BATTLESHIPS
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
with Nantes and Light Giant
Yours & Owls
April 12
Tickets: www.oztix.com.au
Their songs might be known for their sumptuous, echoing sound, but Battleships vocalist Jordan Sturdee says they discovered it completely by chance.
Rehearsing in an old sandstone building at the Bondi primary school where bassist and keys player Jonathan Bowden teaches music, the band found the cavernous building gave their tunes an atmospheric edge.
Loving the sounds they could hear on the recordings of their jam sessions, they decided to self-record their debut mini album, To You, in the school building.
"It had a really good natural reverb, so a lot of reverb on the mini album is just from the building," Sturdee says. "We really wanted to capture it, and we didn't have much of a choice because it was really echoey in there, and it's become a bit of our sound now."
To You took just over 10 months to be completed, much longer than the band had anticipated, and ended up including more songs than was originally planned.
While the musicians were anxious to release their new music, Sturdee found a hidden boon in waiting so long.
"The [previously released] singles were getting quite a bit of play on Triple J, so we decided to milk that as much as we could to be honest," he jokes.
Battleships has only been together for just under two years, but Sturdee and Bowden have known each other since they were in primary school and their mothers forced them to play together. They, along with their friend and drummer Dan McMurray, decided to move from their Sunshine Coast homes to Sydney to pursue music more seriously a few years ago, roping in guitarist Nato Hannaford along the way.
The four piece's first full year as a band was a big one, playing a slew of shows around the country, earning praise from critics for their ethereal tunes and scoring the Triple J Unearthed slot at last year's Homebake festival.
But Sturdee says that despite the commitments of touring and working their day jobs, their focus was mainly on writing and recording.
With each band member having very different tastes in music, though they are all fans of Radiohead and early Coldplay songs, Sturdee says it can be a challenge to nail down a track.
"I feel like our songs sometimes have to run this complicated gauntlet to make it to the end.
"Our drummer likes a lot of Mars Volta and Jon is trained as a jazz bassist, so he likes that sort of thing."
That said, Sturdee says some of the tracks on To You came together without too much hassle, a welcome relief from the ones, including radio favourite Your Words, that had a more complicated inception.
"When you put a lot of work into one song you feel like you've done all you can, but the easy ones are really nice because there are fond memories when everyone sat down to play it and it all worked just straight off."