LIFE IN 32 BARS - THE PARADISE MOTEL
Published: Music Australia Guide #77, June 2010.
Led by principal songwriter Charles Bickford, The Paradise Motel’s arcane, narcotic musical craft made them one of Australia’s most enigmatic and accomplished bands. After a decade-long hiatus, they release Australian Ghost Story, inspired by the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain. By Dan Rule.
1994 Friends Charles Bickford, Matt Bailey and Matt Aulich form The Paradise motel in Hobart, playing only the one gig before moving across Bass Strait to Melbourne. 1995 The trio meet vocalist Merida Sussex, organist BJ Austin and drummer Tim O’Shannassy. The dynamic is golden, with Sussex’s hushed, elegiac vocal creating a perfect foil for the group’s shadowy instrumental scapes. They play their first Melbourne gig on Valentines Day at the defunct Carlton Movie House. 1996 After signing to Mushroom Records, the band release debut EP Left Over Life to Kill to rapturous acclaim. Their narcotic mergence of gritty, claustrophobic atmospheres and elegant and time towering musical passages inspires some pundits to dub the record one of the finest ever Australian debuts. 1997 Following an outtakes and remixes EP, which featured an abstract reinterpretation of The Triffids’ classic Raining Pleasure, the band release their debut album Still Life. It is one of the most anticipated and celebrated records of the year. 1998 The Paradise Motel release dense, layered second album Flight Paths, as Mushroom groom them for the international market. 1999–2000 After a swag of glowing reviews in UK music mags, the band make the shift to London, touring Europe with the likes of Grandaddy, Mercury Rev and Sparklehorse. Bickford, however, begins to feel his inspiration waning and the band decide to take an indefinite break. 2000–2007 Aulich, Sussex and O’Shannassy remain in England where they each follow different paths. Aulich spend time in indie band Drugstore and Sussex releases a solo record before founding the group Candy and taking up ranks at the Stolen Records label. Bickford spends time between Melbourne and London, starting a family, writing songs and investing time in his second love, antiquities. 2008 The band reunite, albeit remotely, to track the record I Still Hear Your Voice At Night, with Esme Macdonald on bass and Damien Hill on drums. Tragically, Hill dies near the end of the sessions and the record is shelved.
2010 Following recording sessions deep in the bush at Warburton, two hours east of Melbourne, the band reunite with Andy Hazel on drums and Campbell Shaw on violin to release the stunning Australian Ghost Story. A haunting, emotive reflection on the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain, it is their first record for almost 12 years.
On the hiatus: “As young people growing up in Tasmania, we’d always been looking outwards. But when we got to the UK I realised that I was only interested in looking homeward again. It got to that point over there where, well, I really didn’t have anything to say and so the band stopped functioning.” On The Motel: “Serious events and emotional events do have a tendency to stay alive in people minds, and The Motel was definitely one of them. No one talked about the end.” On Australian Ghost Story: “It was just one of those things that really echoed throughout our childhoods in Australia. It is a really emotive subject for someone who is interested in humanity and human responses. The record isn’t a straight narrative about the life and death of Azaria Chamberlain. It really is about the lives that were being lived in and around the event in 1980 and a the emotional response to that.”
On maturity: “There’s that quote about when you’re a young band, you have your whole life to make your first record. Well it feels like we’ve had another 10 years to make our first record again and it’s a pretty magical thing. I feel like there’s a kind of delicate, poetic quality to the music not that wasn’t available to me as a man in my twenties.”
Australian Ghost Story is out on June 11 through Left Over Life to Kill/Inertia Visit: the-paradise-motel.com
