MySpacea place for friends

Like all worthwhile journeys, the road to Ringing In The Sane was not without its bumps.
A couple of exploding guitarists had the band marking time, until lead guitarist Luke
Szabo finally completed the line-up in early 2007, making the move from Melbourne and
his previous band The Scissor File.

The turmoil ultimately fed into the album’s title – Ringing In The Sane. “It’s about those
times when you think you’re mentally falling apart, yet somehow it all comes together,”
says singer Pete Wood. “We’d worked so hard and we really believed in the songs. The
Heart Attacks EP connected with more people than we thought it ever would, so it would
have been a cop out to let the band fall apart. It just made everyone more determined.”

It fed into the songs on the album, too. “That was the biggest thing happening in my
life – whether the band was falling apart or growing strong,” Wood says. “There’s this
running theme through the whole thing, little tales of the Adelaide underground and
certain times in the band. ‘Strike the matches’ (from For the Restless) could be the
album’s catchcry – it’s about all the amazing things that go on behind the scenes
with bands in the city, in any city.”

Guitarist Luke’s last minute arrival points to another running The Hot Lies theme
– things are better if they come in the 11th hour. Take Running Low, a song destined
to soundtrack the summer of 2007/08 – “There must be something in the water, we’ve
been a ticking clock all summer…” Wood sings. It’s Ringing In The Sane’s emotive
showstopper, and it will have teenagers dreaming of the last kiss of summer, and the
older crowd shedding a tear of regret. But The Hot Lies see it differently.

“Every time it gets to the line: ‘Counting the seconds down, the 11th hour…’ I just
picture all of us freaking out in the studio, trying to track one last song on a laptop,”
Wood laughs. “But even when it was getting to the 11th hour, I wasn’t stressing because
I knew when this band puts their mind to it they can make it happen. I was copping it in
the studio on the last night – it was four in the morning and Jared was like, ‘You’ve done
it again, you’ve left everything ’til the last minute, and somehow it worked out.’ That’s just
how it works for us.”

Ringing In The Sane also marks a meeting of Oz rock’s “the now” and “the next”
– Eskimo Joe contribute to two songs on the album. The Perth get-together was a
“let’s try something and see what happens” kind of songwriting session, says Wood,
and it resulted in Tokyo – all coiled-up rock intensity and a can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head
chorus – and Under Your Skin – deeply personal, and as indelible as the tattoos it so
vividly describes.

“We weren’t scared to change the music after working with the Eskimo Joe guys,” Wood
says. “To rip the guts out of a song, turn things upside down. When we came back from
Perth, there was a new energy in our songwriting.”

“It never felt like it needed to go down that path,” Wood says. “Songwriting is a massive
thing for us – people can fall in love with pieces of the music, but we wanted people to
fall in love with the entire song. It’s real easy if you’re writing one of those records to go
‘What’s the song lacking? It needs one of those bits’. But if you want someone to fall in
love with the songs, you can’t resort to that, it’s got to be a journey. And that’s what this
album turned out to be.”

Ringing In The Sane – geddit? You will.