Melbourne noiseniks The Nation Blue have turned their acerbic microscope inward on their new album ‘Rising Waters’. And as singer Tom Lyngcoln explains to ADAM D MILLS, they didn’t always like what they saw.

Following the 2007 release of their politically-charged third album Protest Songs, The Nation Blue hit the road, not only assaulting ears across this country but all across the world.

The tour was, by all accounts, a roaring success. Upon their triumphant return home, however, singer/guitarist Tom Lyngcoln though that it may have been the band’s last hurrah. “That was all I’d ever wanted to do with the band, just play in front of some different heads,” he says. “So we did that, and came back, and then the other two [bassist Matt Weston and drummer Dan McKay] kind of took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting them to be calling me up anytime soon saying, ‘Let’s book in some studio time.’”

But call they did, and so the writing process for what would eventually become Rising Waters got underway. It basically entailed Lyngcoln locking himself away in a shed on the Mornington Peninsula for 12 months. “I basically live on something that could be compared to Waco,” he explains. “It’s this kind of commune thing, where I sleep on a couch at my grandmother’s house. My dad lives here as well, and my aunty and uncle have a house next door, as incestuous as that sounds. Dad and I have a workshop in one paddock, and in the paddock opposite there’s another smaller shed, which is where I did a lot of the writing and demoing.”

Though the overall process of crafting Rising Waters was rather protracted – it spanned two years – the album wasn’t laboured over. It was recorded in two sessions, about six months apart. Both times, Lyngcoln presented his bandmates with the nearly-complete songs and the instruction that time was of the essence.

“I didn’t show them any of the stuff until a week before we went in,” he says. “I actually had a pretty vivid idea of the songs and how I wanted them to come together. I think with not playing them live and then the time spent with it, they haven’t really evolved much. It’s the same primitive shit I had in my head when it first came to me.”

On their previous three records, The Nation Blue found inspiration in negative external stimuli – let’s face it, the world is fucked, and these guys have never been shy about saying so. But with the righteous indignation of Protest Songs, the band felt they’d travelled that road as far as it would take them. “Matt and I had been talking about what we were going to sing about this time, and we figured that trying to do another political record would be like screaming into a vacuum,” Lyngcoln says. “We were of the opinion that a change in government had done little to quell that kind of unease that we felt leading into the process of Protest Songs, and we felt like we’d just be repeating ourselves.”

So they turned their attention on themselves, almost literally compiling a list of all the awful things they’d done in their lifetimes. “We’ve had a lot of things happen to us. We’ve had a lot of experience over the years – the band has been together 13 years – and personally as well, there have been a lot of horrible things that we’ve done to people and that have happened to us. So we figured we’d employ those and have a look at them. Up until that point there had been a lot of things we were embarrassed about, and I think with maturity you find ways to address it. Writing songs definitely isn’t the way, but it’s been a nice process – well, it hasn’t been a nice process, it’s been a horrible process – but it’s an interesting way to work through some of those issues.”

“Basically, every day I work with this big fuckin’ radial arm saw, which each day has ample opportunity to take my finger off. The neurosis that has put me into is obviously beginning to seep into the music.”

Lyngcoln identifies two events in his life that served as catalysts for the change in perspective of Rising Waters. The first was a horrific incident on New Years Eve in 1999, when his drink was spiked with three times the recommended maximum dosage of MDMA. “Basically it was the first time I had ever experienced drugs of that nature and it kinda destroyed me. I ended up down at the docks in Hobart and after a couple of violent altercations headed for a pub where I had been working. They recognised that something was seriously wrong with me and locked me in a storage room but I managed to get out and swan dove down two flights of stairs onto my head.”

Lyngcoln came to in the hospital, in the middle of a CT scan. Believing he’d been abducted by aliens, he tore the charcoal line out of his arm and had to be sedated. For the next two days he was almost completely immobile due to the extensive damage the drug had done to his kidneys, spleen and liver. “On the third day of vomiting and shitting myself I was able to stand up after 45 minutes of adjusting positions to sit upright and eventually walked to the bathroom for the first time. It took four days on the phone to people who I thought might have seen me to find out what happened ... and these stories are obviously pretty convoluted at best. A lot of people told me I was hyper-aggressive and a real problem and the falling down the stairs onto the slate floor part was confirmed by the ambos and security staff and the pub.”

A month after this, Lyngcoln left Hobart for Melbourne. “This night really affected both my physical and mental health,” he says. “[It] took probably four years to relax and trust people and not be a jerk … but maybe that was some previously ingrained.”

The second catalyst – more recent and much less traumatic – is Lyngcoln’s current employment making wine cellars with his father under the name Salvation Wine Racks. “Basically, every day I work with this big fuckin’ radial arm saw, which each day has ample opportunity to take my finger off,” he says. “The neurosis that has put me into is obviously beginning to seep into the music. I spend all day thinking about this damn saw, and that kind of paranoia has definitely found its way onto the record.”

But although Lyngcoln does harbour a deep-seated fear of losing his fingers, it’s not like he doesn’t have a contingency plan in place. “I know what I’m going to do if I lose my fingers. I’m going to stick a pick in the stump and learn how to play with my other hand. I’m up for hooks too. I think hooks are practical. Not so good for intimacy, but there’s definitely niches for that kind of behaviour. We’re already a niche market – we’re rough looking dudes, so I think hooks might help us out.”

+

The Nation Blue’s Rising Waters is out now on Casadeldisco.

‘RISING WATERS’ TOUR

Friday, September 4
The National Hotel, Geelong, VIC

Saturday, September 5
The Esplanade Hotel, Melbourne, VIC

Saturday, September 12
Spectrum, Sydney, NSW

Friday, September 18
Step Inn, Brisbane, QLD

Friday, October 16
The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart, TAS