“I’m somewhat dusty,” declares Geoff O’Connor, calling in from a work break. “I look like I work in a coal mine.” O’Connor, frontman and songwriter for Melbourne pop perfectionists Crayon Fields, is actually cleaning used bricks for a crust, although if you listen to Liquorice Night, the imminent new album from his solo project, Sly Hats, you could be mistaken for thinking he’s a nightclub balladeer, a bespectacled Bacharach from a warped 1967.

Pushed into existence by Crayon Fields losing their drummer to a year’s work in Japan (their few gigs in 2007 have been with a temp), Sly Hats is no mere side project. O’Connor has been accumulating these songs for several years – dividing his output between those that are malleable for collaboration within Crayon Fields and the ones he best direct alone in his bedroom for Sly Hats.

“I guess I’m a bit of a control freak, so I wanted to have an expandable and detachable band,” he explains. “If you make your own record you can be as much of a control freak as you like and you’re not impeding anyone.”

Using makeshift and primitive percussion instead of a drum kit, Liquorice Night is a sparse and tender work, with hints of a mellow lounge vibe subverted by atmospheric keyboard parts and tremulous double-tracked vocals. The 11 tracks were culled from 25 O’Connor compositions, with approximately 90 versions of various pieces in circulation before the running order was sorted.

Guests on the album include Jarrod Zlatic and Nisa Venerosa of Fabulous Diamonds (whose own 7-inch comes out on the same day as Liquorice Night: Saturday 2 June), Jono Edmonds (You Will Die Alone) and Max Kohane (Agents Of Abhorrence). O’Connor hopes some of them will be in his touring line-up, which takes to the road in June.

How did they handle his control freak tendencies? “You tell them what to do, but you make up for it by buying them lunch,” explains O’Connor.

After the June tour O’Connor and fellow singer-songwriter (and Chapter Records boss) Guy Blackman will tour the U.S. and U.K. together, providing sympathetic backing for each other in the absence of bands. After that the much anticipated second Crayon Fields album will get underway, although O’Connor is still somewhat perplexed by the strong reaction to 2006’s Animal Bells (second in the Mess+Noise Critics’ Poll, fourth in the Mess+Noise Readers’ Poll)

“Sometimes I was taken aback. I’ve seen both positive and negative reviews of that album and sometimes it’s been the positive ones that have bothered me. Some people said some really strange things about it – it didn’t anger me, but I was confused.”

Gertrudes Bandroom, Fitzroy, VIC
Thursday 31 May

Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney, NSW
Saturday 9 June

Toff In Town, Melbourne, VIC
Saturday 23 June

Troubadour, Brisbane, QLD
Sunday 24 June

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