“Silver Comet” from Ceduna gets visualised by the mysterious BloodMeridian67.

Live at 3RRR - Friday July 3, 2009

[L to R: Ben Michael X; Andrew Tanner; Wes Holland; Sean Simmons [in turban]; Christopher Hollow; Tor Larsen]

In*Press, June 18, 2008

THE DESERT SESSIONS

NICK ARGYRIOU heads underground and into the minds of ANDREW TANNER and CHRIS HOLLOW of Melbourne’s masters of psychedelic rock, THE SAND PEBBLES, as they discuss their new album, Ceduna.

“I love The Beta Band,” explains Andrew Tanner, lead vocalist and guitarist for Melbourne band The Sand Pebbles. “And I love The Byrds,” responds bass player Chris Hollow. This is in direct response to my likening of the Sand Pebbles’ latest record, Ceduna, to the fusion of these two cracking bands. Ceduna, The Sand Pebbles fifth official release, was in fact written in a fortnight in, well, the town of Ceduna, a

majestic and creatively inspiring getaway located on the Far West Coast of South Australia. The group set up camp on the scenic shores of Cactus on the Great Australian Bight, approximately 800km from Adelaide and 1900km via road to Perth.

Following on from the well-documented madness that went into the creation of their fourth record, 2006’s Atlantis Regrets Nothing, The Sand Pebbles have taken the time to step back and smell the roses (and sample the mushrooms). Ceduna is arguably their most complete musical accomplishment to date, a riveting ride soaked with enough three-part vocal harmonies and guitars to give a primed Beach Boys unit a real good shake.

“All of our albums have come together in different ways. Ceduna is probably more complete in terms of the process with the songwriting happening in one big burst thanks to our desert experience,” Tanner confirms. “The recording happened over a two day period with some minimal overdubbing. It was just like putting it down live so it felt like

it came together quickly and in a satisfying way, sort of in one hit, whereas previous albums have had us slaving over fucking mixes for the 300th time!”

I’ve always admired the way that The Sand Pebbles can write these epic monster tunes, all psychedelic and swimming upstream with intensity and pop-driven harmony, songs that can range from a few minutes long to eight or nine minutes and 15 minute tunes, with everything in between. Nothing has veered off course with Ceduna. The band is a very unconventional outfit indeed, but a brilliant one at that, and arguably Australia’s most original and dangerously hypnotic musical act.

As the lads tuck into their lunches and some beer at The Mountain View Hotel in Richmond – a steak sandwich for Tanner and a pita wrap effort for Hollow – I ask, “What is the Sand Pebbles’ musical philosophy?” “Our philosophy is always to try and write the best pop song we can and then just fuck with it!” explains Tanner. This is probably the best representation of what his band have always been about – a brilliant response from a master of psychedelic spin.

So whose idea was it to head to Ceduna and write the album? Was it Tanner’s, a former South Australian lad? “No, not really, Chris and Ben [Michael] had been there previously and they found it to be an instructive time away, so they figured that a band camp would be a good idea.” Hollow informs: “Ben and I had originally gone there for the Millennium New Year to do some surfing, and it was just such an overwhelming experience that we thought it would be good to get everyone out there to have a real crack at writing an album.

“What actually happened was that Andrew and I were first to get out there and we were there for two days before the others arrived. We wrote Future Proofed, Scenic Railway and Wild Season in that time and then Ben got there. His attitude overwhelms the band. He hates the idea of sitting around with acoustic guitars, so for the next week or however else longer we were there, we hardly played instruments or did any real songwriting,” Hollow adds.

Tanner chimes in, mid-steak chew. “We kind of talked about songs more than we actually played anything!” Hollow continues on with his assessment of his good friend Ben Michael, the man who I’m discovering to be the temperamental X-Factor of the Sand Pebbles. “He loves just going away and having a good time so that’s what this fortnight in Ceduna turned into.” Tanner tunes in again, “Ben gets there and he says, ‘Isn’t this so tragic that we’ve got these acoustic guitars around the campfire?’ So Chris and I pushed our guitars under the mattresses.”

The Sand Pebbles headed to Ceduna in November 2006, not long after they had released Atlantis Regrets Nothing. “The live tracking was done with our then drummer Piet [Collins] at Soundpark in Northcote, then Ben followed his plan through of not wanting to do everything like we were doing it – he wanted to take the songs he’d written out to Dave Graney and Clare Moore’s place (Pondersosa) to do his songs with Clare drumming on the three tracks,” explains Tanner.

Tracking in the hottest heat wave of Melbourne’s summer; surely the heat in the kitchen had its moments for the sweatshop savaged Sand Pebbles? “You know the hazy sound you hear on the record? That’s exactly what it was like in the studio,” informs Tanner. “It worked out perfectly because the songs were written in Ceduna in a similar type of extremity and then we’ve rocked into the studio and it seriously was 45 degrees or something in February 2007. We crowded around one fan, played for eight hours and got

all sweaty. It was like an extreme sport, it was full-on!” screams Hollow.

The band has split the songwriting four ways on Ceduna, with Tanner, Hollow, Michael and Larsen sharing the load between them. This is also the recording debut of Sun

Blindness’ exuberant and youthful guitarist, Tor Larsen. With strong lyrical and musical contributions, he’s written Short Term Memory Loss and Purple Flower and belts out

the vocals on Silver Comet, representing a unique and fresh sound alongside Tanner.

“When Tor came into the band we were excited because he’s an incredible songwriter, singer and guitarist. When you have Tanner and Tor singing together it’s a beautiful thing

because there is a time difference between them, and there voices complement each other so well,” a beaming Hollow confirms. “It’s like Cat Stevens’ Father And Son,” Hollow

laughs. Tanner chimes in, “He keeps wanting us to do a version of that song!” “Every song really is like Father and Son when these two sing together! Andrew has taken a few

things off Tor and vice versa and they’ve become closer in tune with voices and phrases and things like that,” he tells.

Ceduna has the ability to creep up, get under your skin and wrap you up, before kidnapping your mind and refusing to give it back. With fans ranging from Conway Savage and Stephen ‘The Ghost’ Walker to Dave Graney and a whole host of Aussie rock luminaries, The Sand Pebbles create music on their own terms. This is a band at the top of their game and they aren’t taking prisoners.

They’ve recently added one Clifford Booth, the one time Harem Scarem drummer and a member of numerous psych-surf outfits including The Beach Nuts and the Three Sixties,

to The Sand Pebbles juggernaut – and the galaxy stars really are the limit. “[This] band makes a virtue of self-indulgence to basically do whatever we feel like,” Tanner chuckles in conclusion. “That’s where it’s at.”

Ceduna is out now through Sensory Projects/Inertia.

The Sand Pebbles play the Spanish Club this Saturday, and the Northcote Social Club on Saturday 5th July.

Ceduna

(Sensory Projects)

Just about every middle class kid with a Lonely Planet guide, a thesaurus of hackneyed eastern philosophical musings and a pair of a designer hessian pants has claimed to have had a transcendental moment. Transcendental, in this context, is often used synonymously (but erroneously) with enlightening. A genuine transcendental moment is said to occur when the witness achieves a higher plane of consciousness, possibly due to the surrounding cultural and environmental conditions, and most likely with the aid of some mind altering substance of valuable potency. But when the drugs wear off, so usually does the moment, and, unless sent spiralling into the waiting arms of a cult with a penchant for liberal sexual activities and micro-managed financial practices, the witness is left with little more than a hazy memory of something that seemed more enjoyable than mundane, everyday existence.

There are plenty of transcendental musical moments to be had without embarking on a journey of self-discovery. Indeed, the liner credits to the new Sand Pebbles record, Ceduna, convey the band’s thanks “to everyone who transcendental with us”. The Sand Pebbles understand the power of a transcendental, psychedelic experience – not in the sense of bright ink blots, purple granny glasses and festering Grateful Dead t-shirts, but in the sense of a moment when you can close your eyes, listen to the music and wait for it to interact with your senses and take you to a different cognitive place. Sure, you don’t stay there forever – but if it was perennial, it’d never be any fun going there.

Ceduna was recorded proximate to the town of the same name, located on the south-eastern coast fringe of South Australia, referred to popularly as the Great Australian Bight. As an artistic statement, Ceduna is a product of its geographical environment. It’s sparse, remote and laconic, an album that you can listen to anywhere, anytime, and feel just that little bit more relaxed, a bit more aware and a helluva lot more in touch. The colours of the album are immediately recounted and illustrated with the opening track Red, orange, purple and blue – it’s bright, but a bit dark on the inside, light but really deep, man, if only you know where to look. Wild Season, in contrast, is a celebration of surf, sand and the beauty of the pop song, played out eight miles high into the psychedelic musical atmosphere. The perfectly crafted harmonies that characterise Short term memory loss are as compelling as David Crosby’s charismatic grin after imbibing some of LA’s finest mescaline (later on, Tina Louise recounts tales of acid fuelled juvenile pranks that would amuse Crosby’s drug-battered brain). The literary inspiration of Tennessee runs a distant second to the haunting, beach bummed television feel of the tune itself and Purple Flower is a love song that gives folk a sparkling mauve tinge. And then there’s the intergalactic brilliance of Future Proofed, a song that both typifies and contradicts western society’s inherently flawed quest to protect itself against the perils of the future, without acknowledging that we’re all only living in the moment, and it’s only this moment that we can deal with.

In Silver Comet the Sand Pebbles take a sharp left back down the glistening, spaced out, surf pop that only few bands even comprehend the existence of, before the final song, Scenic Railway, unrolls slowly into a lazy fifteen minute journey out of the haze, and back into what passes for normality. Like the early morning recovery session with a couple of cigar sized doobies, things stumble back into reality after the wild night spent in wild psychedelic heaven.

And while the Sand Pebbles’ journey is at an end, and the transcendental moments are over, you can’t help but feel you’re all the better for it. Ceduna doesn’t solve world poverty, re-plant old growth rainforests, bring peace to the Middle East, or even eradicate the influence of the mind-numbingly moronic public relations industry from our daily existence. But it does give you plenty of moments that transcend all that shit – and that’s what quality psychedelic music should do.

PATRICK EMERY