Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Finding Purpose With LAURENCE HEWSON From SORDID ORDEAL

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Finding Purpose With LAURENCE HEWSON From SORDID ORDEAL · HEAVY Music Interviews

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My name is Lawrence Houson. I am the guitarianist and singer of Sordid Ordeal.
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Our debut album, When I Left Town has just come out. Get
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around it and give it a listen. You're hearing me here on Heavy Bag
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with Chris yo Ful brother. Thanks for joining us today, Thanks for having
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me, my pleasure. So as you say, mate, sorder or deal
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today, release your debut album When I Left YOUWN. So how does it
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feel to have a finally unleashed on the world and out there. Oh?
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I can't even begin to tell you how long I have waited for this moment.
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In the time this band has been together, We've had like twenty or
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thirty mates. Bands all put out multiple records and then break up and look
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back on a successful career in the time that we've been working on this,
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so it's been a long road in but it is a massive release to smash
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this one out of the chamber. Like tracks on this were on previous demos
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and EPs that we had done, and this, I fear we have finally
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like we have finally attained the sounds that we've always wanted to have. This
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is this is the lineup I've always dreamed of for this, for this band,
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and so yeah, it's all that. I'm actually kind of glad that
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it took so long, because if I'd done it under previous lineups or under
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previous circumstances, it wouldn't have sounded or been the way I wanted it to
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be. Like this is it. This is a true representation of what I
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think this band should have always been. Shit, Hi, and so tell
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us a bit more about the album from a musical point of view and what
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you're going for with it. So the whole, the whole record was created
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on mat and guitars. Like to me, this record is supposed to have
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that quintessential, cutting, biting Australian sound. When I when I think of
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like Australian music, when I think of Australian bands and classic Australian records,
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I think of these weird kind of idiosyncrasies that make our music you need,
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compared to like rock coming out of the UK or rock coming out of the
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US. And when I think of Australian music, I think of like the
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Drones and hoodlum shouts and like you know, Akadaka and just a lot of
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that you know, hard rock biting stuff. But you know, I like,
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I'm a big fan of Poison City Records period from like the two thousands
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up until the twenty teens, you know, And you know, I think
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of a lot of like I think of a lot of feedback and heavy distortion,
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but it's not soundated. It has a really natural sound to it.
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And like when you listen to the song Confession, you can actually hear me
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rocking back and forth on the piano stool while I'm while I'm playing the song.
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And that was recorded in a church in Carlton, and you know,
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like the mixes and then the producers asked, you know, do you want
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to do you want to pull that out or soundate it? And I went,
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no, absolutely not like leave that in there. That's what That's what
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makes it such a natural sounding record, you know. And we didn't even
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with the even with the recording of like the you know, the big fat
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rhythm guitars and stuff, there are moments where the chord you know, rings
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out past the point that it would it would you know normally normally musically make
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sense for it to stop, you know, and I hit the pedal,
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like, you know, deliberately after the point so that we cover that period
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and then they could they could have cut it if they wanted to. And
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then I go, nah, just like Eve, all that distortion in there,
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leave the mess in there. It's got to sound like it was played
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by musicians, not like it was a song that was programmed into a computer
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and then recorded coming out of a speaker system like fuck that for a joke.
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And so you know that, yeah, there are going to be parts
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where maybe I sing slightly off keyp there's going to be like a ta solo
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that like you know, decay out before the you know, the point that
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you wanted it to. But like it just it's a real live sounding record,
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which is funny because like you've got a twelve piece choir in there as
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well, and there's a there's a string quintet in there, and then there's
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a a trad Irish band came in and played on some of the tracks,
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fiddle and ill and pipes, you know, the ill and being the the
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Irish Gaelic word for elbow. Like I said, not like that blow into
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you're playing by pump on the elbow on him. Like it's got all that
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high production stuff in it, but the underlying floor tracks of everything is just
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live as fuck sounding and raggedy, like that really cutting sort of of almost
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guns and Roses level of distorted rhythm guitars and stuff. Yeah, you released
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the singles are Citizen, a purely genetic connection, Confession, and Black Straps
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Mate. So if I saw that someone has heard of your music, would
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you say they're a good sonic representation of the album as a whole? I
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reckon, Yeah, I reckon. Citizen is a great representation of like a
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whole sort of political, aggressive, punky side to us, And we used
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to be way more punk like back in you know, this band started in
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twenty ten and from twenty and ten to twenty seventeen it was really punky,
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So Citizen kind of retains that really sort of punky sound. Black Straps is
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like a perfect representation of that blues rock kind of like really bluesy, dirgy,
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grungy kind of sound. Confession is an excellent representation of like that that
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big orchestral meat Loaf influenced Bruce Springsteen influenced like massive sounding arrangement. And I
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suppose genetic Connections goes a bit more like with with Black Straps, is that
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like chugging, bluesy hard rock, kind of pub rock kind of sound.
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So all four of those songs I think capture, capture, you know,
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very stark elements of sort of ordeal. And if when people listen to the
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other songs on the album that weren't released as singles, you'll probably look at
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you know, Trinity Tirade and put that in the in the Confession basket and
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listen to Miss Here and put that in the you know, in the in
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the in the Citizen basket and stuff. But like, yeah, I think
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that's why those four singles have made sense to us to release those, because
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they were the ones that I think really nailed each different corner of the band
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as it stands at the moment. So When I Left Chound is the first
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of a two part coming of age story mate, So can you elaborate on
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that concept of good for us? Yeah? I can so. I fucking
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I love concept albums, I love rock opera, I like I like big,
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ambitious production. And you know, in my teenage years, I was
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obsessed with Pink Floyd and then Tommy's The Who. I fucking love my Chemical
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Romance, the Black Parade, I love Green Days, American idiot, like
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you know, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and then the
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film The Wall, like it just I love to blend all those elements of
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like big fucking storytelling. It might be like the sort of the Celtic side
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of my influences and stuff as well. In that like everything's a bit ballady,
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and everything's got sort of a basis in a story. But when we
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first really when we first started recording it, I envisioned it as being like
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a CD released album, and you can fit eighty minutes of music on a
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CD easy, you know, And so it was like, you know,
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it was like fourteen or fifteen tracks long or something. And then Vinyl started
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to make its comeback and I thought, you know what, I would love
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to release a Vinyl record. And then you know, when we sort of
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cut the songs into in chronological order of the way that they take place,
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it filled up two full vinyls and I was like, well, fuck,
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maybe we should just release this as part one and part two, because I
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want to experience my music the way that some of my favorite you know,
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artists of all time experience their music, like feeling coming out with the warmth
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of vinyl, and you know, hearing the crackle of the needle hitting the
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wax, Like I want to feel that stuff. And you know, some
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people write it off as wank and they're just like I just get with the
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times, and they just release it digitally or put it on the c But
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like, I'm a bit of a romantic for that old stuff, you know,
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I want to feel that stuff. I want to I want to have
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those experience. You know, even bands as late as like Metallica and Nirvana
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got to experience in the early nineties before CD's really just dominated everything. So
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yeah, releasing it as part one where you know, I leave Woggle Wogger
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in New South Wales as an eighteen year old and come down to Melbourne and
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like, you know, just sort of hit in the face by going to
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UNI and political movements and going to bars and being introduced to the Melbourne clubs
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scene and just things were very you know, done very differently in metropolitan Melbourne
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in the mid two thousands to the way that they've done in Woggle Wogger in
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New South Wales. Like you know, it was, it was, it
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was. It was a total flood of the senses in every sense, Like
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you know, Boos sexually, drugs, like the whole thing it was.
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It was just so overwhelming. And I like that I can tell this story
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in a retrospective sense, you know, because a lot of the songs have
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written from that period and I've revisited them and changed them slightly so that as
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a thirty five year old man, I could put out this record, you
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know, the way they experienced it, But like hundreds of thousands of kids
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across the country have experienced it since the seventies, eighties, nineties, Like
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that story of you know, the kid grows up into the country and then
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moves to the city to either you know, crack into music or art or
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go to university or whatever. It's just such a played out sort of coming
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of age story in Australia, you know. And it's not like America,
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where every regional area there is a massive city there, like within one hundred
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miles. Australia is sparse as fuck. We've got we've got maybe six major
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cities spread out over across one of the largest countries on the planet. But
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the rural area is extensive as fuck. So there's something so much more,
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there's something so much more intimidating about the distance you travel, like to go
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through a metropolitan area when when you're emerging as a kid coming from you know,
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a regional area. I think that this record captures that and walking through
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it, step by step, going into relationships, coming out of relationships,
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you know, discovering your people, you know when you're just like you grow
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up in the country, your mates with the people you find that are there.
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But then sometimes when you move to the city, you find your people
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and you're like, holy shit, this is the community I've always craved and
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I've always wanted. This record paints all that stuff. So that's that's why
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it's a big story. There are a lot of concepts to take. I
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wanted to experience vinyl and so that's why we did it as that part one
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and part two. So album one is called When I Left Town. Album
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two is going to be called Nothing Was the Same Again? Right, Yeah,
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very cool? And I want to be able to hold them up next
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to each other and you can read it straight across the straight across the covers
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eventually, and yeah, I gotta say too, man, I love your
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confidence. Like a lot of bands release their debut album and they chuck it
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out and they go, oh, Yeah, we'll see see how that goes
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before we do another one. But you're like, fuck this shit, I
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got two straight up of releasing. I don't give a fuck out the first
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one goes on releasing too. I love it, man, Unlike a lot
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of bands, I've had a lot of time to think about them. You
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mentioned before too, that you've got like the twelve piece choir and there there's
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a brass on soul ball a stream quarts at the Coldic band, Like,
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how did you manage to bring so many different sounds together and still have the
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album sound? Oh that's an interesting question, you know. I think,
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without sounding like a total fart sniffing wanka, I think it really is just
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the fact that it's authentic, Like it comes from a place where I've got
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My musical taste is eclectic as fuck. Like I'll go from you know,
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listening to King Parrot to listening listening to like trad Celtic sessions and reels and
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jigs in the space of an afternoon, you know. And so when when
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you're so authentically and honestly into all these different elements of music in your music
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in a way that it could accomment at any of that stuff. When you
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bring it together, it just works. And like there's no formula for it.
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I don't even know how we pulled it off. Literally made of mind
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Phil de Carlo from the Cigarillo, who said to me, he got kissed
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the other night and he said to me, Okay, I've got to be
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honest with you. Over the last few years, when all the posts were
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going up on social about the brass section coming into, the strings coming in,
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the kelsuck, you know, stuff coming in, I just went he's
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overcooked it. This is gonna sound shit. Like I've been going to watch
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this band my whole you know, the last ten years. I've seen it
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in it in, you know, like I've seen it as a three piece,
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I've seen it as a hard rock five piece. Like, but with
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all of these elements going into it, He's cooked it. It's gone too
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far, Like it's just going to be yeah, and like it's just I
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love that he I love that he came out and he said that to me,
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and I was like, yeah, wow, Like, you know,
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maybe I just got lucky that it works. But also if there is a
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secret to sort of all deals songwriting, it's that there is so much room
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and space in the songs. It's not written about like it's not written around
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really tight riffs, and it's not written around big, elaborate, sort of
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meandering rifts the way that you might have the way that you might have tool
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where you know, the riffage itself is complicated and needs to be accommodated by
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the other instruments in the band. It's big and it's cordy. It takes
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a lot of influence from like from like country music as well when you think
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about it, and having all that space in there means what do they used
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to say about the Tarana? When they released the Tarana? They had a
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little six cylinder motor in it, but there was all this space under the
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bonnet, so you could throw anything in there that you wanted. Sort of
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ordeal songwriting is like a tarana. It's when you open the bonet up,
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the motor's there, but if you want to throw a supercharger in there,
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if you want to throw a fucking Norse canister in there, there is room
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for all of that. And so that's what we did. We just chucked
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stuff in there and it fucking works. I don't know if I could do
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it again now then the press release. I'm not sure if this was actually
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part of the press release or Chris Marrick wrote it. That describes you as
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Ned Kelly meets Paul Hogan meets Paul Kelly. Like that's a pretty fall un
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mixed live up to bro. They weren't my words. That's definitely Christill that
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I didn't. Yeah, yeah, look there they're big, big boots to
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fill and it's a good thing that I've got a size fourteen foot Now.
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The story of this sort of ordeal is a classic Aussie battlets a mate.
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So the band fall back in twenty ten when you were all university dropouts,
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So it's not a not a bad starting point for a band. I think
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it's very I think it's typical of a lot of bands. I don't think
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it's as dignified as a lot of other bands. But we all we all
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met at UNI, and I think all of us dropped out at some point.
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But you know, there was me and another guy, and we started
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the band together, and we realized that our musical inclinations, our songwriting was
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too different to exist within the same band, and so we went our separate
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ways. He became the drummer in my band and then my bass player I
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played bass in his band as well. So it was one of those classic
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things where you've got eight muso's in a community together and three full bands came
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out of it and everyone's playing in each other's band. And I love that
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because I interviewed Tom Lincoln from The Nation Blue a few years ago and he
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said, that's what the music scene in Hobart was like in the nineties.
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There was one hundred people living in town and about five hundred bands came out
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of it and everybody was playing all in each other's bands and stuff. And
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I was like that that is a very Australian thing, especially in a rural
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area, you know. And I think there are a lot of times I
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still feel like Melbourne is in quite a city. It's just a really big
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country town. But you know, we made it work. So we got
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together, and I think we didn't really quite know what the music was that
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we wanted to create. I know how I wanted my songwriting to sound,
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but I was still finding my voice those first few years that we were together.
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I was listening to a lot of like nineties grunge and stuff, and
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as a result, I definitely developed a bit of a and Aberdeen Washington State
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drawl, you know to some of my singing and stuff. But it was
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also listening to a lot of Radiohead as well, and so like I was
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cleaning out my accent a bit and sounding almost like Southern English. And it
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was just like I hadn't yet found like my version of authenticity. I didn't
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yet realize that you could sing with a thick mar and bygie accent, and
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that you know, it would it would embody nearly everything about it, and
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all of a sudden the pieces would fall into place. Those first eight,
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you know, seven or eight years that we were together, we hold ourselves
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up in Brunswick in the northern suburbs here in Melbourne, and we're just playing
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the Brunswick Hotel recently the Bendigo Hotel, the Tote on Sunday afternoons upstairs,
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like whatever we could get, you know. The really early days, we
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played a few, you know, band competitions before we realized that that was
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just the way that producers and promoters lined their pockets with the ignorance of young
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bands and stuff. You know that that's that old story. But you still
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go through a few of those and you you learn what works and what doesn't.
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I learned, you know, from playing those early band competitions, not
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to turn up to the show with one lead because you're like, for the
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first time ever, like jumped up into the air, tucked my knees underneath
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my body, landed on my knees, but the bottom of the guitar hit
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the floor and broke the jack off inside the fucking guitar and had to grab
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their applies from outside, pulled the thing out, and the only lead I
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had left was a little practice lead that was only about four feet long,
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so I had to play the rest of the set, stood right next to
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the end and pulled the microphone back, you know, towards the back of
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the stage while the drummer and the bass player are playing well in front of
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me. Like just shit like that, you know, when you're working out
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what works and what doesn't and going through the manutua of you set up.
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Yeah, it was. It was just a wild old time. And there
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were nine When I do a you know, I play a solo across the
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bar at the brunning and you know, turn around and accidentally knock your head
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stop through you know, five rows of wine glasses and crap. Like,
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Yeah, it was just a lot of that wild stuff going on and not
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enough organization, not enough administration being done, like not knowing how to promote
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a record or how to organize the recording sessions and stuff properly. But twenty
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eighteen is when we really knuckled down and I went, Okay, if I'm
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going to do something with this, I've got to get into it now,
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like not just keeping around and smashing years. And you mentioned before probably you've
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got an album launch party coming up. What's what's the details on that?
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We actually had that last week. It was oh, sorry, hang on,
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you can edit that part out. I've got confused. I was thinking
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about the listening party. Yeah, the album launch party. So that's coming
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up at Shotkicker is in Thornbery. I love these venues in Melbourne that are
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now artists run, you know, the you know, especially playing a venue
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with Matthias from Child in it, you know, and I'm watching Child at
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Cherry years ago when you know, the fucking song trees would kick in and
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then you just get smashed in the face by doom blues and stuff. Like
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the fact that these guys are going out and running venues themselves, so the
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musicians are being treated in an ethical way, Like I couldn't think of a
20:04
better venue to get behind and want to do an album launch at. So
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our main support is the Currency, who are like my favorite folk Australian folk
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punk band of all time. They've been a massive influence on me over the
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years, Like they're one of those seminal bands that like sang in an Australian
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accent and sort of made me feel like it was possible. And they're the
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trailblazers before you, like the guys who who don't think about you know,
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oh, maybe we should make it sound more American or more English to make
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it more marketable to overseas. These are the guys that really went out on
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their own and went fuck it, whatever happens, at least we did it
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in our own voice. And I'm like, that's exactly what I want to
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bring to music. So it's like it's just an honor to have those guys
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support us, and like I would support them for the rest of our damn
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life, like they to me are gods and godesses in that band, and
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it's just a testament to the sense of community. The Melbourne music scene.
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That these guys are so much more well known than us. They've played all
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over the country, They've supported Droptic Murphy's and Flogging Molly, that these guys
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would support us a little old sorder or deal from Melbourne. You know,
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I've only just pulled our shit together in the last few years. So we've
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got the Echo Social Club opening at the show, a little rock duo.
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We've got no purple Pingers. The guy who runs shit Rentals dot or is
21:22
a viral sensation on Instagram because he's sort of He's got this very famous Instagram
21:29
page where people submit their rental properties and he just takes it to landlords and
21:33
he takes it to real estates and just like analyzers, like what's wrong with
21:37
the rental market in Australia. This guy's become like a hero of the renting
21:41
working class. But I accidentally discovered that he writes his own folk songs like
21:47
oh Brown, like that kind of thing as well, So I reached out
21:51
to him. It was just like, do you want to come and play
21:52
a show with us, because politically we're on the same page. I fucking
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love what you do, So he's coming in to do that we've got two
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Irish oh it's performing with us as well. I've run the open mid night
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at the Drunken Poet in West Melbourne here for the last eight years and I've
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just seen some of the best poets and performers come through and I've got a
22:11
little bit nostalgic for like that. You know, from everything from the Woodstock
22:15
period to like the mad Chester scene in the UK where you wouldn't just have
22:22
a rock show and it was just band, band, band, end of
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the night, it was like band or a poet or someone doing you know,
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art bullshit in the corner of the room and people just drop an acid
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and watching that happen while the bands playing in the background. I wanted to
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have a more immersive performer experience. I didn't just want to rely on this
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sort of bulldozed formula of just band, band, band, And so the
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poets are Hannah Kingston and Holly Hughes. The first time they came into the
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Drunken Poet and performed, I was blown off my fucking face. Like the
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way they just cut through to the truth and read is just astounding. So
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we first ran Poets at our two lawn last year and people really enjoyed it,
23:02
and I'm like, well that was if that was all the experimentation I
23:04
needed to know that we should be doing this. So they'll be performing on
23:08
either side of Purple Pingers or Jordan and our violinist kat Oglotham her other band,
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The Ramshackle Army, who have been playing around, you know, for
23:19
years and years. They don't all live in the same city anymore, so
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they don't play as regularly, but when they are in town and the stars
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aligned, this is the first time we'll get to play with them, and
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I love that. At previous shows we've played with our other violinists band,
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Darling Vicious, Ella's band from Sydney, and now we get to play with
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cats band the Ramshackle Army supporting us as well. So yeah, it's just
23:45
an amazing sort of array of like the community coming together bands we've always wanted
23:49
to play with. They're really excited for it all. Oh yeah, brother,
23:55
well I hope we got as well for you. But in the meantime,
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the album When I Left Sound is out. Now What I Did?
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I've listened before the interview made and it's a polity shit on there. Bro.
24:03
It's really what I'm so best like you like it man, No,
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it's it all. And I'm like, if I pass through a Richamond station
24:10
to room mate, I'll pop in and bring you a beer. Come and
24:12
stay hi, don't let them, don't let the manager see you. Give
24:15
me a beer. What time you're working, I'll be working from four o'clock
24:22
in the arbow till midnight. And that's all three nights of the Taylor's We've
24:25
shows, sweet as will. I'm anticipating at some point she's going to want
24:29
to come down to get an autograph from me. Well, I'll tell her
24:33
that I've got your number and I'll sell her that if you might be able
24:34
to line her up. All right, very nice to hopefully you catch up
24:41
for beer to thank you so much for everything. Pleasure bath, take care.
25:15
I don't you let say you shut up? He says that twisted riding
25:26
there, you clan out and joining the magica crowd. You want to funtion,
25:33
disgust, bring brother, turn up your mother, brother had said,
26:17
sowin jump pies stem touched by logic, so up, got such up,
26:30
don't dresson picks off ry mother, he's too big. Mother, fuck up
27:11
you f find you south where George Ballin is the holight Your pace shot die
27:19
there, ridden down, wid shot SHA's please say so. Your mouth shut. Who