Natural selection process
Sydney alt-rock quartet Papa vs Pretty took a hardline approach when choosing songs for second album White Deer Park, released tomorrow.
If one of the band or American producer Dave Trumfio didn't love a track then it wouldn't make the cut.
Vocalist and guitarist Thomas Rawle, who formed Papa vs Pretty as a solo outfit as a precocious 15-year-old in 2006, saw songs he'd honed and polished discarded because one or two bandmates didn't feel they were worthy.
"If a song is good it will be heard eventually," the surprising sanguine singer says while walking through inner-city Sydney with bassist Angus Gardiner.
"I get, as a songwriter, that you're going to get close to songs but you've got to respect everyone's opinion if you're playing in a band.
"It's either everyone agrees on them 100 per cent or the song doesn't make the cut."
This brutal methodology meant that while 12 songs (plus the tracks, Introduction and Interlude) appear on White Deer Park, there are around 70 finished songs floating around in the ether.
Rawle, 22, says he wants people to eventually hear all 80-odd works.
"There was talk before we did the album of doing a double album," he says, "but a double album for your second album is a little full-on."
Double album? Papa vs Pretty could have released an octuple album.
"Octo-album," Rawle laughs. "We'd be the Octo-mom of bands."
Recorded in two Sydney studios and Trumfio's facilities in Los Angeles, White Deer Park is the follow-up to 2011's ARIA nominated United in Isolation.
The truckload of new songs was written in a prolific 12-month burst up to April last year.
"Ages ago, really," Rawle says. "(The songs) have just been sitting there but they're coming out now."
The material on White Deer Park reflects the young band's world view, with several tracks lambasting their peers for their lack of a rebellious streak.
"When you go on Twitter and Facebook you see a waterfall of apathy and vanity," Rawle says.
"It's very difficult to understand how anything is going to get done."
Papa vs Pretty launch the new album with shows around the nation, kicking off in Fremantle this weekend.
The ambitious foursome, which features new member and guitarist Luke Liang, will perform White Deer Park in its entirety at the gigs.
The album takes its title from the 90s children's television series The Animals of Farthing Wood which was based on the series of books by Colin Dann.
The Siege of White Deer Park, the fifth book in the series, was first published in 1985.
"That show was the first thing I can remember as a kid," Rawle says. "It was very dark for a kids' show.
"That's why I'm so dark and brooding now, and mysterious," the singer adds with a chuckle, "because I watched that show."
