The Bads "So Alive". New Zealand release April 27, 2009. 

Neil Young, Dusty Springfield, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Jimmy Webb, David Bowie, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, T-Rex, Led Zeppelin, Husker Du and Willie Nelson.

Those were the names given by Dianne Swann and Brett Adams as early musical interests. It doesn’t mean that all of those artists inspired the music of The Bads, but it does mean that those legendary names made a crucial impact on the musicians at a crucial time.

Dianne Swann and Brett Adams have worked together since 1992. Swann you will remember from When The Cat’s Away – NZ’s successful 1980s vocal group. But she had already established herself as a writer in the group Everything that Flies, an act she is still proud of, pleasantly surprised people remember the band’s material. Adams has recently been playing guitar for Tim Finn and back when he was 19 he played with The Mockers.

From The Julie Dolphin, as the pair first called themselves in London, to Boom Boom Mancini and now to The Bads.

Says Swann, “It was pretty magical when Brett and I started writing together in London when we wrote the stuff for The Julie Dolphin...we had this kind of telepathy which was exciting”, the pair often write separately, but always with the collective project in mind. Adds Adams, “what we do now is quite different to what we did in The Julie Dolphin, a lot less noisy anyway but it does not feel like any radical change to me”.

The thing that is not different is that the song comes first. So Alive, the new album by The Bads is filled with gorgeous melodies and pop songs that shimmer with a country vibe, with indie intentions, with straight-ahead rock; clean guitar lines mixing with quirky ideas. Pitch-perfect harmonies sitting inside precise rhythms – each song feels like a mini-masterpiece that has been worked at, honed, cradled, loved, learned and forgotten then learned again.

“It probably falls in to the rock/alt-country label”, reckons Adams. Or, as Swann says, “Rockin Poppin Altin Country!”

So Alive certainly feels like that – and it feels very alive too. Where previous album Earth From Space had a majestic sweep to it and a grace that was felt across several listens as songs made themselves known, the tunes that make up So Alive have an urgency, whether it’s the Bic Runga-of-Birds-like ‘Pack Your Demons’ or the country shuffle of the title track.

Both Adams and Swann are not concerned with being identified as “NZ musicians” – but they are Kiwis and the good music of The Bads is made here. Swann says it started out “as just a kind of antidote to the disappointment we experienced in the UK. We recorded Earth From Space at home mostly...and were not even really serious about putting it out...then once we put it out on a small label and thought ‘bugger why didn't we make more of this?’ Earth From Space found fans, among them Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan who introduced the band to an Australian audience on TV and raved. Music from the same album was used in American TV Series Kyle XY and The Unit, and also lead to the band composing for the NZ TV series Hunger For The Wild. (The title track from the new album falls out of that work.)

Right now the band is right into playing live again and the new songs do have a more live feel to them. “I guess also we have just given into the fact that we love Alt country or country rock or what ever the hell you might like to call it...and we are not holding back!” says Dianne.

The not-holding-back will see twists of the duo’s shared love of Wilco (‘Gracious’) mix with the melodic/harmonic sweet simplicity of the first Goldenhorse record (‘Say Your Goodbyes’).

The feeling that The Bads has moved from a good project to a great band is clear on every track of So Alive, and there’s certainly no shame in it being a Kiwi album – as ‘Helensville’ very much celebrates, taking Split Enz-y mandolin and the feel of George And Queen to create a bit of country-bumpkin busking.

There is a sense of childlike wonder, of discovery, in the songs created by The Bads. And there’s also a feeling of actively adding to the canon of song, of taking a melodic idea and placing it down not only for people to listen to but for it to be part of a larger something – part of this thing called music that we all love.

There’s also a modesty to The Bads who, as The Julie Dolphin, opened for Green Day and collaborated with Radiohead. Dianne has some strong memories of unique experiences (“seeing Frank Black in the audience when we played at the 100 Club in London” and “collaborating with Tom Yorke [Radiohead] on The Bends Sessions and playing keyboards on Street Spirit at the Astoria would have to be up there”). Brett has tales of playing with Tim Finn and The Mockers. But what is most important – to both – is playing strong songs. That comes, as Dianne sums up, “by being inspired by writing, by wanting to write the best songs you can”.

So, you have the new album by The Bads – arriving four years after Earth From Space and 17 years after the two songwriters responsible first started working together. Good things take time.

www.thebads.com

‘So Alive is released 27 April 2009 on Mana/Warner Music