Mick Harvey Interview | Bleak Squad
On idiosyncratic weirdness, natural balance and leaving their egos at the coat check
Noah chats to the ever-busy Mick Harvey on the making of Bleak Squad and how they balance each other’s artistic sensibilities before they embark on a run of shows in Feb and March.
Firstly, congratulations on your debut album Strange Love, which has been creating lots of hype receiving 3RRR and PBS’s Album of the Week, as well as topping the AIR Chart and making the top 40 ARIA Chart. How does the response so far make you feel?
It’s very gratifying and a little surprising. I suppose on some level we were aware there might be interest in the project because of the personnel but at the same time, I don’t know, could have gone the other way. I never understand these things. We felt the songs and the music were really engaging and unique in some way but again, one can never be sure how other people will hear one’s own idiosyncratic weirdness, so the strong response was a bit unforeseen and very welcome.
The incarnation of the band is a wonderful scenario with Marty Brown itching to get behind the kit more and dreaming up the idea of getting you all together. His phone calls to each of you obviously worked as he managed to orchestrate the vision and get all of you together.
I think the vision was orchestrated in the studio. I mean,
Marty had an interesting idea there and has been pulling logistics together throughout the whole process but whether or not the idea would work was up to everyone and what might be contributed and how we would work together artistically.
That’s not something that can be predicted or controlled.
So, you go in with your song ideas in tow, jam them once and then record them on the second take! It must have been so liberating to work so quickly with such intuition and freedom. Can you fill us in more on the making of Strange Love.
I’m not sure it was exactly like that for every piece. Some of the songs would have been like that, maybe even first take sometimes, but there were others where we recorded several takes and discussed how to rework them. In principle though, we found the basic approach to each piece very quickly and just put that idea down which is not that surprising as we didn’t really know what the instrumental pieces would turn into. As for liberating…. on some level, yes, but I always work quite fast in the studio, and I suspect Mick Turner does as well so it’s probably part of a familiar procedure for us. However, you analyse it, it was an enjoyable experience.
There is plenty of energy and excitement coming across on your tracks that’s also infectious and engaging, whilst being familiar if you are aware of the individual styles of vocals and instrumentation you each bring. You all have very different musical personalities, and I’m sure you all had lots to bring to the table. How did you manage to balance out everyone’s different song ideas?
I’m not sure, it just seemed to balance itself naturally. Maybe it was that we each contributed 3 or 4 pieces for consideration.
Also, I don’t think anyone had an overarching agenda - we were all just interested in what it might turn into, so we kept listening to each other and basically left our egos at the coat check.
Bleak Squad is a fascinating name, who came up with it?
Well, I think that was me. It was one of dozens of suggestions I was sending in and was obviously intended to be a bit tongue in cheek. When the process narrowed down to that being the popular choice, I was rather surprised.
Getting into a studio is one thing and recording another but how tricky was it to pull it off together live and how did it feel to perform when you did over the dates in August and October this year?
There have been certain tricky things and probably the ongoing absence of the organ parts in some places is something that has been discussed, you know, “should we get someone in to cover those”? For the most part we were able to find the original core of the songs as recorded and work from there. The other tricky thing was executing the singing parts. In probably three quarters of the songs the singing was laid over an instrumental piece at a later date. Sometimes that creates a learning process around playing one’s instrument and singing at the same time.
Luckily for those who have missed you so far you have recently announced a whole string of shows in Feb/March 2026 where people have lots of opportunity to catch you. Are you imagining this band is going to live on past these dates and do you think there will there be a follow-up to Strange Love?
We are planning to go into the studio in early January. There are also still a couple of instrumentals awaiting some bleak attention lyric wise so I suspect we will have a follow up sometime in the next 5 years. Haha!!
Finally, who are your favourite local Melbourne bands at the moment and who would you like to see interviewed for Tempo?
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