INTERVIEW: Vika & Linda return with new album 'The Wait': "We wanted to make a surprising record for ourselves and for our audience and just push it a little bit."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Lisa Businovski
Vika & Linda have been beloved stalwarts of the Australian music industry since they first came to prominence as members of The Black Sorrows in the 1980s. After leaving the band and forming a duo in the 1990s, they have had five top 10 albums including last year’s greatest hits collection ‘Akilotoa which went all the way to number 1.
Today they return with their first album of original material in 19 years, appropriately titled The Wait. With songwriting credits from some of the biggest names in Australian music, including Kasey Chambers, Don Walker, Bernard Fanning and Paul Kelly, the album is a remarkable collection encompassing a wide range of soundscapes and emotions. There is the guitar rock of fourth single ‘Lover Don’t Keep Me Waiting’, the piano ballad ‘I Miss You In The Night’, the soulful country tinged ‘Teeth’ and the brooding, ethereal ‘The Long View’.
Vika & Linda’s powerful and emotive vocals have always been their standout feature, but The Wait is a breathtaking reminder of their ability to create stunning music. We recently caught up with the Bull sisters to find out more.
Vika & Linda so incredibly wonderful to be talking to you today. The Wait is out today, it is an incredible album return, you two have such power. How does it feel to have it into the ears and hearts of the world?
Vika: Feels great and nerve wracking at the same time It's been 19 years since our last original album and we just can't wait to see what people think. We've tried new things, we've matured a lot. I think we've got a better sound now than we had all those years ago, we've worked really hard on our harmonies. I'm very proud of it.
You say it's it's nerve wracking, is it because of, to steal the title, the wait? Or is it because the music industry changes so much every year, and 19 years is a long time?
Linda: I think it's a double whammy. It's nerve wracking because the songs are written especially for us and so there's a responsibility to the songwriters, that you deliver something that they not only like, but love, and that we love and that we can sing and that our audience like it as much as we do. We're always worried that when you put out a record, people will go, ‘oh, that's not what I expected, that's not what we wanted’. We wanted to make a surprising record for ourselves and for our audience and just push it a little bit. So that's where the nerves come from - will they like it?
Speaking of co-writes, you've released the single 'Raise Your Hand' which was written by Kasey Chambers and Brandon Dodd. There's so much swagger to this song. I love it. Can you talk me through it?
Linda: The thing about this song that I love is definitely the message. It's the lyrics, it's stand up for what you believe in, don't ignore me, I have an important thing to say as well. And that for is a theme on the record. I really love that message and Kasey and Brandon just got it in one. It took a long time for us to get right, we recorded it and had to redo it because it was too slow. It was the very first song we received and it's a important one for us because of the message and also live it's got this incredible reaction when we started singing it live. People just started putting their hands up and it was quite powerful.
Another one of the highlights on the album for me is 'Pigface and Calendula'. This is like country rock blues and I was like ‘okay I'm liking this beat’ and then I was like ‘hold on a second - this ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’! Talk to me about the creation of this one and and what it means for you, because it's such a great take on such a classic poem.
Linda: This was written by Glenn Richards from Augie March, and when we received it I thought ‘wow, that's a wacko song, I really like it.’ Vika and I tried it and it just came together really quickly. It was the one song that Vika and I fought over - ‘I want to sing it’ ‘No, I want to sing it’. Vika can build out a tune and I tend to take the the ballads. But with Vik's encouragement I did it just to show a different side of my singing style. It was just a joy to sing. The message of it too, two little plants in the back of a dark garden, and you can ignore them, they don't need the sun, they still gonna survive. That's what I liked about it.
You are of course sisters, and you've worked together forever. So you're so aware and confident in each other's strengths and your own weaknesses. If we go back to the beginning, I'm guessing you're always singing. Talk me through what music meant to you growing up and also when did you decide that if you were going to go at this it was always going to be together?
Vika: Music was a very important part of our lives growing up, mum and dad were massive music fans. Tongans, because they can sing, they're singing all the time. They're just practising for church every Sunday, there's always a choir going somewhere. They are massive singers they're great harmonisers they're very powerful. Dad had a very eclectic record collection. There was Elvis, there was Bill Haley, there was Mahalia Jackson, there was Charley Pride, there was all sorts of things in there that we got to listen to. And because mum was such a great singer, she taught us how to sing. Linda and I were constantly singing to the radio and television theme songs and working on our harmonies from a very young age. I've always wanted to be a singer, so when I left school, I joined a band. Linda went to university to become an art teacher but she wasn't having such a great time at that, so I said, ‘Okay, I know we can harmonise, come and sing with me’. That's how it all took off. We joined a band called Sophisticated Boom Boom, and it kind of went from there.
Have you found that you've always had similar musical curiosities? How do you navigate that as a duo?
Linda: Oh, it's tricky. Vika and I have very different musical tastes because we're very different people, people tend to assume that we're similar, but we're not. We're actually opposites. Vika's very broad brushstrokes and very spontaneous and I'm very detail focus. Vika and I have always struggled with coming together and meeting in the middle, and that's been tricky. On this one that's why it took four years to get together because we had a broad range of songs on and we had some songs that I loved that didn't make it some songs that Vika loved didn't make it because we couldn't both agree. We will not sign off on it until we both love it.
A lot of the music that you do put out and people adore it for is aside from the fact you've both got such incredible voices, I keep coming back to this notion of storytelling. Would you say that's one of the the elements of singing that is possibly the strongest for you?
Vika: Very, it's a very strong element. One of the number one things is what's the lyrics? What is the message here? What are we trying to say? It doesn't always have to be a happy positive message, it’s just can we sing them, there are things we can't. And second if it's got a catchy tune, because we're big on melody.
Linda: If you can't sing it, if we don't know what we are singing about how can anyone else understand, you know? We can't put any emotion into something that we don't understand.
Vika: I don't like cryptic, I hate that. That's ‘what the hell are you talking about?’, I just hate that. Just tell it straight! What are you feeling here? If you just tell it straight, then people can interpret it whatever way they want.
Linda: The worst thing that can happen is if you go to a songwriter and say ‘I don't get it, what are you talking about?’ That's embarrassing, because when their song is personal, and they get it, but we want to get it too. Try to avoid that situation!
The album ends with 'The Long View', which is very, very beautiful. I almost want to say it’s like underwater piano. It's painful in a beautiful way. Was that always going to be the album closer?
Linda: I felt that it was always going to be the anchor and the full stop because of a number of reasons. Not just because it was written by Paul Kelly, but because of the treatment of it. The message is very atmospheric and beautiful, I couldn't quite see where it would fit anywhere else but the end. To me, it keeps the door open for the record to be played again. It’s a definite full stop, but it's also a door opening feel for me. Like a cave that you keep walking through, and I just love that song.
You've both been kicking arse on our airwaves since the 80s. The music industry, particularly in Australia, is saturated with men and guitars, it just is. What are your thoughts on the shift in equality within the music industry with regards to female artists? Do you feel if it's changed since your early days?
Vika: Oh hells bells, it's changed a lot.
Linda: For the better
Vika: For the better. There's a lot more women working behind the scenes as well. We've got a great manager, she's the best thing that's ever happened to us in our career. Before she came along, we were just wandering in the wilderness and then she came along and just went ‘right, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang’. There's a lot of women like that, that are kick ass. Also just seeing the amount of young girls coming out singing and writing their beautiful songs, it's just changed completely from the 80s. It's just a completely different ballgame.
Linda: Not only that, yes, but fashion as well. Vika and I were on tour with Paul Kelly recently, and the girls that open for Paul like Emily Wurramurra, Gordi and Fanny Lumsden they just take centre stage and completely own it, they don't have to be what the record company have told them, what to wear, or how to behave, or what to do, they just completely break every sort of barrier for me just in what they wear, how they are. They're themselves and it's really exciting to see them doing all that.
And so do you think that's been such a shift from when you were initially performing? Just the fact that the women and soul performers are getting a chance to be heard?
Linda: We were rare. We'd look around and see a festival bill and we were the only girl's there a lot of the time. And that's frustrating, because there's so many talented women out there working. So it has have changed a lot, hasn't it Vik?
Vika: It's changed a lot. We grew up and cut our teeth on the Australian pub rock scene in the 80s. We were singing seven nights a week in smelly pubs, people smoking. It was a male dominated industry and there we were singing backing vocals, but we were at the front with Joe [Camilleri] just trying to compete with guitars every night really loud, because everyone know [The Black Sorrows] were a rock band. That made us strong, it really made us tough. It was a good way to grow up in this industry, for our voices for singing. It made us really strong. We copped our fair share though, we've had people spit on us, we've had beer cans chucked at us, we've had people going 'show us your tits', all that sort of stuff, we've endured all that. And it's just like, nup, you know what, you can get fucked, we're not going away. Because we've had each other, I think that's the strength we've had, we grew up in this industry together, and we kept each other going. We were very lucky, very lucky to have each other.
Linda: We used to do shows on our own as well, people used to heckle the hell out of us. And we used to fight back, Vika particularly. We used to have a whole swag of comebacks, just to put them down. In a really non-humiliating way. We used to get a little bit of joy out of it, just telling them to shut up without making them want to leave. If you could do that without making them leave, we were winning!
That's awesome. Before I have to leave you, the album’s out, what is coming up for the pair of you?
Linda: We're gonna concentrate on writing aren't we Vik?
Vika: We are actually writing songs, that's what we're doing. Linda is very good at it, she's a good songwriter, not me, I find it very difficult. Because this album was written by great Australian songwriters, we were more like interpreters, and we shaped the songs, produce them, pull them all together, and did them in a way that we wanted to sing them. We’ll probably try and write a little bit more, because Linda did write songs for this record but they just didn't make the cut. We'll probably revisit those songs and see what we can do with them. Because now we're busting to go because it took 19 years to make this one. I think the next one won't take so long! We've got the bug now, it's like, ‘Okay, let's go, let's work on the next one!’ And maybe in the next couple of years we'll have another record out.
Linda: We've gotta tour this first, that's the other thing, getting out on the road in November. We're playing the biggest rooms that we've ever played on our own, that's pretty exciting. But it's also like 'shit, I hope people come'. And you know we're battling this pandemic. We're working towards putting together a very good tour and a good band so that we can translate these songs on a live stage.
The Wait is out now via Bloodlines. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Vika & Linda you can follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
