The first time I heard The Working Title’s debut album About Face I was theirs, forever. What was it that got me? The Working Title are the whole package complete with textured guitar melodies, powerful, emotive lyrics and sensual, soul-stirring vocals, and the effect on me is like turning on a tap between my thighs. Joel Hamilton’s raw, earthy vocals will find your inner erotic being too, and hold you in its ardent, intense embrace for the whole album.
The Working Title’s brand of music fits somewhere between pop, alt.rock and indie rock with a unique blend of U2, Switchfoot and Foo Fighters. Their often driving, sometimes tender, always naked sound is best appreciated by putting About Face on repeat, lying on your bed in the pitch-dark, in nothing but your underwear, and letting it wash over you. You’ll be consumed by it. I was and still am. I even made it my number two album of the year.
When I first reviewed About Face a year ago — a review I will post here shortly — I tried to score an interview with this incredible band; no luck though, as then label Universal Records, weren’t letting me anywhere near them. Now, after an amicable split with the label, The Working Title are unsigned and therefore easier to interview.
I recently spent some time chatting with frontman and lyrist Joel Hamilton. This South Carolina native, has spent the majority of his time since 2001 – when The Working Title first formed – touring, learning and perfecting his craft. Soft spoken, intelligent, with a charming southern politeness and natural reserve, he was deeply shy to start off with. But all Joel needed was some time to relax. Eventually we chatted about Dr Who – he had never heard of Dr Who, the freak – The Working Title’s split with Universal Records, touring and, most importantly About Face.
So Joel do you want to talk about the split with Universal?
Yeah. I’ll give you a little history on that. We were signed to Universal for about three and a half years. We had been a band for like – I’m really bad with time-lines so I’m just gonna’ wing it (laughs)– maybe eight months or somethin’. We did a record on our own, we had it engineered.
Is this your first EP, Everyone Here Is Wrong?
This was before the EP. I decided to go even further back in time.
Wow, how old were you?
I was… This was probably like seven years ago. I was probably… I was… Hello, I can do math! (laughs) I was what 17, 16? I think I was 17; I’m really bad with time-lines. (laughing) Around that time we recorded a record, sold it around town, did some touring. And like a year or two later we met this guy in Charleston who hooked us up with this guy in Atlanta. We did some demos. Johnny had a couple of people in the music industry he gave out a few of those demos – it was like a four song demo that we did – he gave them out to a couple of friends in the industry and two days later we had every label we have ever heard of trying to fly us out to do showcases and whatnot.
That must have been incredibly flattering.
Yeah it was. It was definitely unexpected. We definitely handled it the best we could and were as levelheaded as we could have been. We basically told every label that we were not going to fly out to any showcases. We had a lot of friends in bands, and I’d heard stories, a lot of people saying how terrible showcases are. We just imagined ourselves playing in front of like ten people in business suits and how ridiculous that would have been. And we decided weren’t going to do that. We weren’t really chasing a record deal anyway.
We were just like, “if you really want to see us play, we’re playing in Charleston.” So the next time we played in Charleston we had twenty different people from ten different labels kind of a thing. At the show everyone come up and saw us, it was a sold-out show.
I just can’t believe how long it’s been. As I’m saying this… it’s just really crazy.
So tell me more about Universal.
Universal ended up coming in kind of late in the game. We had some offers on the table, we weren’t really looking to sign a record deal but it didn’t really make much sense to pass it up because we were getting everything we wanted out of it. And so we ended signing with universal. And we were like “hey, we’re really young we know that, we want to spend a couple of years on the road and we want to release an EP.”
So from those demos that we did, we did a few more with the same guy. We ended up putting out that EP, Everyone Here Is Wrong. We put that out after landing at Universal. We put it out on Redemption Records though. We wanted it to be kind of a low-key thing. We wanted to stay under the radar for a little bit and do touring and basically not blow up faster than we needed to, before we were actually ready, before my songwriting was ready. We put out that EP, we toured a lot, we toured for two or three years. Universal basically helped us, let us mature, made it all make sense. It was cool.
Then we went in and recorded the record, did some demos for the record. Everyone from Universal was super excited you know. The president of the label was totally stoked and ready to do whatever it took. By the time we finally got the record finished and were ready to release it, the label literally split in two. Everything fell apart around us. It was really bad timing. Our guy ended up leaving – he was like the Vice President of Universal – he had helped up negotiate our releases from Universal and we were able to walk away with all the rights of ownership to our record which was pretty fantastic.
That’s practically unheard of.
Yeah, it really is. So that has pretty much been finalised for the past couple of months. And now we are here because of all this!
So how does it feel, floating in space all by yourself?
Very interesting.
Have you had any interest from other labels?
Yeah we have. The place we are at right now, with a label, we’re not through with this record [About Face]. Even though a lot of people have suggested just recording another record and putting it out or chopping it, it just doesn’t make sense. We spent so much time and put some much of ourselves into this record and don’t feel like it’s really seen the light of day compared to what it should have. Right now is just to tour and sell our record and put it into the hands of as many people as we can. And if people come along and want to re-release the record or license it or distribute whatnot and it makes sense then we’re all for it. But right now we’re not really huntin’ down anything except touring.
You seem to be in love with touring. You talk about it a lot. Why is that?
A lot of reasons. Touring is one of the only ways, as a band, that you can truly become self-sufficient. By building your touring market, getting to the point were you can go out and play in as many different regions and cities as possible. Have people come out to see you play and pay money for you to play. And if you get it to that point, you don’t really have to rely on other people, other sources, or record labels to fund that. That’s definitely a big reason.
But that’s not the only reason is it?
That’s definitely a bit reason. But it’s a factor that I love it. It’s so much fun. As socially scared as I am of people, at the same time I love it. I kind of have a phobia of it, but I love it. I love being around people that I can be comfortable with. Like talking to you and getting comfortable with you, being to talk… It’s really cool. I don’t really… It’s not easy for me to get comfortable with people where I can really open up or talk to them. But I do love meeting people, and to have an opportunity to form those relationships where you can be comfortable with people. I love traveling, I love seeing new places.
Lets talk about, About Face. It is your debut, full-length album.
Yes ma'am.
It’s been out about a year now?
About ten months or something like that.
Your voice is just incredible when you sing, so passionate and emotive. How do you do that?
I think it stems from the fact that most the songs I write are very personal and filled with intense emotion. I guess that’s the person that I am and also musically I’m influenced by people who have done the that sort of thing.
What is your favourite song on About Face?
Mmmm… Favourite song… Let’s go with “Turbulence”. That song is one of my favourites to play. I love listening to it, I guess. I can’t really listen to my own music past the mixing and getting it ready to release stage. I start hating… I start finding things that we should have changed. So I guess when it comes down to it, I don’t really listen to recordings past a certain point.
“Turbulence” is an intensely emotional song. A lot of times with a song, like months into playing it you have to ask yourself, “No wait, what was this song about? I need to re-channel this.” “Turbulence” is one of those songs that you never have to do this, it always just right there, it’s like ready for me when I’m ready to play it kind of a thing. The meaning of the song, the emotions never leave.
Lets talk about “About Face” the song. I think it is the perfect encapsulation of the whole album. I think it is absolutely perfect to introduce you to the rest of the album because it has a little bit of everything, in every other song.
I glad you agree because I had to fight really hard to get that on there. That was a song and I decided to trim it down and make it really short and decided that would make a really cool intro. It used to be a full-length song. It had another verse. I’m glad it made it on there.
So where do you think The Working Title are going?
I don’t know. I’ll be the first to tell you that I never will know about the future ever. I’ll never try to act like I do. I know that we are planning a lot of touring right now for May, June and July.
Ultimately what do you want for The Working Title?
Like I was talking about before, to get to a point where we are self-sufficient and we don’t rely on anyone else but ourselves. And I can create the music that I want to create and put it out how I want to put it out and when I want to put it out. Being on a record label is nice because they help you to like pay for gas money on the road but when you want to put out a record it takes forever. There’s a lot of stuff that really sucks about it.
The Working Title will be embarking on a nationwide U.S. tour in mid June with two other bands — Days Away and Goodbye Tomorrow — but dates have yet to be confirmed. The Working Titles gig dates for the rest of may are below along with their video for the song, from About Face, “The Mary Getaway”. You can listen to more tracks from About Face at The Working Title’s MySpace space or on their website.
Tour dates for May:15 Jacksonville, Florida; 17 Orlando, Florida; 18 Atlanta, Georgia; 19 Columbia, South Carolina; 26 Charleston, South Carolina.
