an interview with Outright’s singer Jelena Goluza

In the lead-up to the hardcore band’s new release, Outright’s singer Jelena Goluza talks music, inspiration, and elections

 

A melodious ferocity runs through the new album by metallic hardcore band Outright. Keep You Warm will be released July 15th through the Australian band’s own label, Rage and Reason Records. I took this release as an opportunity to hear directly from the band’s vocalist, Jelena Goluza.

 

Damon: Jelena, thank you for your time! I read that the band formed around 2010. Since then, the band has released a couple of EPs and is about to release its second LP. You have also toured with bands like Propagandhi, Refused, and Rise Against. How has life since 2010 shaped you? How do you think experiences have affected the band and the music?

 

Jelena Goluza: I think playing in this band has provided a lot of catharsis over the years. Having a voice and the energetic output has enabled us to express a lot of what we’ve been through or feel. While this still comes through in our new music, there’s also more reflection and introspection that comes with having the space to push beyond the urgency to focus on other things. 

 

Musically, and with many line-up changes over the years, we’ve evolved to play a broader range of heavy punk that leans both to metal and melody at times, faster in some songs and much slower in others. It’s nice to stretch our legs. In the past 12 years, we’ve had the opportunity to play anything from small art spaces to enormous arena shows, and we’ve learned to fill each space differently and take our own special memories from them.

 

D: How has the experience and work of being in a band changed?

 

JG: As a band member and our label owner, I’ve definitely experienced the impact of increasing digitisation, and it hurts. Normally, record sales would cover all the costs for production so we can keep doing what we do, but online streaming has taken all that away. There’s also the added burden of having to invest in more video clips just to have that online presence. I mean, it’s fantastic to be creative in more ways and to work with brilliant filmmakers to do that, but the financial pressure is hard to manage.

 

We’ve noticed time management and touring gets harder as we get older and carry other responsibilities in life, but we wouldn’t take it on if it wasn’t fun and meaningful for us and important to back up what we do in the studio.

 

D: The album is remarkably focused—the songwriting and performances keep up a sense of passion and enthusiasm. And I like how the aggression is balanced by guitar melodies. For example, “Truth Teller” has a nice mix of urgency and drama, and I really liked the parts that come at 1:07 on “Tied Through Time” and 2 minutes into “Tyrants Vultures.” Please describe the song-writing process. How do you and the band write songs? What comes first?

 

JG: Thanks for being so kind. It’s nice when other people pick up the same bits we love in those songs. The riffs come first. Always. Someone will come with an idea, we workshop it together, and then when it finds some form, I’ll write lyrics to match the mood and we go from there, adding layered guitars and backups. I always love seeing what random changes get made at the last minute in the studio, too, just to lift the track some more. We compile a library of ideas, which is really useful for those times when we can resurrect a scrapped idea that ends up being perfect for something else. It was interesting adapting to a virtual song-writing process while our city was in lockdown for many months due to COVID, but I’m proud of how we made it through.

 

D: What non-musical works or forms of art and media influence you and the music?

 

JG: Aboriginal artists like @coffinbirth teach us a lot about the First Nations experience and inspire our solidarity and action. Our song “Tied Through Time” is informed by reflections of the Bringing Them Home report on its 20th anniversary. Forced removals in modern child protection policies are known to cause what is now considered a second stolen generation event among First Nations peoples in Australia, yet Aboriginal people remain the longest-surviving civilisation in the world and should be celebrated.

 

The song “Silent Spring” is inspired by Rachel Carson's book of the same name published in 1962. It taught us about the environmental impact of pesticides, and we’ve since learned the risk and tragedy when we don’t pay attention to science, even for our own survival.

 

Our video for “The Hammer” takes the premise from Maleus Maleficarum and flips it with the influence of various films and plays based on the history of witch hunts.

 

More generally, we’re influenced by intersectional progressive literature and commentators, artists like Weiwei and Haring and political documentaries and podcasts.

 

D: What makes you feel good?

 

JG: Personally, exercise and nature always makes me feel good. I think what makes the band feel good is knowing we’ve tried our best and connected with others who relate to what we do. Everything always comes back to community-building, creativity, and catharsis.

 

D: In the US, where I am, news of Australia’s most recent election was largely crowded out by domestic stories and the war in Ukraine. What are your thoughts on Australia’s election?

 

JG: I think our recent federal election was a clear indication that our national community is rising up and speaking for people and the environment. We’ve seen more seats move away from the conservative party to greens and independents than ever before. People have witnessed the crushing impact and disappointment of conservative governments and become more engaged to set things right. I think there was also a strong backlash against the former government for how poorly it handled sexual assault in Parliament and industry, delayed vaccine roll outs, homophobic and transphobic policies, flood and bushfire prevention and relief, constitutional recognition for First Nations people, and corruption. Women spoke out with their votes louder than ever. Young people spoke out with their votes to make a difference when the older generations never acted on their behalf. It’s been the change we’ve been waiting so long for, and we’re invigorated to hold the new government to account to carry that change through.

 

D: What do you think of compulsory voting and Australia’s version of it?

 

JG: I think there are arguments for and against compulsory voting, but I’m satisfied with my experience of it in Australia. I feel it is the best opportunity to engage and capture the views of a wide population and get as close as possible to the level of representation required to comprise a democracy. Even though we have to deal with preferences, we can still vote to ensure our preferences also lean in the direction we want leadership in. This increases legitimacy and responsiveness more than other electoral systems can. Even though true democracy relies on higher levels of education, compulsory voting is at least a way to engage and inform more people about how policy and power affects them and equalises them in the weight of each vote. Some people think it forces people to vote, but there is nothing stopping someone from lodging a blank paper if they choose to disengage. That said, voting policies aren’t the be-all and end-all. Our entire political system needs to back that up, and its players need to constantly be held to account with transparency and integrity.

something about "Of the Farm" by John Updike

In Of the Farm, a contrived little family engages in some emotional thrust and parry during a weekend on some property in rural Pennsylvania. Joey, a thirty-five-year-old Manhattan executive, his new wife, Peggy, and her smart pre-teen son, Richard, have come to visit Joey's widowed mother, who still lives on the family farmland. Feelings of resentment and self-pity frustrate the gathering.

This slim, 1965 novella by John Updike was the first I have read by the American author. I have mixed feelings about it. Although the emotional scab-picking can seem indulgent in moments, tender feeling comes in the balance—and Updike, with elegant prose, can be forgiven for lingering in anticipation of those little resolutions.

a few words about MJ Lenderman

Noisy guitars, country influences vie on MJ Lenderman's new album.

The latest by MJ Lenderman sometimes sounds hard-luck; other times, hard-bitten. Both fates come in spades on Boat Songs.

“TLC Cage Match” opens with an acoustic guitar soon accompanied by a sympathetic slide guitar, and then comes a lucid Lenderman with his reedy and resigned vocal: “It’s hard to see you fall like that, though I know how much of it’s an act.” “SUV” imposes overdriven guitars and feedback on the bitterly steady beat, and the bad memories are seared in with the lyrics, “I still have the key to your boyfriend’s SUV / I keep it by my bed like a picture of you and me.”

Songs weave back and forth between the sounds of Modest Mouse and Drive-By Truckers.

MJ Lenderman lives in Asheville, North Carolina. His solo work—and his work with the band Wednesday—pulls between 1990s noisy shoegaze guitars and country rock. Boat Songs, released April 29, 2022, is less of a lo-fi production than the Wednesday releases, but the lyrics remain eagerly vulnerable, like on “Under Control” when Lenderman carefully changes chords on an electric guitar and sings, “I had it under control, and then it snow-balled and rolled and rolled and rolled / And I don’t have control anymore.” The reckoning ends with the verse, “I got my wheels in a ditch / There’s a word for this, for what used to scratch the itch / And then some day it quit / Ain’t that a bitch.”

His sense of humor streaks through the album, especially on “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat”—listen and hear the countrified funk of the earnest and absurd. And the album opens with “Hangover Game” and its lyrics that scoff at the myth of Michael Jordan suffering from flu or food poisoning during his epic “Flu Game” against the Utah Jazz in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals: “Oh, he looked so sick / It was all over the news / But it wasn’t the pizza, and it wasn’t the flu / Yeah, I love drinking too / I love drinking too.”

Note: I had not heard of MJ Lenderman until Boat Songs. I am a fan.

something or other

There are worlds on Earth he can never know—like a world in which his wife has a strong Christian faith and offers him her loving arms.

 

some "content" about an album from a Canadian death and thrash band

Besieged returns twelve years later

The engine is flooded with death metal and thrash, and because of that you can smell Violence Beyond All Reason. The new album from Besieged burns from track one with blink-and-you-miss-it atonal solos, spitfire chord changes, barking vocals and guitars, and hyper-driven drums.

“Paragons Of Brutality” opens with drum fills that fall into a groove before slam-dancing from riff to riff. This sound is part of the legacy of the classic Florida-based band, Death. The old way’s piss-stain spread shows darker on “Path to Defy,” where the band tries to piece together pit-bull bites. And drums first lead the attack and then hold back on “Descent into Despotism.”

Powder-flecked riffs spill from pockets and socks, and left turns blur into oncoming traffic.

Besieged started around 2010 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Twelve years somehow passed between the band’s debut, Victims Beyond All Help, and now. The sound is a mix of progenitor Death and Bay-area thrash. The songs sometimes lack flow, and the drums can sound canned as the mix buries the bass and cymbals, but the guitar is a self-cutter and this album is wild.

Unspeakable Axe Records releases Violence Beyond All Reason June 6, 2022.

 

something about lending support

The woman opened the package—the Ukraine flag had arrived from Amazon. She remembered ordering it on Saturday or Sunday and was grateful that she had not picked the big one, having chosen instead the tasteful 18"x27". She still had to find a place for it outside.

The blue and yellow colors were pure and signaled to neighbors that she is informed and feels passionately about the issues—that she, too, stood with the people of Ukraine.

Some weeks later, returning from her walk, the woman paused and counted three other Ukraine flags on her block. How long, she wondered, do we keep these up?

something about “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates

American author Richard Yates gives voice to friends of loneliness. He made an extraordinary debut in 1961 with Revolutionary Road. The novel’s aching pulse beats loudly, softens, then redoubles louder than before. Characters struggle to make sense of the feeling that they will never live the life they imagined. Yates once said, "If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy."

Revolutionary Road plays out in East Coast suburbia, 1955. Frank and April Wheeler think they are in a rut. Frank, a charismatic intellectual in his college years, no longer finds ironic amusement in the nine-to-five workaday office life; April, an attractive, artistically inclined woman, is home with the kids and a growing sense of desperation. April persuades Frank to relocate their young family to Paris, where the promise of real life now awaits. This promise of change gives new spark to their relationship—but the spark dissolves in a thread of smoke.

One dampening force is the neighbor’s adult son, whose borderline personality and candidly delivered, jaded insight depicts the Wheeler's problems plainly. Then April discovers she is pregnant, conceiving reckonings. The desperation buried in the Wheeler’s unsatisfied lives surfaces for air, and change comes.

Yates once described Revolutionary Road’s subtext:

I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the fifties, there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price.

This quote surprises me in a way, though, because Yates sounds like he is criticizing people like Frank Wheeler because he could not leave the security of the suburban life and office job; but in reading Revolutionary Road, I thought Yates was criticizing Frank because he thought he deserved anything else.

Notes:

• Quotes from Boston Review, October 1999, and Ploughshares, Winter 1972.
• Revolutionary Road, the 2008 movie directed by Sam Mendes, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, but Michael Shannon owns it, of course, with his performance.
• Previous posts: something about Richard Yates and something about "The Easter Parade" by Richard Yates