After making appearances at some of Australia’s hottest festivals and supporting some of the country’s best bands, Queensland’s Cold and Need are starting to build some serious buzz. I recently caught up with the band’s drummer Jared Daly to chat about their new EP Colours and Shapes and their upcoming shows.
You’re still making a name for yourself outside Queensland, so what do we all need to know about Cold and Need?
Cold and Need are a 4-piece Brisbane rock band. Our songs are loud and fun, we want you to clap and sing along at our shows.
You’ve just released your second EP Colours and Shapes. What can you tell me about it?
Colours and Shapes was definitely our most focused effort at a release. We spent countless hours/months demo-ing, e-mailing tracks across states, completely pulling material apart then re-working, changing sounds, trying new gear. At one point our producer Simon Leach actually told me to, “put that fricken China symbol away and never bring it back out”! So that really shows we tried our hardest to explore as many different possibilities, while slowly driving Tristan Hoogland, our Brisbane engineer/producer, crazy.
The EP features the single “Kaleidoscope.” What was it about that song that made you want to release it?
“Kaleidoscope” was a late inclusion in the EP. We had already written and trialled the other tracks written for the new EP live, and at one rehearsal something just clicked and we wrote “Kaleidoscope” within a two-hour period, recorded it on an iPhone and e-mailed it to Simon in Melbourne to be critiqued. We were very focused on writing a tune with a strong guitar line as it was something that we thought we hadn’t focused enough on in the past, so that was a big factor in us releasing it as the first single.
How do you think you’ve grown between releasing your self-titled debut and Colours and Shapes?
I think we have definitely grown as a band between the two releases. Our self-titled EP was mostly written by Tom. This time round Chris has stepped up and brought a new element to our music. Along with the songwriting, our self-titled EP was approached with the overall plan to get in and get out, get the songs recorded and released quickly so we could show people that hadn’t seen us play what we can do. With Colours and Shapes we were prepared, we had an extensive pre-production plan with trips to Melbourne to work with Simon Leach (Little Birdy) and spent a lot more time in the studio.
You’ve been playing a few shows here and there to support the EP’s release. How have they been going?
The recent shows have blown us away. We made a decision a couple months ago to try something a bit different when it came time to release the new EP. In the past when it was time to release something new, we went to the same venue and went through the same process. As everyone knows, there is definitely not enough venues in Brisbane for original bands, so when we were approached by a new venue called the Barlow to launch their venue with our EP show we thought, let’s give it a go. Whether or not it has helped us with getting Colours and Shapes heard, we are happy to be trying new things and gaining new experiences.
Some of my favourite Cold and Need performances that I’ve seen online have been acoustic. How do you feel about stripping songs back?
Stripping songs back is fun. We spend most of our time when recording adding more and more (we used five guitar amps and four snare drums during the recording of Colours and Shapes), so when we are asked to play our songs acoustically we always approach it with an attitude not to just strip the songs down but to find another way to express a certain feel or moment in the song. Keeps it interesting.
Your shows get rave reviews and regularly sell out. What do you think you bring to the stage that gets people so excited?
I guess we don’t like to play the same set very often. There are a few elements to our show that sometimes can force you to stick to a formula. We play to a click track and use an array of synth backings and percussion tracks to bring the feel and sound of our recordings to our live show. But we constantly change our backing samples, move sections around, add more instruments on stage (keyboards and percussion), and in recent shows, started including a cover in the set. Along with the fact that playing live is the whole reason we want to play in this band and we are always writing new material to keep the set fresh.
What do you love about performing?
There’s nothing like hearing a crowd of people that you don’t know sing your lyrics back at you; we still can’t get used to that feeling. At the Colours and Shapes launch we were blown away by the amount of people that knew the words to the songs. I guess what we love most about playing live is getting to share the energy of the song with a couple hundred people at once. So much fun.
You’ve already played some big name festivals and supported some great bands. What have been some of your career highlights so far?
I’m sure that every member of the band will have a different highlight and favourite moment, but I can definitely give you two moments that we all rate highly. One is getting a song played on JJJ for the first time; that has been a goal for such a long time. The second is a little bit more personal to the band. Our producer Simon has always been really supportive of us BUT is a tough man to please, so when we sent the finished version of Colours and Shapes to him and he told us it sounded “great” instead of the usual “ok/not bad/getting there/change this/fix that,” we couldn’t believe our ears. It meant a lot, definitely a personal highlight.
Now that we’ve looked at the past, what’s ahead for Cold and Need?
We have set ourselves a few goals. We want to start touring more regularly interstate, find our way into a few more festival lineups and release our first attempt at a music video. Just get our music out there and see what happens really.
See why everyone’s raving about Cold and Need when they play Sydney’s Oxford Arts Factory on September 21.