Austin Sound

Hello Lovers is one of the most unique groups in Austin. Behind John King’s volatile, swooning moans that pitch in gritty, operatic swells atop lush strings, Hello Lovers melds Antony’s passionate croon with Scott Walker’s dark orchestral visions, cut with a southern flair. Last year’s debut EP, Vanity Fair, was an unsettling yet graceful baroque construction, and their new full-length, Gone With the Wind, proves even more impressive as the group has come together into a dramatic force of strings and piano. Hello Lovers will be releasing the CD this Thursday, July 17 at the Mohawk, and we spoke to the band about the origins of their stunning sound and the making of the new album.

Austin Sound: So how did you guys start thing whole project? It seems natural that kids would pick up their guitars and go jam in their garage, but your whole setting seems entirely different, being more string instrument based. How did you get together?

Masha Poloskova: I met John [King] and Mollie [Fisher] through Andy [Hadaway], who was our original keyboardist and pianist. He was recording with John and asked me to play some tracks on the record. We came and met over a weekend and just banged out some tracks, it was super fun. I guess a couple months later John called us up and was like “Hey do you want to form a band together?”.

John King: We got together essentially to record our first E.P., and then I was living in another city at the time I moved here to record with Andy because he had a really cheap space. I ended up stuck here and working with Mollie. We just kind of threw it together in the studio to record that record. I guess we were into it, so we decided to do it for a really long time.

AS: For a lot of bands, strings are an after touch. It’s like “Sad song, need a cello!” But for you guys, it is the core of the songs, your songs rely on strings and the different orchestration. What’s the writing process like with that sort of instrumentation?

JK: Usually me and Hanna [Liddell, replacing Andy now in live shows] or me and Andy will get together and structure the piano accompaniment based on a minimal chord structure and a melody. Then we’ll bring the ladies in here and they’ll hammer away at it while we work on the arrangements together.

AS: On the new album [Gone With The Wind] there are a couple of instrumental tracks. What made you want to leave the lyrics out of that, or was it just a different song to begin with?

JK: Well, one of them was an instrumental piece from a while back that I Just wanted to have recorded, and I felt like this group could play incredibly well and they did. The other is an interlude from a previous song and we just thought it would give the record a really good texture.

AS: The first track I really like, and it really stands out because it’s almost all vocals, and snapping I guess. What’s the point at the beginning, why something so different?

JK: Well, that’s kind of a throwback… For a while in 2002 I did a gospel workshop with some friends and that’s really where I learned how to sing. I’d always wanted to try to write something like that, and finally I accomplished it and just kind of sat on it for a few years, and it was one of Andy’s favorite songs. He essentially insisted that it be on the record. So we didn’t have anywhere to put it, so we just put it right in the front. It would’ve seemed like maybe an awkward break in the middle.

Sequencing that record actually was a feat in and of itself. We ended up doing it on a 30 hour trip back from San Francisco to Austin.

AS: I guess you need something to do… Anyway, one of the things people always point out are your unique vocals. Is that a conscious choice, and if so what are you trying to put across?

JK: I don’t know if that’s a conscious choice. I don’t know what I’m really trying to put across. I think I might have different role models than a lot of people that sing. I favor old gospel and blues singers like Bessie Smith and Marian Anderson. Nina Simone. I guess I really wanted to sound like them more than I wanted to sound like any contemporary rock singer. And so I think my interpretation of that probably ends up sounding kind of weird.

Mollie Fischer: (laughs) Definitely, definitely. A lot of times – I don’t know that I would call it a dissatisfaction – a lot of people don’t understand the lyrics, myself included. I still don’t know a lot of the lyrics myself, and the way I like to explain it is that it’s very chamber music-esque, John uses his voice like an instrument. He changes timbre a lot, the way he uses his voice is very multi-instrumental, in a way.

AS: I’ve heard Gone With The Wind being described as more “refined” than the Vanity Fair EP. Did you have that in mind when you were writing, was that something you were aiming for?

JK: I think that was all kind of just part of the process because Vanity Fair, like I said, we all kind of met making that record. Gone With The Wind was recorded I guess two years after that, so we had been working. All of our songs and arrangements had been developed together out of the root, you know, so we had kind of figured out how to do what we wanted to do.

AS: Talk about the recording process some too, what was it like recording with Erik Wofford? And was it all recorded with him, by the way?

JK: We did kind of some of the best stuff on the record with Erik, and we did it in three days. The process was difficult. We were going to do the entire record with him but the label that we were working with previously kind of lost their funding, so we ended up taking it back to the studio where we did our E.P. and did a seven day lock-in there, and Andy pretty much took the helm on engineering that. But Erik, Erik was a blast, man. He’s really professional, he’s really kind, he’s really easy going… I don’t know…

AS: Back to the album itself, with a name like Gone With The Wind, it at least recalls the movie in name, and certainly you had that in mind when you named it that. Why ‘Gone With The Wind’?

JK: Well I think we represent a somewhat Southern aesthetic, as well as cheekily maybe something melodramatic. Kind of wanted to make fun of that, and I like to bolster the suggestion that we’re repping the South. Other than that, I just thought it was fun and I liked the imagery of the words, and I think you can find a lot of different associations to them other than the extremely obvious one.

AS: Southern Gothic is the other thing I hear all the time in connection to your name. Do you agree with it, I mean, you kind of already said you did?

JK: I think Gothic’s funny. So I agree with that because it’s funny (laughs). The only thing I really know about Southern Gothic are like some authors…and this hit that Bobbie Gentry made about somebody killing their baby. And yeah, I think that could work for us.

AS: Southern Gothic is so rooted in literature. Are there any literary influences that you…

JK: For sure. I’m really interested by the imagery of like Carson McCullers and James Baldwin. When I read their stuff it kind of reminds me of some of the small towns I lived in as a kid as well as a lot of the stories of my mother’s life, who grew up in the South.

AS: Well, thanks for your time, anything I missed? Anything you want to add?

JK: Well we’re probably going to go up to New York in September. We’ve kind realized that’s one of the best ways for us to tour, just fly somewhere play a little bit and fly back. We spent a little time in a van going out to the West Coast at the beginning of the year and it was extremely difficult for us. That’s it for that ‘to add.’

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