Originally published in NZ Musician Magazine
The Jury & The Saints have been busy the last few years. Since forming in 2009 they’ve toured with Paramore, made a couple of EPs and an album, signed with German label SPV, and just recently they put out their second full-length release, which they recorded in Germany with rock producer Alex Lysjakow. I sat down with singer Jesse Smith and guitarist Rowan Crowe to drink watered down coffee and talk about life as international musicians.
The band recently toured in Germany, before recording an album in Germany, for the label they’re signed to in Germany. I had to ask: what’s up with these guys and Germany?
To hear Rowan tell it, it seems more chance and opportunity than any planning on their part. “It’s funny, it just happened to be over there that they loved the music – you know it’s big choruses and gang singing and rock music, I guess.”
“Apparently because there was a bunch of stuff coming out of New Zealand that was good, every week they’d check the New Zealand charts,” Jesse says. “And because we were punky kind of rock they thought ‘oh yeah, this could work.’”
The Jury & The Saints signed with SPV at the beginning of 2013, and then in the middle of the year the band went to Germany for six weeks. Three weeks of touring (playing to 6,000-strong crowds with a Deutschrock band they assure me you’ll never hear of outside of Germany) was followed by three weeks recording what would become their second album, a life experience Jesse says he’ll never forget. “We ended up in a tiny town just outside Berlin for three weeks, staying at this weird little hotel just round the corner from the studio. The landlady didn’t speak a word of English, and was an alcoholic – so it made for very interesting conversation.”
The band didn’t know Lysjakow before they recorded with him, and it was the label’s suggestion that they work together. “But we were psyched with what he did,” Jesse tells me. “He produces a lot of rock,” says Rowan, “and coming from a punk background I think he gets it more. It needs to capture that energy, that essence of what it is, or else it’s …” he gives an exaggerated shrug.
It seems like they’ve managed to capture that energy – the album has been well received overseas. Along with the interest in Germany there have been high-scoring reviews from magazines and websites like Kerrang, Rock Sound and AltCorner. But the positive buzz overseas can feel oddly distant when the band’s back here in New Zealand. “It’s one of those things where it feels like you’re having a dream at night and then you wake up the next day,” says Rowan. “It doesn’t feel like