Last night we had a good old chin wag. Jon's a great facilitator so he lead the discussion - we were wanting to find out what everybody actually wants from Hennessy Love Machine, who we're targeting and what is our sound. These seem like questions you would think a band would have sorted out from the start but it's not always that cut and dry. The thing is, we've been writing all these different songs, some of them we love some of them we've grown tired of quickly, our writing began with a lazy kind of jazzy shuffle then into shuffle country, then into a weird mix of high energy rock/dance vibe.
We all come from such varying musical backgrounds which is why I think we have such an eclectic bunch of tunes. But last night we came up with one band who we would most love to play in - ie. which band in the world would I most love to sing in, or Kurt would play guitar in etc. Through this little 'sensitive male bonding workshop' we came out with an interesting result; one very obvious common thread in all of the bands we chose was that they all had a definite rock element and to be more specific it was an alt rock feel. I personally didn't see that one coming, rock yes, but alt? The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If we can take hold of this genre, this alt rock beast and focus our attention on what alt rock means to us while bringing in our own individual styles, we will come up with something really great. Nailing down a genre which suits HLM doesn't pigeonhole us, I believe it gives us a stronger direction but at the same time our own personal creativity which is so important to develop is recognised.
Another outcome from our circle jerk was we have agreed to play a few less gigs in the near future and focus more on song writing. Especially now we've decided upon where our music fits a little more into the whole scheme of things, the new stuff is practically bursting to get jammed. Moses will be a bigger part of the song writing process which until now has only been happening on a few songs, he'll push Kurt and vice versa and for me, hearing Mo's lead embellishments can inspire vocal melodies I probably wouldn't have even considered.
There was talk of a band name change too, but that's a whole other story. First things first I guess, it's good to have a new direction, and one thing I personally struggle with is change. As Mo said so wisely "If you always do things the way you've always done them, you'll always get what you've always got". Or something like that. Moses - going through puberty since 1998. Good on ya mate.
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