Celebrating the trashy side of media and the world’s addiction to information, Evermore has released their most thought-provoking album yet. Truth of the World: Welcome to the Show is the first concept album for the boys and weaves an intricate path around a made up television station. The album is saturated with channel surfing samples, fake television ad clips and fictional news broadcasts to create a world entirely of its own. It also marks a big step in the evolution of the New-Zealand band’s music now the boys have put their whiny ballads behind them in favour of electro anthems.

On The Barrier caught up with drummer Dann Humes to chat about the new album and their upcoming tour of Australia.

OTB: So what have you been up to this week?
Dann: Well I’m in Melbourne at the moment and we’ve just played through the show eight times.

OTB: I guess you’d be reaching that stage of being sick of your own music soon yeah?
Dann: I wouldn’t say I’m getting sick of the songs it’s just we’ve been playing the show so many times to no one, I’m really looking forward to playing in front of some people.

OTB: Whats Truth of the World about?
Dann: In a nutshell…well it wouldn’t fit in a nutshell but it’s a concept album. At least that’s what everyone calls it. We get the lyrics to tell a story throughout the album. The story revolves around this big media made up empire called ‘Truth of the World’. There are a few songs where we sing from their perspective but the main storyline is about a boy watching Truth of the World every day and it sort of becomes this personification of the whole thing.

OTB: So a concept album… did it make it easier or harder having a solid theme you were running with?
Dann: It was a lot harder. I think that the whole point was that we wanted to do something harder. You get to be a bit artistic but we had to keep checking to make sure it made sense. We really just took our time and just kept writing songs. We’d write a song and think ‘how could that fit in?’ or we’d change the words to it… everything on the album got changed quite a bit.

OTB: Do you have a really cool story about how you came up with the concept? Or did you kind of trip over the idea?
Dann: I think like all good ideas they are slightly tripped over upon. If there is a good story it is usually made up. We were just looking for some kind of concept. Jon had this concept for a story of boy growing up and then I had already written a song called Truth of the World which was about this made up TV station and singing from the news anchor’s point of view and saying all these things I didn’t agree with. The anchor makes a few appearances throughout the album and then he has this little wingman politician guy who is quite evil. They start a political party at end of album.

OTB: During the recording of the album did any of you go completely stir-crazy and develop weird habits?
Dann: We do have a lot of strange habits already but no I think we were pretty good and not at all crazy then the last two months we had left to finish it we all went crazy… literally. We worked seven days on and one day off and I just forgot how to interact with people. I’d come into Melbourne city and go to a bar and literally I couldn’t stop thinking about it. People would be asking me questions and I wouldn’t be able to say anything back. I was really worried I’d lost all of my personality. But once it was done I was back to normal. It was cabin fever more than anything and we all just got really cramped. I got some serious drumming cramps.

OTB: What’s the strangest thing a fan has ever given you?
Dann: I got a really weird keyring once? No, you know what is weird? When people give me a photo of myself. They give it to me and I think I’m meant to sign it and then they say ‘no it’s for you’. It’s like, why would I want a photo of myself? The last thing I wanna see is a picture of me.

OTB: Is there anything you wish fans would give you?
Dann: Someone should bring me a signed picture of them! Take a picture of themselves and sign it for me.

OTB: Is there anything on the album that someone listening to it might not pick up on but is kind of a laughing point or something you guys cringe at when you listen to it?
Dann: There’s a lot of stuff. We made all of these fake ads in one of songs like all these made up channels with fake ads. We’d do hundreds of them in the studio. It would always be at about 4 in the morning when we’re out of energy we’d just do a fake ad. But yeah, Jon had this woman voice he would do in the ads and it made it on the album somewhere. Whenever I hear it I literally can’t stop laughing.

OTB: Do you rock out to your own music?
Dann: I don’t think anyone does that but on stage I definitely rock out.

OTB: If evermore was to have a mascot, what would it be and why?
Dann: Evermore would be…maybe like something that’s a bit different and weird.

OTB: Bandicoot?
Dann: Nah that’s got the whole Playstation thing. I’m gonna go for a platypus – cuz it’s quite unusual and it sort of looks a bit weird too.

OTB: If you could create the perfect music video with anyone or anything in it, what would it be?
Dann: We did this music video in South Africa with this young director guy and we were talking about how he did this video with this band who asked for 20 bikini girls. I think one day we should have a cliché ‘sitting around the pool with bikini girls’ video.

OTB: Some people have been surprised to learn Hey Boys and Girls is by Evermore because it's so different, did you aim for this reaction?
Dann: I don’t know what we were trying to do. We had this whole idea for the Truth of the World empire thing and thought why don’t we write a jingle for it? Like a theme song. We weren’t intending for it to be a single, we wrote it in like 20 minutes. So it was just us rocking out singing about Truth of the World and when we ended up recording we thought it sounded pretty good.

OTB: Out of all the interviews you've done, is there anything you wish someone would ask you or something you wish you could just bring up while talking but never got the chance?
Dann: I can solve a rubics cube! I’ve never gotten the chance to tell anyone that.

OTB: So John has produced this album, does that make the album a lot more exciting for you?
Dann: It’s got a lot more creative license I suppose. Jon has always been involved in the production; it’s just that now his name is on it as the producer so I think he got the need to step it up a bit and that was really cool. He came up with stuff I didn’t even know was interested in, like he went with quite an electronic edge and he’d never listened to electronic music.

OTB: What was your initial reaction to Jon's new hair?
Dann: Everyone sort of makes a big thing out of it. I didn’t think it was that extreme but people were so shocked. Maybe it’s because he’s the front man because I’m always buying new glasses and cutting my hair off but he looked the same for 20 years.

OTB: How hard was it to pick the songs for the new album? How many were there to choose from?
Dann: This is slightly scary because we had so many! There were 110 but when it came down to it we had about thirty.

OTB: Jon works in the higher vocal range… have you guys ever been tempted to try having him sing a song like Tom Waits or Barry White just to see how it sounded?
Dann: One of the weirdest things about your voice is that the higher you sing you lose the lower register. I sing really low so whenever I write a melody for Jon I have to take it up six keys because he can’t sing too low.

OTB: Hey boys and girls, truth of the world, is a a bit of a stab at the media industry, what is the worst thing that has been reported about you guys?
Dann: It’s not a stab at all, It’s celebrating it. It’s more about how really trashy media appeals to us. I mean I get up every morning and read the newspaper and it is always the most ridiculous thing that I can find. Even if it was between a picture of someone dying something about a lady get caught doing something. People just don’t want to hear about bad things.

OTB: Ok so what’s next?
Dann: We start the tour in a few days which will keep us busy for a few months then we’ve got a New Zealand tour, we’ve got a Canada tour then Germany. We’re just going to take this album to as many people as we can.

Evermore will reach our shores on June 4 when they perform at Settler’s Tavern in Margaret River. They’ll then move onto the Prince of Wales in Bunbury on June 5, Capitol Theatre in Perth on June 6 and the Fly By Night in Fremantle on June 7. Evermore are being supported by End of Fashion and The Sundance Kids.

By Nikkita Dixon