Talk about life imitating art.
Just as the new songs of Die! Die! Die! contain more than a few twists and turns so, too, do events of the past year.
Let's rewind 12 months.
Singer and guitarist Andrew Wilson had just returned to Auckland having completed yet another overseas tour with long-time drummer friend Michael Prain.
The pair, along with bass player Lachlan Anderson, had also managed to find time to spend a week recording at a French studio, the result of which is the band's fourth album, Harmony, released in New Zealand last week.
"I've never worked on anything so hard," Wilson says via phone from Auckland, where he and fellow founding member Prain have been based since moving from their Dunedin homes in 2003.
"But after we finished it, me and Mike weren't sure whether we wanted to do this anymore. I'd been doing music non-stop since I was 14 in Dunedin - had never had a break and I really needed a change.
"I just needed a break from Die! Die! Die! I needed a break from touring. It was a really different time of my life compared to nowadays. Back then, we were stuck in this constant cycle of touring everywhere and not really enjoying ourselves."
The result of this incessant touring, a goldfish-bowl existence that tests all relationships, is the departure of Anderson, replaced by Michael Logie, whose Kiwi alt-rock credibility includes The Mint Chicks, F In Math and Opossom.
The band has also waved goodbye to New Zealand label Flying Nun. Whereas its previous album, 2010's Form, was handled by Flying Nun, Harmony has been released on Die! Die! Die!'s own imprint, Records Etc. (Form was Flying Nun's second New Zealand release following founder Roger Shepherd's move to buy back the label from Warner Music with help from Neil Finn and others in 2009; it followed Grayson Gilmour's No Constellation, also released in 2010.)
"I don't really want to talk about it," Wilson says of the move.
He does anyway.
"Flying Nun didn't really do what they said they were going to do and communication was really hard. It was a bummer, but with this album we decided we didn't want to blame anyone else if there were any screw-ups.
"Having our own label was something we'd thought of when we first formed in 2003 but we never got around to doing it. It has been amazing, actually. We've got the most support we've ever had from people."
In concrete terms, this means New Zealand label Rhythm Method is distributing Harmony here; elsewhere, the band has signed deals with an English label (though Wilson can't disclose which "just yet"), Red Eye in the United States, Inertia in Australia and Golden Antenna in Europe.
The group also has a new manager, Manu Taylor, who Wilson credits with saving Die! Die! Die!
"He put our band back together. He convinced me to continue. It's a good working relationship."
Other personalities have played an integral part in the band's latest chapter. Shayne Carter (Bored Games, Doublehappys, Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer), who produced Die! Die! Die!'s 2007 album Promises, Promises, again provided Wilson with both insight and motivation.
"I can't really express how much Shayne helped me out. I had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted to sing but I'm the world's biggest procrastinator, so when I work with Shayne I can't put things off. And he's probably one of the only people in the world whose opinion I care about."
Tasmania-based producer Chris Townend, whose credits range from Portishead to the Violent Femmes, went so far as to waive his fee for the initial recording sessions at Blackbox Studios, near the Loire Valley in France. Wilson had met Townend through a mutual connection with Australian band Silverchair's frontman, Daniel Johns (Wilson has worked on Johns' new solo album).
"Chris was working with Silverchair and I'd been talking with them for a while ... he did it as a labour of love, really. He did it for no money, which was very nice of him, because we had no money at the time."
Wilson believes Harmony benefits from Die! Die! Die!'s previous recording experiences. He points to his band's 2006 self-titled album (recorded by Steve Albini, famous for his work with Nirvana, among others) and sophomore effort Promises, Promises, both of which included "lots of bits that we didn't have time to fix up".
In comparison, third album Form, recorded over two months by Nick Roughan, formerly of Palmerston North outfit The Skeptics, another band with a reputation for guitar-driven soundscapes, took "too long".
"This is a nice in-between approach. We just wanted to make sure that it sounded like the live band. We recorded 18 songs but Chris pushed us to not do anything too 'rock' or too 'pop' or too obvious.
"With Die! Die! Die!, things can't be over-thought. If we over-think it, we ruin it. It needs to stay simple and feel natural. I think it's quite an uplifting record, although people have different opinions of our band."
Harmony might not be a drastic departure from Die! Die! Die!'s exploratory (read sometimes noisy, often punk-infused) approach to music, but it does offer a more textural, layered experience than Form, on which Wilson and company had attempted to trim all elements of fat from their songs.
"As you get older you are less self-conscious and more happy to paint with lots of different colours," Wilson says, acknowledging a long-held list of influences that range from punk to noise-rock and points in between, chief among them the guitar-slingers of HDU (Tristan Dingemans), My Bloody Valentine (Kevin Shields) and Bailterspace (Alistair Parker).
"We grew up listening to those bands. Carriage H [the Logan Park High School band of which he and Prain were members, winning the 2002 cokesmokefreerockquest] was obviously influenced by bands such as My Bloody Valentine.
"Playing guitar has always been my dream ... I can't play it in a conventional sense so I need to push it into interesting areas for myself. I try to keep things as minimal as possible. All my gear is broken and I think that adds to the charm."
Still, Wilson had better get that gear fixed soon. Die! Die! Die! is about to embark on a seven-date national tour that includes two Dunedin performances later this month (see below), after which it will head to Australia before embarking on "pretty extensive" tours of Europe and the United States later in the year.
"We are booked until March next year, but I'm going to try to ensure we don't fall over like we did last year," Wilson says.
"I haven't been to Dunedin in about a year. I've been trying to get my life together in Auckland. But I'll have 10 days off in Dunedin during this tour, so that'll be a good family catch-up."
Catch them
Harmony, the fourth album by Die! Die! Die!, is out now.
Die! Die! Die! performs the following dates: Crown Hotel, Dunedin, Wednesday, July 25 Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers, Friday, July 27.
