After a lengthy wait of five years, Thirsty Eyes have released their debut record ‘A Certain Regard’ on Haldern Pop Recordings. The Austrian three-piece make music that sounds like a panic attack feels; dangerously hanging in the balance between fight or flight. With untamed guitars, deep and shrewd vocals, and a fierce injection of adrenaline, it’s hard to know whether to run home or directly into the storm. In ‘A Certain Regard’, you get just this, an unfaltering sense of urgency from start to finish. From the offset, Thirsty Eyes have delivered a bounty of raunchy singles, including the tumultuous waves of ‘Touch The Weather’ and menacing grandeur of ‘838’, and became to be known as “pillars” of the Vienese music scene. Following the drop of ‘A Certain Regard’, DMC World connects with the band to discuss the genesis of making a gritty rock anomaly…
Hey guys! How are you all doing today and where are you speaking to us from?
We are fine and right now we are sitting right in my studio doing what I call homework. Here our album was recorded and produced and some of our songs were written right here. But next weeks another story, then we will be touring Paris, Gent, Hamburg, Berlin, Prague and many more..
Can you tell us about how you chose the title of your album, ‘A Certain Regard’?
There are several layers to this title – one of course is connected to the Filmfestival in Cannes and does not need much explanation, we guess. You might find something in our songwriting that is quite cinematic, then we write and produce our music we not only “see” sounds, we see pictures, perspective, scenes and colour. We care a lot about other art forms and film is one of them, so here we are.
Another layer is the thought that not only the work on our album but also our life feeds from a certain energy, an inner urge and these things result in an own point of view. Finally we all have our own, certain regard. It is up to the listener to do his part of the thinking – but you can also see this as simply a nice sounding title, too 😉
How would you describe your sound to listeners?
This is a hard one. We often had this kind of discussion and finally always ended with the “rock” idiom. Chuck Berry, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jack White, The Flaming Lips, Elvis and Tom Waits all finally have this term in common and if these folks are considered to play rock music, then so are we. In short we could describe our sound as our very own turn on rock music, with lots of confetti and fireworks, with reflections of the past and a lot of respect for many other artists from Jazz and Blues to Cabaret or Vaudeville, but at the end of the day it is still rock music, we guess.
Who are some of the artists you may have looked to for inspiration when cultivating your sound?
We do not really look for inspiration, but of course we find inspiration almost everywhere. So there are various influences you can find on our album, but talking about cultivation our sound and name dropping there might be Harry Nilsson, Lee Hazlewood, Ennio Morricone, The Latin Playboys, Serge Gainsbourg but also Fat White Family, John Zorn and The Flaming Lips, old Blues and Exotica. Tom Waits and The Beatles, too.
Can you tell us a bit about your songwriting process? Did it flow quite naturally or was it a case of testing new things, and were there certain songs that were easier to write than others?
We have different kinds of songwriting, some of our songs were only written by them selves, with mostly Samuel Ebner and Philipp Moosbrugger jamming and fooling around in kitchens, living rooms, castles or studios – but there are also some songs that were demanding for something else and with some songs it took us years to really bring the compositions to the point we wanted them to be. Both processes are important to us – there is no approach we prefer because both approaches have their own qualities and dangers.
How has your music evolved over the past five years of fine-tuning?
In that five years we simply brought every song as close to what it wanted to be than we could. It was not really an evolution of the music, it was the other way round – the music forced us to learn, to evolve, if you want to use this word.
You take your name from the growing materialistic culture of modern society, how does this theme fit into ‘A Certain Regard’?
Dono.
Your album digs into a series of hard-hitting themes, what do you think is the most important message you’d like people to take away from your music?
Face your demons and do not forget to also face yourself – you are one of them.
The video for your track Pop Sent has a particularly eerie vibe, can you tell us a bit more about filming it?
We were lucky and could „hijack“ a whole film crew including equipment and location of another movie production. They had two days off and film ace Ioan Gavriel, who had worked with us before on other videos, suggested to take the chance and make this video. We would not have been able to afford this video without the commitment of Ioan and his crew. The Video was filmed mostly over two nights and in a way it is the work of fans.
What is your favourite track from the album and why?
There is no such thing, sorry.
What can we expect in the future of Thirsty Eyes?
We are working on new ideas and also concepts that vary from more theatrical work to a more unplugged approach. The problem with Thirsty Eyes is that at least the band’s mindset is quite versatile, so regarding the future we would prefer curiosity to expectations..
