HUSBAND

Newlywed

Consisting of many familiar faces from around the local scene, Husband is an epic indie rock band led by Michael Paolino. MATTHEW HOGAN chats to Husband ahead of the band’s debut EP launch at Mojo’s this Friday, November 18.

You may recognise Michael Paolino from his time spent at the indie rock trio Luna Parade. But despite the fact that Husband and Luna Parade share several members, Paolino swears they’re completely different projects.
“Playing in Luna Parade was great fun and by the end of the band‘s life we were writing some really heavy ‘wall of sound’ kind of stuff,” he begins. “It was a shame we never recorded any of those last tracks because I think they were our best songs. We wrapped it up because we had changed our style too many times and were unable to define ourselves musically. At the same time, I love playing in a band with Darrell [Sundai – drums] and Sebastian [Kane – bass], so when I wrote the Husband EP I showed it to them and asked them to be a part of it. The dynamic between us is different now.”
The band is completed by Lacey’s Connor Gamble on keys and Carl Fox on guitar. Together they play the songs Paolino wrote around the time he got married, but how does being a newlywed translate to the brooding songs found on the EP? “I never felt I had a story worth telling in my music,” he says. “When my wife Sarah proposed I started thinking about marriage and what it meant to me. I spoke to people about their marriages and I heard a lot of stories and heaps of advice. There was so much I decided to write about it. Love and relationships are intense and sometimes things aren’t perfect. The main piece of advice I took from my friends and family was that both people have to want to be together bad enough for it to work out. I want to write about the darker side of marriage as well as the good times because it’s all marriage.”
The EP quickly took shape after Paolino bashed it out in his studio late last year. “Every song started as an acoustic track,” he says. “From there I just kept adding things and experimenting with different sounds I wouldn’t normally use. Eventually I found a sound which I felt was me. After I finished the demos we went to Soundbaker Studios where Rob Agostini recorded my vocals and Darrell on drums. Rob really got the sound I was looking for and it showed though in the tracks which he mixed and mastered.”
Since then Husband has become known to circles outside of Perth and Australia thanks to an expansive marketing campaign. “I felt now was the right time to step it up marketing wise because I genuinely love this new project,” Paolino professes. “I’ve been fortunate to have amazing support from my manager Rachel Davison who is always thinking up new ways of getting the music heard. We’ve been working with a US publicist who use their contacts to submit the music to various blogs. Publicists cost a bit of money, so if you’re looking to get your music out there it’s worth spending.”
Set to play their first ever live show at their launch this Friday, with Simone & Girlfunkle and Kathryn Rollins in support, the band is already looking to the future. “I have started writing the next EP which I want to release pretty soon,” the frontman says. “Next year Husband is planning to gig pretty heavily.”