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Spotlight On End of Fashion's Justin Burford
Editorial Review“I feel like our first album was our youthful, naive album and this album is like the angsty teenager” says Justin Burford of new album Book of Lies.
Editorial Review
Perth band End of Fashion (EOF) first appeared on the radar back in 2003 with the four-track EP Anything Goes/ Rough Diamonds, before really getting our attention in 2005 with their self-titled debut album. The album's guitar-driven pop single O Yeah (written in one session so the band could win a bet) was an instant hit and scored the band ARIAs for 'Breakthrough Artist - Single' and 'Best Video' as well as a nomination for 'Song of the Year'. Following their early heady success, the band took a low-key approach away from the spotlight, later emerging with their second full-length album Book of Lies, launching September 2008. With fans already wild for the lead single Fussy (press play on your left to check out the video), lead singer and songwriter Justin Burford takes Citysearch on End of Fashion's latest musical odyssey …CS: Perth is producing a lot of great bands - Eskimo Joe, Little Birdy, Sleepy Jackson, Jebediah - how's it happening?
JB: I don't know really! (he laughs). We just kind of do our thing over here … part of it's the isolation, it allows you to focus on endeavours that, in a larger city, are probably harder to pursue.
CS: You're about to release sophomore album Book of Lies, was it a difficult album to do?
JB: We avoided putting out something that we thought was substandard by taking our time with it - it'll be over three years since the first record came out.
CS: And you've been quiet between albums …
JB: That was the idea. We didn't get massively huge off the first album, but we got probably more success than we were expecting … we didn't want to follow up with something that cheapened it at all for us, so we decided to put our heads down and get busy. We raised our head again towards the end of last year saying, 'Ok, we think we're ready to make a record' - that was after eight months of writing!
CS: Do you see the album as a follow on?
JB: There are elements of End of Fashion that will follow on regardless (but) we felt like we really needed to move on from the first album. I don't think it was conscious or deliberate - we're not the same people that we were when we made that first record - we have grown up!
CS: End of Fashion's line-up has changed for this album
JB: Nick Johnsson decided to leave it alone during the writing of the album, but that was more to do with the fact we were sitting around writing, and that's not the drummer's favourite thing to do! (he laughs). We got our original drummer - Mike Hobbs - back in the fold to finish demoing with us, and it was natural to get him on the album and now he's part of the line-up again.
CS: Did it make a difference to the new album?
JB: The general sense of ownership was probably one of the big differences between the albums. It feels like with the first album we just wrote a bunch of songs and went on tour and we were this fun touring live band and then we went away and made a record with this big American producer and it took some of ourselves out of it … I think it's a good record and I'm not dissing on it, but the experience for us coming away from [Book of Lies] was far more satisfying because we've written these songs, we've had a chance to work on them together as a band and we've recorded them with a producer of our choice in our home town. That's better, we needed to do that.
CS: I've heard the new album described as dark, how do you see its vibe?
JB: The vibe of the album is a bit more cynical - it's in no way downbeat - I find it hard to say it's dark, necessarily. It's quite an intense listen.
CS: Why did you release album tracks Fussy and Kamikaze together?
JB: Kamikaze is one of the very first songs I wrote for the record and Fussy probably the last. When we were talking about which single we were going to go with first there was a divided camp: some liked Kamikaze, it was a bit quirky, left-of-centre; Fussy, on the other hand, is quite instant. Someone came up with the idea of putting out an A and B side - sister singles, and we'll make clips for them both. We thought it was a really good idea.
CS: Fussy's video is sinister and manic (watch it above), what was it like making it?
JB: It was a really good video to do. I got to walk on set the day before we shot and played with some props, then it was working out who this guy was for a couple of days. It was a two-day shoot and I had to stay somewhat in that dark, crazy place. I was in Melbourne by myself just pacing around my hotel room on my day off between the shoots …
CS: You've taken a few of the songs out for a test run, how are they feeling to play live?
JB: We picked about six or seven songs that were easy for us to interpret live - we've been playing them for a few months now and they're feeling good.
CS: Are you excited to be going on tour again?
JB:I think we're going to learn a lot from this tour … like how long we've been away and not toured for! Hopefully this will get us nice and fit!
CS: That goes for audiences too!
Kelly Ford for Citysearch, August 2008
Catch End of Fashion at Brisbane's Valley Fiesta, plus stay tuned to Cityearch for EOF tour dates!
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