Polish Club: ‘That’s how these things last beyond the people that make it, the people who experience it – that’s the thing that appeals to me about creating music, it’ll outlive all of us’

Sydney-based rock duo Polish Club will release their touching and emotionally charged fourth album Heavy Weight Heart tomorrow (13 September).

The duo comprises David Novak (lead vocals and guitar) and John-Henry Pajak (drums, percussion and backing vocals). Novak and Pajak met towards the end of high school through mutual friends: ‘He was always playing in bands that I would go and see,’ Novak said. ‘Both of his parents are Polish and my father is Polish, so we went through a thousand different band names. Until you start putting music to it, they all sound really lame and terrible, so we just picked the one that kind of made sense!’

A great deal of Heavy Weight Heart’s lyrical content and vibe has been informed by Novak’s heart surgery, which at the time was upcoming. After suffering a congenital heart disease for a couple of years, he had surgery at the beginning of the year. Many of the songs on the 10 track album imbue a dreamy, love-infused romanticism – with both Novak and Pajak’s recent nuptials influencing them: ‘We wrote it thinking it was going to be our last major label album and it wasn’t,’ Novak said. ‘The one before that ended up being that, we left our label while making it. As a result, the record is very dense. We wrote it with a four-piece band in mind and we’re going to have to tour it now with a four piece band in mind (laughs). It’s very much a big stadium pop-rock record, which is funny because, in my mind, that’s fun and new and interesting. So many bands do it but we’ve never really purposefully done it before. So yeah, it was super fun for us and I think the songs are still interesting beyond that kind of forced complexity.’

‘It was like an immaculate conception, I don’t know what happened! It’s like I blacked out and we had a song!’

As such, the album strikes a perfect balance between hard and soft, sincerity and boldness. The opener, ‘How Dare You Fall In Love In This City’ opens with the traffic sounds and noise you associate with a big city before a saxophone comes swooshing in. It’s unquestionably one of the biggest and most atmospheric songs on the album, reminding me of Human League. With nods to Bruce Springsteen, Sharon Van Etten and The War On Drugs, it feels like one big vocal crescendo. They co-wrote it with their friend Robby De Sa and it can be viewed as a companion track to ‘Manila’, the first song released from Heavy Weight Heart in April this year. ‘Both songs explore the notion of not being sure whether or not you’re happy in said place (Manila or Sydney),’ Novak said: ‘ I am super, super happy with it, it’s probably my favourite song that we’ve written. It was funny because that one came out in a similar way that we would write by ourselves in that it came out really quickly. We knew who Robby was but it took us a while to settle on an idea. As soon as we decided on two chords – it’s just two chords up and down the whole song – I just hit the barre chord C and D up and down – but I wrote the lyrics and the melody in 10 minutes. I sang it in maybe two goes, it was like an immaculate conception, I don’t know what happened! It’s like I blacked out and we had a song! Normally, we fill in the gaps around the skeleton of an idea, so this was awesome.’

As the track goes: “A house with many rooms. A table at each door. With those flowers that you like. Fine carpets on the floor. I studied in Berlin. I know now what it takes. I’m gonna let you in. To know not what we’ll make.”

Writing several tracks with De Sa proved to be a game changer and a marked shift from how they usually write, according to Novak: ‘I think we’ve come to realise that the way John and I write is not necessarily the way everyone else does,’ he said. ‘It’s not necessarily the most efficient way for a lot of people but for us, it’s super efficient, because we just lock ourselves in a room for three hours and shit out ideas (laughs) and just mumble into a voice memo on the phone and revisit it at a later date and try to find meaning in it and add words to it. To have to get into a room with another co-writer for half a day or however long it is, and just have the goal of writing one song and finishing one song is really different. I’ve done a fair amount of it by myself with other people for other things, which I adore but when you’re doing it for yourself, it’s a really different part of the brain. It’s a whole different skill. I think the only reason it worked for this record is because of the person we were writing with. With Robby, we have a rapport. I just hate the speed dating aspect of it sometimes, it’s like a really intense blind date! That’s not to say it’s bad, it can be really fun and productive (laughs), but there’s whiplash coming from how we’re used to doing it and how we think we work best.’

‘We’re hyper aware of how lucky we are to be able to be doing these things and the song very much reflects that, that you’ve got to follow your life into those big moments’

‘How Dare You Fall In Love In This City’ is their critical take on a city they actually love: ‘We both are living in Sydney, which is a very difficult city for most who live in it, in terms of the cost of living, which is the case in every major city in the world,’ he said. ‘But especially here in Australia, Sydney is far and away above the rest of the cities in the country in terms of the value of anything you might want to buy, including houses. We both also recently bought our first homes to live in, so we’re dealing with the effects of all of that. We’re hyper aware of how lucky we are to be able to be doing these things and the song very much reflects that, that you’ve got to follow your life into those big moments. I think it’s a song screaming at myself (laughs). You know what I mean? It could sound like it’s directed to the other half of a relationship, which also works. I don’t really like to set the meaning to it.’

The desire not to tie songs down to just one interpretation is something that has long resonated with Novak: ‘I always come back to when I dropped out of uni, half a year before I was finishing it,’ he said. ‘The straw that broke the camel’s back was an argument I had with a lecturer who was giving us an assignment on what a Marvin Gaye song meant. I had an interpretation of it that she said was wrong. I went on this massive tangent saying I just don’t think I can be wrong. I don’t, that’s just the way I think about songs. If I release a song, I’m also releasing any right I have to say the song is about ‘x, y, z’ because once someone else hears it, they’re going to feel something, be it good or bad and put some meaning to it. Who am I to say that’s wrong? Ultimately, where it leads me is to this point where I don’t 100% remember what’s going through my mind when I write any of these words, you know. And oftentimes, I’ll rewrite it in my head if I can sit with the finished song for ages. When it gets released and I see people have this reaction to it, sometimes the meaning disappears and I find a completely new meaning to it. I’ve even changed a couple of words in the songs afterwards. You’ve got to really try not be precious about it. That’s how these things last beyond the people that make it, the people who experience it – that’s the thing that appeals to me about creating music, it’ll outlive all of us.’

Novak admits that he listens to ‘a lot of awful bands like Incubus’: ‘Not awful, that’s mean,’ he said, quick to correct himself. ‘I’m stuck in my late teens, early 20’s. Recently, I went on a long flight and downloaded three Weezer albums for the journey, what does that say about me?! But I also listen to all sorts of music that’s niche and not popular and so does John. Often our jumping off point for writing is really pop stuff and really mainstream stuff, for lack of a better term. The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys are in there and there’s a lot of R&B in there. I borrow from R&B and pop for a lot of our melodies to write something soulful and melodic. If you think about it, Blackstreet (an American R&B band from the 90’s), Mariah Carey and Toni Braxton were all pointing back to Teddy Pendergrass (an R&B and soul singer from the 60’s). John comes in with a laundry list of influences (laughs) Put a two-piece garage rock band in a room and ask them to write a pop song, they’re not gonna write Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ but they might have some fun with it!’

‘It went on a big journey, we tracked at least 10 guitar lines, we kept just adding to it!’

‘Heavyweight’ is one of my favourite tracks on the album, it’s warm and heartfelt with hooky Britpop guitars, a slow jam that takes comfort in relationships: ‘That is also John’s favourite one, we wrote it with Robby again,’ Novak said. ‘It started out like a really sparse R&B song with an electric guitar and a drum machine. When we got to the studio, we didn’t know how to not replicate it because we didn’t want to replicate that vibe because it doesn’t really work with the rest of the song. We had no idea how to record it because I didn’t know how to fill in the gaps because there’s not much there beyond the melody. So we took a little while and eventually I was just like: “We should just add heaps and heaps and heaps of guitars!”. It was basically at the point of ripping off ‘Wonderwall’ and we’re at the point of ripping off ‘Creep’, or some sort of Radiohead song (laughs). Once we gave ourselves up to that and stopped being so precious about it, and worried about borrowing from two of the most popular songs of all time (laughs), it just became really easy to do. I think it finds a way to not become those songs and be its own thing, while also just borrowing from that general vibe. It went on a big journey, we tracked at least 10 guitar lines, we kept just adding to it!’

They also took inspiration from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s own views about ‘Creep’: ‘I know that story about how Johnny Greenwood hated ‘Creep’,’ Novak said laughing. ‘So he put that really gnarly, abrasive guitar on it, as a protest, but also just to make it cool, or accidentally make it cool. It’s a similar endeavour with this one, where I wanted to put in as many distorted guitars as possible because we added a lot of acoustic guitars to the top. I don’t feel super comfortable doing that, that’s not really my natural wheelhouse. So if we’re going to do that, can we please just make it a little bit crunchier and abrasive at the end?! And I think we’ve found a balance.’

The boxing metaphor throughout ‘Heavyweight’ turns out to have been Pajak’s idea: ‘He just really wanted to use the word” “heavyweight”,’ Novak said laughing. ‘I was just like: “I don’t know how to do this” but I found that first line and then the rest was really easy. That’s how we work in general, John will come in and be like: “Can you use this word? Or can you say this? Or can you just sing this melody?” It’ll be one hyper-specific thing. And I’ll be like: “What the fuck? Sure!” I’ll force myself to humour him because he’s always right. He has a sensibility or a taste that I don’t have, I can’t see it. He can grasp onto a concept a lot quicker or out of thin air, whereas I need to convince myself a lot more or just force myself to do things. He’ll be the spark and I’ll do all the rest, in terms of lyrics. This song is unabashedly cheesy and unabashedly earnest and happy. On paper and writing it, sometimes that can be a bit icky (laughs) but I think one thing that we’re quite good at is taking things that are on the surface quite cheesy and pretty simple concepts of love and dedication, happiness and fulfilment and presenting it in a way that’s believable and urgent. I’m probably just saying this because I’m the singer, but for me, it’s all in the delivery of the vocal and treating it seriously. Being able to scream something or sing it at the top of your voice in key, it really sells a lot of simple stuff in a very serious way, so I think we’re lucky in that sense.’

‘It’s coming from a place of feeling genuine, feeling something that’s real and once you start doubting this happy cheesiness, you lose that sense but I do love that song’

The same could be said for the anthemic, synthy closing track, ‘I Belong To You’: ‘It’s funny because I think John thinks that one has reached the limit of cheesiness and tackiness,’ Novak laughed. ‘I do, too, but I’m always flirting with the earnestness. I feel like it’s a really fine line between going overboard and being too saccharine. All of a sudden, everything’s lost all meaning because you’re being too saccharine and that does happen. It’s not the end of the world, because I would argue that 95% of artists in the world are a little bit too saccharine anyways. At some point, you turn around and you go: “Why am I beating myself up for saying something nice?” There are so many more pressing issues to be dealing with. It’s coming from a place of feeling genuine, feeling something that’s real and once you start doubting this happy cheesiness, you lose that sense but I do love that song.’

‘Manila’ is their homage to Novak’s filipino heritage. It’s evocative and heady and really takes you there, yet it was actually inspired by a trip that Pajak, not Novak, made: ‘He said why don’t we make a song be about Manila? It’s something that I would never think to do, I think, maybe because of imposter syndrome, in a way. I’m 50% filipino and I now go there every year. I think it does feel more and more like I can speak to that experience and that heritage. Especially as I get older and bring my wife there and we make our own experiences there as a family but it’s a strange place. It’s not an easy place, especially for people going for the first time, which I experienced secondhand with my wife, who very much enjoyed it, but also was like: “Whoa, this is quite a lot of culture shock!”. Everything is quite different but also weirdly familiar, because they were colonised by America, they were colonised by the Spanish (and the Japanese). There’s a lot of different cultures mixed into one, none of them being Australian (laughs).’

As the track kicks off: “In a sun-drenched afternoon. On a table set for two. I’ll be waiting by the bar. We don’t have to venture far. There’s no reason to hold back. Why on earth you wearing black?”

Novak continues: ‘There’s a reservation in the vocal to ‘Manila’ that we haven’t really explored in our previous music. It feels like a more earned climax towards the end of the song, when you really take your time with building a crescendo. The song is very much “I don’t know if I like it here. I don’t know if I love it here. I might hate it here but there’s nothing quite like it”, it’s a very confusing place!’