about America? To me what I find most amusing about America is the size of the meals. Most plates of food here are bigger than my fucking head. That's pretty funny. It was a big culture shock when we first came here, but we've spent more times in the states than we have in any other country in the world over the last 3 years. It's all pretty normal to us now. I mean we've seen more parts of America than most Americans I would imagine. No one state is really indicative of the entire nation, it's kind of like 50 countries in one. And that's the good thing about it. |
