Background
Most of the song lyrics on Howling Bells were written by Juanita Stein when she took time off from the band's previous incarnation, the Sydney-based pop rock group Waikiki. All members of Howling Bells were also in Waikiki. After growing discontent with their pop rock sound, the band members opted to assume an indie rock identity and changed their name to Howling Bells. The group began to perform material from Howling Bells while still called Waikiki. The majority of the lyrical subject matter centres on Juanita's own interpersonal relationships. She wrote some songs about the loss felt through ending relationships and others about forming new romance. Afterward, drummer Glenn Moule, guitarist Joel Stein, and bass guitarist Brendan Picchio arranged the music around her words.
We wanted to let the music breathe and get away from our urban environment, so we tracked down this beautiful house.
“ ” –Juanita referring to their demoing location in Victoria.The band found a country house in the mountains of Victoria, where they spent a month creating demo tracks for the album. "Broken Bones" and "Blessed Night" were the only two tracks not to be demoed in Australia. "I'm Not Afraid", the album's last track, was written by Peter Stein (Joel and Juanita's father), who is also a songwriter and musician.
After hearing Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head, they agreed that was how they wanted their album to sound. They sent demos to Ken Nelson, who was responsible for producing A Rush of Blood to the Head. Nelson soon responded, stating that he would be interested in working with them. With little financial security, they relocated to London and waited for Nelson to finish production on Coldplay's X&Y. The start date of the recording of Howling Bells was repeatedly delayed because Coldplay was dissatisfied with its studio sessions. In the meantime, to support themselves, the members of Howling Bells took up temporary work. Eight to ten months after their arrival in England, Nelson contacted them with the news that he would soon be ready to record.
Read more about this topic: Howling Bells (album)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)