Interview: Girls in Hawaii

Girls in Hawaii is a Belgian band who releases Hello Strange, an unplugged album today. Hello Strange has been made and recorded in the follow-up of Everest tour - a tour made of 130 dates all over the world. It was thought as a creative digression, a way to make a fresh start after Everest - an album marked by loss. Hello Strange is the outcome of 3 weeks working on Girls in Hawaii's songs rearrangement to stimulate creativeness before the making of their future fourth studio album.

We had the chance to talk with Antoine about the band, its fantaisies and the making of the unplugged version of their songs.

Please introduce the band: when did you form around music and what unites you as a band?

The band’s story starts with Lionel and I, Antoine. We have met in high-school when we were 16 or 17. Something matched instantly between us, we spent two years in school making inside jokes and stuff; we spoke a lot about music. Both of us had many bands; we were grunge fans listening to Nirvana, Pixies, Grand Daddy… Then we kind of lost sight of each other few years after graduation. When we were in college, we wanted to something together that was more than just grab a drink from time to time. So we had this project of starting a music band, but we didn’t want to bother with rehearsing places, drummer, bassist, and issues regarding common schedule. So we bought a small portable studio, a beatbox, a synthesizer, a bass and a guitar. We have started to make song just the two of us. And the band has been really born from the possibility to record an entire song together, to be able to communicate and work together on arrangements. We didn’t want to just do guitar and voices tracks and rehearse in place, but we wanted to build up a whole universe. It was easier to do it together because we share influences and we talk easily to one another; also we knew what we wanted to do from the start. The rest of the band rapidly came around the project to make live show. And so slowly, they have gain importance in the decision making - it has been 10 years now since we make music professionally. Everest [their last studio album, editor’s note] for example, it’s really a record that we made all six together. Lionel and I still write at the beginning, but we work more and more all 6 together in studio.

You are all a bit multi-instrumentalist, did you develop those skills late in life or did you learn to play many instruments earlier?

No one learnt music theory, we pretty much all learnt by listening to Nirvana. I have started by playing the bass, and then I’ve learnt the guitar – I almost only play the guitar now. So we all pretty much learn to sing and play in our own room by doing covers. And my little brother [Denis died in a car accident in 2010 – editor’s note] was a drummer, so there were always drums at my house. But all in all if we are a bit multi-instrumentalists, it’s rather because we had to make our first album just Lionel and I, so we had to play a little bit of everything: beatbox, synth, piano… We’re not that good at playing a certain instrument but we are able to play different instruments and manage to create arrangements.

In an interview you gave for DumDum – a French music webzine, you said that you took a special care to the songs succession in concert so as to make sense and tell the public a story. Therefore how did you pick the songs for this unplugged album that was recorded live? Which story did you want to tell?

I don’t know if we really want to tell a story – even in our albums – I would rather say we want to evoke a journey, a kind of landscape, a series of moments. We do think a lot about our album’s setlist and our show’s tracklist. We take a large amount of time to create coherent setlist or tracklist. Generally once we hold about two songs that goes together well, we build something around it for our tour. We’re not the kind of band that brainstorm around a table before each date to define which track we open with and so on. We are rather willing to unite intimate moments and then go on something with more energy, and go back to a brighter moment. In fact it’s rather a series of moments  that generally ends up in a climax at the end of our show. We work a lot with our sound engineer and our lights engineer in order to develop all of this: songs succession, bloc of songs between which we won’t talk because it would concentrate something strong, and then moments that requires break… It’s about bringing dynamics and rhythm to our shows and albums.

 Then how did you proceed to choose the songs featuring on Hello Strange – since they are all already part of you discography?

At first, this project – even if it ends up on an album – was first and foremost a tour project. We have toured about ten months in an electric setting, with rather rock gigs. However in our records, there were always different parts: a really electric part, and another that was more intimate, folk and chill-out. This last part is something that we haven’t yet manage to bring on stage on an electric tour – for several reasons: because we don’t have the right gear, because venues are too big, because people crave for rock stuff and so do we. So we wanted to do a kind of tour “appendix” for a while; something that’ll be lay back, acoustic, in seated venues or theater with a special setting, special lights and stuff like this. So when we have choose the songs, we choose ambient tracks that we almost systematically pushed aside on regular shows.

And for other songs, we choose them because we didn’t want to do something too soft, acoustic only. So we simply wanted to completely revisit some of our tracks. We took songs that we’ve played a lot on electric tour, tried to twist them and see what the result will evoke.

However for Hello Strange tracklist, we deliberately put aside all our most famous tracks that we’ve been playing for ten years. We were just like “ok so we are gonna do 20 dates only, so we’ll pick songs people know less, that are more special, more acoustic and chill-out.” Basically we picked 25 tracks and we worked on it during a month. At the end 17 songs made it on the tracklist. For some tracks we tried for 24 hour but it wasn’t working. This month was a kind of laboratory to try out things.

You toured in a lot of different countries, did those stays – even if they were really short – inspired you, especially in the instruments you use for Hello Strange (Indian harmonium, crystal glasses…)?

I don’t know if we were influenced by any of the countries we travelled to… I would say no because nowadays we more or less know the world culturally speaking. I’d say we are more influenced the music we have been listening to – some being world music. On our behalf, there just this will to find a ludic approach to music again. Because at the beginning, when we were playing the guitar as teenager, it was just about struggling for days to learn something, and be happy once we master it. Every day we were learning something new. And then doing it professionally, we realized that on a long electric tour like we previously did, when you are stuck on playing a certain instrument – be it the guitar or the drums, you grow automatisms and it becomes less and less fun to play for a year. So after that we were eager to explore the possibilities an go on trying to play each one of us different instruments. Everyone can play with any instrument he wants to play with. So for 2 to 3 months we collected lots of instruments, diverse instruments, a lot of weird stuff even! And on stage, there are instruments everywhere: we go from one instrument to another, there’s a lot of movements on stage. There’s a vibraharp – it’s kind of a huge xylophone: we are 3 or 4 to play on it depending to the song we’re performing. There’s also a piano, marimbas, weird kind of organs, an Indian harmonium… Speaking of Indian harmonium, it’s typically the kind of instrument that we could have discover during one of our travels. But it wasn’t the case, I’ve never been to India yet [he laughs]. I actually discover it through a friend, who have been to India, bought one and show me how to play with it. It triggered my envy to test it.

What kind of tracks could we find in the Girls in Hawaii’s playlist during the making of Hello Strange ?

Actually nothing, because the making was very short. We have toured for a year, and we decided to close our Everest project by a month of tour with a complete different setting in seated theater. We wanted to record an album live on the two first concert dates. So basically it was 3 weeks of creation, 2 weeks to rehearse, and 2 recorded live show. Then the record was mixed, the mastering and the cover art were done in a month and a half. It was super intense so we were pretty much all fed up with music. Instead we pretty much all read a book or watch a series to relax.

Fun question now: In a Brain interview –French webzine – you said that your fantasy wasn’t to make up with a girl in Hawaii but to actually be a girl in Hawaii. What kind of vahine would you be?

Did we really said that!? [he laughs] To be a girl in Hawaii… in people’s mind and in cliché that means that she’d be pretty, I guess, seductive and sexy…

Actually we’ve never been to Hawaii, and I don’t think we’d ever will. We don’t necessarily want to go there, but to us it evokes something unreal. It’s a kind of box where we would have put all our fantasy back when we were 25. It was just us craving to leave Brussels rainy days, to leave our old attic or old cave where we were recording. It was this fantasy of heat, sun, mildness, rest and parties…

So if I were a girl in Hawaii, I guess I wouldn’t have any financial issue, nor would I have to work. I would want to be a girl simply in this ideal of delight, idleness, charm… Simply laying on a beach!

Special thanks to Antoine for his time, to Delphine Caurette and Marie & Tara for their precious help.
Photo credits: Olivier Donnet