Sydney’s The Griswolds are on the verge of releasing a highly anticipated debut album. With their latest single, ‘Beware Of The Dog’, doing big things and the album fast approaching, CraveOnline spoke to guitarist and co-writer Daniel Duque-Perez to talk about the band’s hectic schedule, SXSW appearance and new material.
Dan on some of the standout moments from 2014’s already packed schedule…
We finished our record, shot the music video for our first single, put out our first single. Everything has been a standout moment so far this year.
On being one of the many Aussies to have represented at this year’s SXSW…
The whole SXSW festival is insane. I think we played 10 shows in four or five days. We got some great accolades from it: Huffington Post top 50 acts to watch this year, the New York something, AU Review and we got to see a bunch of awesome bands- seeing Magic Man, Chvrches was really cool.
You’ve been doing a lot of touring and promoting in the US? How’s the response been?
We are pretty much split 50/50 between Australia and the US now because our record label is based in New York. In about eight days we leaving to go to the US for another three or four months. (The response in the US) has been nuts. We put the single out about two weeks ago and we’ve been charting on iTunes, Spotify, top five on Hype Machine and getting a lot of love and radio pick up. Live shows are good. Tickets are selling and the rooms are filling up. It’s been nuts man. We’ve been so lucky.
On the success and filming of new single ‘Beware Of The Dog’…
We’re still filming that. It’s taking about two weeks to film. That song nearly didn’t make the record just because it was the first song Chris (Whitehall) and I wrote a long time ago and it didn’t really sound like anything off the album. But we wrote a couple more songs and one sounded similar so we thought it would be good to keep it on the record and then use it to bridge the EP to the album for people and use it for a soft release, meaning not spend any money on promotion, marketing or editorial and just release it as a press release only with the audio links attached to see what blogs and radio picked it up. It’s done really well so I’m glad we did it now.
You’ve previously said the album will be more mature than the EP. Has the success of the past couple of years change you guys as individuals?
I don’t think we’ve changed. I think starting with the label we signed with (Wind-Up Records) it really changed the game for us in the sense that we could do a lot more than we ever thought we could. In terms of maturity, we didn’t have a deadline to write to the album and we could take our time writing it and go wherever we wanted to go. We spent a fair bit of time in New York writing it in a hip-hop studio and then we spent a heap of time in Australia writing it in a meditation retreat and then we got to pick our favourite producer (Tony Hoffer) to work with.
Our musical taste has changed as well. (The new album) is gonna sound quite different to what the EP sounds like but we’re super stoked and can’t wait for people to hear it.
The Preatures, Vance Joy and Birds of Tokyo were just some of the home grown bands to have massive 2013s. What’s your take on the current Australian music scene and who have you enjoyed listening to recently?
The current Aussie music scene is great. The quality coming out of Australia is just getting better and better. People keep asking me, ‘Why do you think Australian music is doing so well?’ and I don’t think it should be a focus on Australia, but I think the quality of what we’re doing is just getting better. We’ve got bands like Tame Impala, who would have been as big as they were if they from Ukraine. The Temper Trap, The Preatures, bands. Everyone is just bringing to that ‘world’ level.
The acts I’m listening to at the moment are Movement, The Preatures. Shit, there’s so much good stuff at the moment.
On the new The Griswolds album…
The album is done, it’s finished. The release date is looking like it’s going to be around August. We should have a couple more singles out soon too.
On working with producer Tony Hoffer (The Kooks, Beck, M83, LadyHawk)…
The guy is the funniest dude I’ve met in my life. He’s a prankster through and through. And he’s a musical genius, such a pleasure to work with. He and his engineer Cameron are the best team. I’d love to make more records with them.
There are a few solid haircuts going around The Griswolds. Who has the best trim at the moment?
We all look like shit at the moment because of the music video. We all look like a bunch of rednecks. At the moment maybe Timbo (John) is looking the best because he’s got a real creepy set of beard fluff going and his hair is all long and slick back into a mullet.
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