Music From Racing and Amalia Hall
Ex-Checks members have traded in their three-minute rockers for Ibiza-worthy anthems.
Racing want to make dance-music rock. Or rock-music dance – either way works for frontman Ed Knowles. And for those who recognise that name from noughties North Shore rockers The Checks, it might come as a bit of a shock that he’s now happy to falsetto his way through an Ibiza-worthy house anthem to help prove his point.
Sure, The Checks progressed from Rolling Stones garage-rock to Stone Roses grooves over the course of their three albums, but their mantelpieces are still bedecked with two New Zealand Music Award trophies inscribed with “Best Rock Album”. Rock. Solid rock. The Checks, ahem, checked out back in 2012, but now Knowles and guitarist Sven Pettersen have formed a new outfit with Sherpa bassist Daniel Barrett and drummer Izaak Houston of bizarro psychedelic outfit Space Creeps.
And just four tracks into their debut album, Real Dancing, it’s abundantly clear we’re not in rocksville any more. Over bouncing pianos and a pounding club beat, Knowles gives Devil’s Work the full soul-diva treatment with lyrics that soar to majestic peaks, then subside to let you draw breath, all the time repeating lines such as “feel the change in me” and “you used to be my baby”. Heck, we’re only a bubble machine and glitter cannon away from a full-on foam party.
It’s by no means the tone of the whole album, but for Knowles it’s also a calculated move towards the sort of pub-friendly dance anthems that he and Pettersen grew to love when they were enjoying the high life in the UK, back when The Checks were scoring tours alongside Jet, Muse and The Killers.
“I just wrote it in that octave and thought I’d bring it down, but just never did,” he says. “It helps me feel like I’m changing characters – it’s the full glam to go with that early 90s club sound.
“It was only when we got to the
UK, back with The Checks, that we got into this sort of music. We were possibly even subconsciously resistant to the more dance-orientated music at the time because we weren’t used to it, but it got us in a way that we weren’t expecting; we saw how people got hooked into the rhythm and the melodies and we really responded to it.
“I don’t think we would ever have ended up with this Racing album if we hadn’t been to the UK.”
Real Dancing – even the title is a sort of challenge to the more synthphobic music fan – is an exuberant success.
From the louche Jagger-esque funky drawl on opener Motel Pool and the Bowie-plays-Duran Duran Drugs and Affection to the macabre groove of Sweet
Bedlam, there is plenty to draw you back to the dance floor time and again.
And yes, there’s nothing that new about rockers embracing disco – Queen did it, the Stones did it, and last year, Queens of the Stone Age got Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga producer Mark Ronson onto their Villains album – but the shameless beats of Move Your Body, Misbehaving and the ecstatic Run Wild are an exciting, uplifting addition to the New Zealand music scene.
To accompany the dance sound, Racing have also adopted a live act that’s dropped the three-minute rocker in favour of tracks that stretch to 20 minutes and concerts that can go on for hours (almost three-and-a-half of them at a recent Dunedin gig).
“We love looking over a crowd and seeing people suspended in time and space in the same way that DJs would at a club – and when you can play a track like that for 20 minutes at a gig and people love it, then we love doing it.”
REAL DANCING, Racing (self-released)
Over bouncing pianos and a pounding club beat, Knowles gives Devil’s Work the full soul-diva treatment.