Gus Unger-Hamilton: "We pushed ourselves to new musical places on this album that we'd never been to before." Photo / George Muncey
“How green was my valley? To be told of such hills. To be held in such spots. To behold such warmth.”
Speaking to the Herald ahead of his upcoming trip to New Zealand, Gus Unger-Hamilton of Alt-J is reminded of the song on his third album, Pleader.
“While the song was inspired by Wales, there are a lot of geographical similarities there,” says Unger-Hamilton, who returns to New Zealand in April to tour the band’s latest album The Dream.
Reminiscing on his past expeditions to New Zealand, “beautiful rolling hills” spring to mind for the keyboardist, who visited Aotearoa in 2017.
“For quite a few years we had a tech who was from New Zealand, Tom, who we were very, very fond of,” he recalls. “He talked a lot about New Zealand and so it was one of those things where when we visited, we were very excited to be there. He took us to this beautiful island where we went fishing. I wanna say Waiheke? I’ve always had a very nice time in your country.”
Best known for songs such as Breezeblocks, which spiralled into a hit TikTok tune overnight, Left Hand Free - made famous by the hit teen series Outer Banks - and Hunger of the Pine, a moody, melancholic melody that features Miley Cyrus over the chorus, the band has become a name among the masses since its inception in 2007.
Now, releasing a fourth album, Alt-J is revealing an intimate sound to mark 10 years performing as a band.
The Dream has a familiarity to it. Experimenting with genre, storytelling and instruments, the album creates an experience that is both explorative and comforting for its listeners - the ultimate oxymoronic backtrack.
With songs like Hard Drive Gold, a cryptocurrency crowd-puller that has its listeners in an insuppressible toe-tap, to Get Better, a cathartic ode to the pandemic which explores the staleness of sitting at home, starting the day with tiramisu and raising a spoon to the frontline workers.
Then there is the slow-building Chicago which has its listeners in a frenzy and then the fetal position within three minutes and 55 seconds.
But Unger-Hamilton’s favourite song from the album is the contemplative Philadelphia.
“It’s quite a challenging song for me to play live. I play the bass guitar and the keyboard in it, so I have to kind of switch between the two mid-song. It’s also influenced by The Beatles. We tried to give it this real 60s Abbey Road kind of sound.
“When we got the string arrangements done, a friend of ours did it and the brief I gave him was: ‘make it sound like The Beatles if they were writing a James Bond soundtrack song’.”
The band started recording The Dream in 2020, however they were interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic: a global event that was defining for the album.
“In a way, it’s a real product of the lockdown, the lockdown that it was written and recorded in,” Unger-Hamilton says.
“We were travelling further into our minds than we’d ever travelled before on an album - all while not leaving our studio in London. We pushed ourselves to new musical places on this album that we’d never been to before.
“Part of that physical confinement that we were all going through meant we were sort of just keen to expand our musical universe as far as we could,” he says.
The album is filled with little surprises, both on the tracks and behind the scenes, and Unger-Hamilton reveals a little Easter egg for his listeners to discover.
“My wife is the backing singer on a song called The Actor. I think she does a very good job. She’s not a singer. I mean, she knows she can sing but she doesn’t work in music or anything. She had no training. That was really cool.”
Alt-J’s new album marks 16 years since the band came together at Leeds University and 10 years since the release of their debut album An Awesome Wave, which brought bangers like Breezeblocks, Fitzpleasure and Something Good to eager ears.
Looking back on the past decade, Unger-Hamilton considers the band’s sound over the years, its evolution and its consistency to produce undeniably-catchy tunes.
“There is no definition of an Alt-J song. If we write it together, it’s an Alt-J song. It doesn’t have to sound a certain way or be a certain style. I think that our confidence has just expanded as time has gone on.
“There are completely new genres that we’re trying out on this album that we probably wouldn’t have even tried on our first or second album.
“I think all of our roles in the band have expanded a bit. Ten years ago it was very much like Thom is the drummer, Gus plays the keyboard.
“Now, I think we all do a little bit more of everything, which is quite nice. I think that evolution has been a pretty slow and organic process.”
After 10 years of playing and touring, Unger-Hamilton’s concluding piece of advice to aspiring artists is not what you would expect.
“Don’t try to be friends with famous musicians. I think that, ultimately, friendship should be a natural thing.”
Unger-Hamilton reflects he was perhaps similarly star-struck when he met The Smiths’ Johnny Marr at Coachella. What followed was an epiphany that stuck with him throughout his musical career and was something he wanted to pass on to musicians on the rise.
“When I was younger, I was thrown into this world of rubbing shoulders with famous people backstage.
“I went and talked to him and he was really nice and polite. After it was over, I thought ‘I’m not even a huge Johnny Marr fan.’ I quite like The Smiths and stuff, but I was like ‘why did I do that?’
“I kind of fantasised about becoming best mates with other cool musicians and, actually, my best friends are mostly people I went to school with. So, that’s definitely something I’ve learned. I feel like, now, I don’t go out of my way to talk to other musicians and famous people. I just leave them to do their thing.”
With more than seven million monthly listeners on Spotify, a world tour on the cards and music that can be many different things to every type of person, Alt-J continues to use alternative music to appeal to the masses while staying true to their connection as a band.
With a decade down, what’s in store for the next 10 years?
Unger-Hamilton hopes to be, if anything, doing what he loves with the people he loves doing it with.
“I really hope that we’re still finding the project interesting, which is what’s kept us going up until now.
“We’re really doing this because, when the three of us get into a studio together, there is a chemical reaction that creates all kinds of unusual outcomes.
“So, I hope that that is still fizzing away and I hope that we are still capable of getting joy from making music together, which I think we will.
“We’ve achieved a lot. We’ve achieved much more than we ever hoped to very early on with the band.
“So, ultimately, I hope that we still have a good musical chemistry and we’re all still enjoying making music together.”
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