Grant Smithies
New Zealand music industry and establishing a cultural beachhead across the ditch. In 2012, Fowler signed directly to Island Records in Australia, former home to such luminaries as Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse, Morrissey and U2. And his most recent single, Something To Tell You, recently hit the No 1 spot on Australia’s alternative radio network, Triple J.
Now he’s been summoned across the Tasman to play live shows. It’s enough to give a man ideas above his station.
‘‘It’s very weird, I agree,’’ says Fowler. ‘‘Apparently one of Triple J’s DJs started playing it on a new music show and suddenly it was all on. Like in the old days, you know – the switchboard went crazy! A No 1 smash hit! Who knows? Over time, I might find myself playlisted alongside AC/ DC! But really, I’ve never even considered that people in Australia might be able to sing along to something I wrote. That single’s just me, singing some of my complainy lyrics by myself in my room, pretending to be someone I’m not.’’
So who exactly is Tom Lark? And how did he get here, to a bar in Ponsonby where a record executive is paying for our drinks? He seems so unassuming to be considered A Big Deal. Between sips of mineral water, the guy speaks so quietly, I have to lean forward to hear him. A sense of introspection is further enhanced by the long, golden-brown hair repeatedly falling from behind his ears and closing like curtains across his face.
‘‘Really, I just make music I think sounds cool. I spend all day just tinkering around in my bedroom, trying to figure out how to make fun pop songs, which often have big melodies and a 60s and 70s vibe. My favourite thing is to write a song that sounds like a sci-fi Beach Boys record.’’
Perhaps we should blame the Christchurch earthquakes. Before relocating to Auckland in 2012, Fowler was down there, playing in bands, bashing out an unholy racket with little connection to the gleaming pop nuggets he produces today. And then, in 2010, the earth opened and the sky began to fall. The band lost an entire album of ‘‘weird grunge stuff’’ when their studio was destroyed. Clearly it was time to go solo.
‘‘Once we no longer had a studio, I bought a crappy hard drive and piece-of-crap microphone, downloaded some free recording software and started making really weird solo stuff by myself at home. At first I had no idea what I was doing. Really, I was just a sad kid pressing ‘Record’ in his room, but I always wanted to learn to make exciting pop music. I just had to wait for my skill to catch up with my ambition.’’ Now 25, Fowler began teaching himself to record solo at age 21. He dreamt up the Tom Lark alias as a shield against rejection. ‘‘Even when I got a bit better at making solo stuff, I was worried people weren’t gonna like it. I thought it might be helpful if they didn’t know who it was. That way if people hated it, I could just deny all knowledge and invent an entirely different character when I put out the next record.’’
He needn’t have worried. While Fowler shrugs off an earlier 2011 debut EP as ‘‘pretty lo-fi, just rudimentary demos, really’’, Michael Taylor from Island Records in Australia saw huge promise, signing him in early 2013. ‘‘I heard these super-rough acoustic bedroom tapes and they just blew me away,’’ says Taylor from his Sydney office.
‘‘He struck me as this raw talent – a very shy kid but also a musical genius. He’s a guy who’s fine to
get on stage and play live and be a personality when he needs to, but at heart, he’s a really reserved musical geek.’’
Now managing director of Universal Australia, Taylor has signed New Zealand acts to Australian labels before, including Gin Wigmore, The Naked and Famous, and Broods.
‘‘I think I must have some weird Kiwi fetish. Some of your pop music is just plain better than the Australian stuff, though we should probably keep that just between us. And there’s something very special about Shannon. His tunes are really quirky and unique. Sometimes you think a song has just delivered you to a safe warm place then he’ll toss in a lyrical twist that throws you out in the cold. Now, that’s awesome.’’ Agreed. Made at home in his North Shore bedroom and mixed in Sydney by American engineer Eric Dubowsky (Weezer, Kimbra, Joss Stone, Chet Faker), Fowler’s second EP, simply entitled Tom Lark, contains five tracks of rare verve and sonic panache.
There’s a celestial glow to the guitars, which jangle and gleam like the harps of angels corrupted by The Kinks. Drums clatter out 60s girl group beats under limber basslines. Melodies burrow so deeply into your brain that you’re whistling them on the way to the dairy 10 minutes after you’ve heard the buggers. It’s proper pop music, this: bright, smart and snappy, catchy as a cold, full of cunning couplets and just the right amount of grit to offset the sugar-rushing sweetness.
It’s music informed by a narrow range of impeccable references. You imagine its maker has grown up on a desert island with nothing but a big pile of life-giving coconuts, a functional stereo, and the collected works of The Beatles, The Byrds and Beck. Many of the formative musical influences you might expect to hear in the work of a man his age are largely absent.
And for this, it seems, we could perhaps lay the blame at the saintly sandalled feet of Jesus. It transpires much of Fowler’s early musical education came from hymn books and the pathologically clean-cut sounds of Barbra Streisand and The Carpenters.
‘‘In the mid-70s, my parents became Christians and burnt all their decent records. Back then, if you became a Christian, you really were opting out of mainstream popular culture, so people would symbolically torch their Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix albums to distance themselves from any appearance of evil. By the time me and my brother were born, all that was left was really harmless stuff. But that was cool. The Carpenters made some pretty strange, mournful ballads . . . ’’
As a teenager, Fowler furtively ingested modern music via a transistor radio hidden under his pillow. ‘‘I remember this one time Alien Ant Farm were singing Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal, and the CD at the radio station got stuck. It just played that song over and over, on an endless loop, until it really DID sound like the devil’s work! I thought – maybe this is what my parents were trying to protect me from. But after a while, my parents mellowed out a bit, too. It got to the stage where I’d say – ‘Right, I’m just going to my room to listen to The Beatles’ – and they’d be OK with that. My dad even taught himself trombone and got me playing bass in one of his jazz bands.’’
From dad’s jazz band to opening for Elvis, it’s been quite a ride. In order to play live, Fowler strapped together a five-piece band to do ‘cover versions’ of his solo songs. They opened for Elvis Costello last year, after which he magnificent Tame Impala and a distinguished local roll call which includes Lawrence Arabia, Liam Finn, Bachelorette, Race Banyon, Connan Mockasin, SJD, Fazerdaze and Kane Strang.
‘‘Yeah, the bedroom artist is almost the new model in the music industry now. That’s cool for musicians, because they’re not paying by the hour for studio time while they work out their songs, and it’s cool for record companies, because they end up receiving something almost fullyformed. It’s also a great way to make music, because sound quality is not as important as people think; a good melody recorded through a telephone will still be a good melody. You just need to get a few key details right. A song might sound like complete arse, but if you ditch a few things then put some cool studio effects on what’s left, it’s suddenly, like, ‘Whoa! Sweet!’ ’’
I imagine that’s not always true. You still need a good idea to begin with. Otherwise you just have arse with added effects.
‘‘Yeah, you’re right. But I don’t find the ideas part difficult. I love pop music and I’m good at coming up with a hook. To me, a song just needs a good melody, a singalong chorus and then some rough, unexpected things to give it some contrast. To be honest, I’m really proud of the fact that I’ve taught myself how to do this stuff. Now the biggest fun I can possibly have is to be at home, by myself, coming up with the perfect lead guitar line in my bedroom.
‘‘Recording-wise, we’ve come a long way from the old days, eh? You know . . . it’s 1965. The band’s tight. The studio lights dim. The engineer presses ‘Record’ on the tape machine. And . . . that’s a cut! Press it, and get it in the stores!’’
‘I must have some weird Kiwi fetish. Some of your pop music is just plain better than the Australian stuff.’