Interview: Dale Kerrigan

One of last year’s most exciting local guitar records was made in a Dunedin flat. Mink blankets were hung to create a drum nook. A mattress separated the two guitar amps. Housemates came and went during recording.

The result was The Water, the second album by Dale Kerrigan. A seven-track collection that moves through punk, post-rock, noise, spoken word, and lots of yelling, it has a surprising lack of inhibition considering where it was created (the neighbours must have been very understanding).

But as lead guitarist Joel Field tells me, it wasn’t uncommon to finish a session and walk out to feedback from a flatmate eating a bowl of noodles: “That sounded great!”

Three members of the band live in a different flat now, in Anderson’s Bay. I arrive on a freezing cold September evening, around the same time bass player Conner Blackie gets home and proceeds to light a fire. Drummer Josh Nicholls supplies everyone with a beer before our interview proceeds.

His sister Shlee is the principal songwriter and singer in the band. She has a guitar set up with a few effects pedals in the lounge and is playing when I walk in.

I tell the band about listening to their album on my plane ride from Auckland. Loud music usually distracts me during turbulence, but during one particularly frenetic section of the song ‘Scene of the Crime’ I realised it was making things worse.

They all laugh. “That’s great,” says Shlee, “I wrote some of the songs about the feeling of being in a storm, so it’s funny you say that.

In fact tracks two and three are called ‘Stormy 1’ and ‘Stormy 2’. I notice that, title included, it’s an album themed around moisture.

“I had this theory that the reason I’m so noisy and angry is because of the weather in Dunedin”, says Shlee.

“Last year was a shocker,” Field adds.

The two guitarists/vocalists talk over each other as they elaborate on what inspired their raucous songs. Field says last year was "probably the worst of his life" while Nicholls mentions "a flowing of emotions".

“It’s cold and miserable here,” says Field, before emphasising that making the album united them. "That was worth it," he adds.

Nicholls did all the singing on the first Dale Kerrigan album Noise Bitch, but she wanted to include Joel’s voice on The Water. That’s partly because she thought it fit the songs, partly because she’d been listening to a lot of Sonic Youth.

“Every single song I’ve written has been from the perspective of me as a teenager, the now-26-year-old says. “I think it’s because I didn’t start playing music till I was 21, so I had all this angst built up, that I could then throw into the music I'm writing now.

“So maybe that’s why it’s a bit angry, because it’s coming from a teen perspective.”

The press release for Noise Bitch says “the band forms a response to the ‘ugly boy singing noise’ stereotype”. Shlee laughs when that’s mentioned.

“I think I was annoyed, because in most bands I’d seen, if there was a female front person they were singing really beautifully. I don’t really have a beautiful voice, but also that’s not how I want to express the music I’m putting forward.

“And then you see all these noise bands with ‘ugly boy singing’, where it doesn’t really matter what you sound like, you’re just yelling over these melodies. That’s what I wanted to achieve. But I wouldn’t call it ugly…”

The rhythm section of Connor and Josh have opted out of the interview, but they’re listening attentively and chip in with reminders from off-mic. The pair have been playing together for around 10 years in the band Koizilla, who performed at this year’s Silver Scroll Awards.

Shlee explains to them that her approach is “How can I disrupt this a little bit… how can I make it more difficult for you guys - to make you more sloppy, as opposed to more tight?”

The band’s front-people Shlee and Field attended the Dunedin School of Art together. When I comment later on the album’s thematic package and striking artwork (a painting of a Fennec fox by Becky Nicolson), Connor says it stems from the pair’s tertiary studies.

It also led to some of The Water’s most intriguing sounds, as Shlee explains. “In art school I drilled two guitars together, and hung them from the roof with some chains, and spun them around to make this ‘wah’ sound,” she says.

“That’s what I’m really into. Using the guitar in funny ways.”

The band all enthuse about a video of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon walking around Los Angeles, rubbing her guitar on buildings to elicit a response from passers-by.

A similar impulse led to the title of the band’s first album. “I was getting sick of old men coming up to me at The Crown and asking me to explain what my pedals sounded like,” Shlee says.

“I was at art school at the time, and we were doing bronze casting. I had the idea to make this pedal that didn’t make any noise; it was just a pointless bit of bronze.

“My plan was to sit it in the chain, and then [when asked], be like ‘It does nothing!’”

She named the pedal the Noise Bitch. It appears on the cover of their debut.

“There was a review of the album somewhere,” says Joel, “and someone’s commented ‘And if you notice this pedal, it isn’t even plugged in!’

“They fell right into the trap that Shlee had set.”

Joel mentions that a lot of guitar scraping (a la Kim Gordon) occurs at Dale Kerrigan live shows. I ask for other examples of other non-traditional sound sources, and Shlee responds with one they haven’t used yet, but want to. 

“I put a guitar inside of a piano, and modified it so when you hit the keys, the hammers in the piano would hit the strings of the guitar”.  

We talk about the meaning behind some of the songs, like the mischievous caper ‘Scene of the Crime’: “Being with your friends when you're young, and doing something a little bit naughty.”, and ‘Stormy 2’, with its line about sharing raincoats: “Being ok with being on your own”.

There’s talk of the various Venn diagrams that make up the member’s individual tastes, and their common ground. “There’s a bit of emo,” says Shlee, and Joel mentions a shoegaze influence. 

They champion some other Dunedin bands, including Hoha, and Cuck, but are less aware of the city’s musical legacy, despite being mentored at art school by Michael Morley, of noise legends The Dead C. 

Dale Kerrigan, like other Dunedin bands, aren't worried about sounding polished and commercial, Joel says.

“I guess it’s because we’re so far away, we hold onto the DIY aspect a lot more,” says Shlee.

“I don’t like being asked about the Dunedin sound, because I don’t have much to say about it,” she adds. 

It’s only fitting that the members of Dale Kerrigan are firmly fixed in the present, and not over-analysing their place in things. They’re a band running on impulse, fusing art-school nous with angst, and - as photos of their live shows make clear - the sheer joy of playing loud music.