“It's not improvised if you fall back on the same riffs and grooves.
“We were playing some of these shows where we'd improvise but because we're doing it every night, there wasn't anything fresh coming out of it,” says Simpson. This, combined with their hectic live schedule, meant that they were finding themselves somewhat restricted by the way things were unfolding. “That was the story, like we’re this band who make it all up as they go along, the whole album you can hear them thinking it up as they play it, all the words are made up on the spot and stuff.” “The whole notion of being an improvisational band was pushed a bit harder than was actually the case,” says Simpson, with bassist Cameron Picton adding, “People pick up on certain aspects of your story and you don't really have much in the way of control over what gets picked up on.” Greep also echoes this. The move away from improvising is less of a leap than some may think, the band say. So we were making a conscious effort to change the music.” “When you get into a situation with unlimited time, you really start to think about what you want to do in music, to ask what kind of music you want to make, and then realising how many times you have actually thought about that and been honest about it. Greep: “If you're playing and touring all the time you get into a sense of wanting to have some control over things and not wanting to do anything wrong,” he says.
So we fell into patterns of jamming and rehearsing but the productivity levels weren't as high because it was hard to get in the zone when you knew you had a 5am flight to catch.” “For a few years we hadn't had the time to be in a space together for a few weeks to try and create something new. “It was a welcome change because things had been so hectic,” says drummer Morgan Simpson. The forced downtime of the pandemic brought about a much-needed break and reflective pause period for them. The band that once seemed evangelical about the infinite power and possibilities of improvisation have now ditched it in favour of structured songwriting. The change was already there but then the necessity of doing stuff separately accelerated that change.” “After the first album we had written songs already trying to set in place a new direction but when COVID hit it gave us even more of an opportunity, individually, to further go down rabbit holes. “We wanted to try something completely different,” says Greep. However, on their second album Cavalcade they have honed that momentum into a record that is, at times, a planet shift away from the last record tonally.
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