Throughout their 17 year history, the need to constantly evolve as a band has made Hooverphonic impossible to place into a particular musical genre. Their first album, “A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular,” had a definite trip hop sound to it, but soon they began adding strings for a more lush, organic sound. They’ve continued to surprise listeners over the years, as they did on “The President of the LSD Golf Club” in 2007, where they shifted to a stripped-down, more psychedelic rock-oriented style. Hooverphonic is the type of band you should never write off if you’re not happy with a change in style–chances are that next time around they’ll sound a bit different again. The core of Hooverphonic over the years has been Alex Callier and Raymond Geerts. They’ve gone through several lead singers, with Noémie Wolfs currently on vocals. Hooverphonic’s 2010 album “The Night Before” has FINALLY been released in the US; in a Skype interview, Callier discussed the release, the band’s history, creative process, and more.
Like many of your recent albums, there was quite a delay between the original and US release of “The Night Before”–why?
Alex Callier: “For us, what changed in the last 17 years is that back in the early days, you just released an album worldwide. Sony would just put it out worldwide. Now, we really want to find the right label in every country–a label that is really convinced and enthusiastic. So it took us about a year and a half to find one that was really enthusiastic and said ‘we really really want to do this.’ And that’s why we said ‘ok, if you really want to do it, then we’ll go for it.’ In every country we do that, because we want to work with people who really are not just doing their job. We want to work with people who are really believing in what we do. So that’s why it took so long.”
Are you worried that this will lead to piracy, with fans in different countries who don’t want to wait?
Alex Callier: “Well yes, sure, but that’s the world we’re living in. We don’t care too much. It took us a couple of years to get used to the idea, but it is what it is. We still believe that real fans buy our music, people who really love what we do will buy it. And if they don’t buy our album, they will come to see our shows. It’s true that over the last 17 years, our income kind of went from selling records to more of the live side. We sell a lot of tickets here in Europe, and don’t have any financial problems, so for us it’s ok. Of course in the beginning, when the internet just started being very popular, it was a shock. But after a while you adapt. We just try to see everything positive–positive energy is the best thing. It’s like when singers leave the band, we try to see things positively and say ‘well let’s look for another one, an even better one.’ The reason why Raymond and I have been doing this so long is because we’re very positive and enthusiastic about everything we do.
You have worked with a few different vocalists. When looking for a new singer, do you focus on finding one who will bring something new to the sound, or making sure they can sing the existing material well?
Alex Callier: “It’s a balance. We’re looking for someone who can bring something new to the band, but at the same time….when we first started looking for a new singer, we worked with a few people on new material and it was really fantastic. And they we said ‘well let’s do 2Wicky and Mad About You and Eden,’ tracks we have to play live. Then we’d find ‘oh no, this isn’t working.’ The next step was that whenever we contacted a new singer, we did it the other way around. We started first with the old material and if that worked out, we started working on some new material. It took us two years I think before we finally found someone in our back garden. That’s the funny bit, we got more than a thousand applications from girls all over the world; Americans, English, even Russian, Polish, Italian, whatever. And finally we ended up with a singer from Belgium, which was something we didn’t expect, actually. It was quite funny. For us, finding someone who can re-interpret our old stuff, really give it a new life, that was really important of course.”
When you are writing and working in the studio, are you thinking about how your music will be presented live?
Alex Callier: “No we don’t. In the studio we’re like ‘ok, now we need an orchestra, a 40 piece orchestra!’ and then live we’d go ‘ok, how are we going to play this live? I don’t know, maybe we should downsize it.’ Most of the time we see the live concert as completely different than an album. And also, when I go to concerts by other bands, I don’t like them to copy their albums live. Why bother? I want to see people reinterpret their work. We sometimes do a tour without strings. This time we have a 12 piece string orchestra, last time we were touring with a 40 piece orchestra. With ‘President of the LSD Golf Club’ it was just mellotrons and keyboards. So when we’re recording a track, we don’t really think about it. But, I have to admit that through the years, we’ve noticed that whenever we have strings with us on the road, the crowds go ballistic. So the strings are really important. Since last year, we’ve been been constantly touring with strings, whether it’s 12 or 40 piece, we need strings. I think we’re always going to need them from now on.”
Are there particular tracks that changed considerably from their studio to live versions?
Alex Callier: “Oh yeah, ‘Mad About You’ we did a new version of. ‘Eden’ we played for years in a different version but for the past year have been playing the original. We tend to change things. ‘2Wicky’ is quite close to the original, while for years we played it in more of a bluesy way. So yeah, every tour we try to take a couple of tracks back to the original way, and a couple of other tracks we kind of completely rearrange. Like ‘Renaissance Affair,’ which was on the 2nd album, we made a completely new version on this last tour. Every tour needs to be different, every time people come to see us, they need to be amazed and surprised. It’s like going to the same restaurant every week and if it’s every week exactly the same, after a while you’re fed up with it. So we just need to evolve constantly, I think. With everything in life, not just music, everything needs to evolve.”
From: https://chaoscontrol.com/hooverphonic/
