Adelaide blues rockers The Associates will launch their sophomore album ‘Tales Of A Rich Girl’ with a home-town show in August.
Released today (7 July), ‘Tales Of A Rich Girl’ is the follow-up to their 2015 debut album ‘Red Dress’. Bassist and co-songwriter Stephen Portolesi says the band have solidified their sound into a more consistent style. “On ‘Red Dress’ we were really finding our feet with our direction and what we wanted to do,” Stephen explains.
“We'd come together from a whole bunch of different backgrounds in music. Blues in general and soul, funk and gospel have been the collective genre but with ‘Red Dress’ we were a bit more sporadic with our direction.
“From there, I think the last two years we've really developed a bit of a distinctive sound and a lot of the stuff definitely still has a diversity and is eclectic in nature. But I think the tie between the songs is a lot stronger and it's certainly got a bit more of a stamp of what we wanted it to sound like this time around.”
Since coming together in 2014 as the product of remnant members from four other bands, The Associates have developed extensively their songwriting and live performances. “We've travelled a fair bit in that time,” Stephen says.
“So we spent that time in an eight-seater Tarago travelling back and forwards... and certainly before the first album we didn’t travel much at all. When we recorded the first album we'd probably done one or two shows, that was it. We'd really done nothing at all.
“We had a bunch of songs Ange and I had written, then got together in the studio to record and went from there. That time spent together is really critical in trying to formulate some sort of cohesiveness in the sound.”
The Associates worked with LA producer Jim Scott on ‘Tales Of A Rich Girl’, which Stephen says was a key factor in coalescing the specific tone and sound they were trying to achieve in comparison to ‘Red Dress’. “That certainly helped as well,” he says.
“That whole journey of writing, getting that uniform sound; even the song choice and what ideas went in and what ideas we let go, and then the final tracking stage was a lot more unified this time around.
“Jim’s a really nice guy and I think nice guys are easier to work with because they create great environments to be creative and [you] never feel that the clock is running. It's funny... we were in six, straight twelve-hour sessions but it never felt hard and it never felt like we were being pushed as well.”
For the launch at The Gov (Adelaide) in August, Stephen says he and the band will be performing the album live as closely as possible to how the recorded it in the studio. “We're expecting it to be a really good night,” he says.
“We've got some great friends who are amazing musicians that are going to sit in with us. The goal of the night is to reproduce the album. Normally when we play live we will just play whatever direction the song takes; in this case we're really trying to present the album and reproduce the sessions from Los Angeles.”
‘Tales Of A Rich Girl’ is out now. The Associates play The Gov (Adelaide) 26 August. They also play Umbrella: Winter City Sounds' Woodstock Crossroads event at Producers Bar (Adelaide) 15 July.
