Singer-songwriter Lubin Raines tells Scott Kara how his writing - and confidence - developed.
Sitting in a ramshackle and cluttered lounge of an old house in Sandringham, it's hard to believe a truly great country music record was made here.
Even one of the architects of the album, Lubin Raines, the shy, modest, and slightly oddball leader of the Vietnam War, is pondering just how their self-titled debut turned out sounding so good.
"With the home recording, I wasn't holding out a lot of hope for it being great at all," he says. "I thought it would be a lot more bedroom [sounding] than it is, but then it came out sounding really hi-fi and amazing."
Despite the band's name having heavy metal connotations, the Vietnam War - led by Raines on vocals, guitar and harp, with Saan Barratt (who also lives in this house) on bass, guitarists Matthew Short and Kristal Gallagher, and drummer Kari Hammond - play dusty, often tension-filled country music with hints of psychedelia and occasional outbreaks of thigh-slapping.
And for a person who constantly downplays things, like how for many years he didn't think people would like his songs, Raines sure writes self-assured tunes with a true grit and swagger to them.
And there's also a wry and humorous side. Take the line in Beat My Time: "I pour out my love like water, everyone knows that I'm a well," which, delivered in Raines' deadbeat lilt, is deliciously droll stuff.
"It nicely summed up a confusing mess of emotions about what was happening at the time," he says of the song. "It's a picture of the state of mind I was in. And I feel like it is a bit of a conflicted song in the sense that it's got a wish in it, but at the same time it's trying to be quite dismissive and blasé."
He wrote that song about five years ago. Back then, Raines and his two children were living above an old block of shops in Devonport. He'd just broken up with his wife and though he was looking after his kids (who are now 11 and 8), he still had a lot of time during the day to write songs when they were at school and daycare.
"I was kind of like housewife, you know," she smiles. "I had a lot of time during the day to myself and I suppose I was able to start something and could keep coming back to it. I got a lot of work done.
"It was a kind of insular time, this internalised world, which is really good for writing lyrics and really good for writing songs, I think," he says.
The band was formed when friends, including Barratt, who was an old mate of Raines' from Western Springs College, "rallied around" the songs he was writing.
"We used to get together on a Wednesday or a Thursday, drink wine, and sit around, playing guitars," remembers Barratt. "We weren't really writing songs or anything, just jamming. Beat My Time was the first song of Lubin's I heard and it just sat right. It sat nicely. It's a good song and it hasn't really changed much either - pretty much what's on the record is like the first demo we did."
The album, which was recorded and produced by Supergroove and Drab Doo Riffs main man Karl Steven, has been a long time coming, for a few reasons. There have been some line-up shuffles over the years and both Barratt and Raines admit they have their "rows".
"We've had some rough times. I guess that's the thing about being friends, you don't mind having a fight about something, because maybe if you didn't know someone that well you'd be more diplomatic," says Raines.
However, it seems the main hold-up was that they had no grand plan to do anything bigger than to just have fun and play live. "It was like, write some songs, play a show," says Barratt.
It's not that Raines and his cohorts lack ambition, it's just that he didn't think people would like his songs that much.
"The shows that we were playing were so small, and there were lots of other bands around. There was never any expectation that the audience would grow beyond the regulars and our friends who came to our shows. I guess I never had the expectation that people would really like it," he smiles.
If anything this low-key approach has lent the band a certain mystique, which suits the album's spare beauty. They had planned to have other instruments on The Vietnam War, like piano accordion and lap steel, but decided it was starting to sound too dynamic. So they resolved to keep it minimal and stuck to playing their core instruments.
"No extras. Let's just keep it the band sound," says Barratt. "And Lubin was keen on making the whole record sound like you were watching a live show, in respect to the continuity of the guitars, the drums, and everything sounding like it was one piece of music. And we do sound like that [live], only a bit faster and a bit louder with a bit more guts," he smiles.
It won't be as long a wait for the next album with future plans in place.
"Tour this record, make a new one, and repeat. I'd like to keep doing that," says Raines.
LOWDOWN
Who: The Vietnam War
Debut album: The Vietnam War, out now
Where & when: Kings Arms, tonight, 7.30pm
- TimeOut
