CDM 101 - Broods x Dog-Grooming

21st September 2016 by Rose Riddell

In an effort to make interviews more exciting for bands, Coup De Main has launched a new interview series, CDM 101 - in which we help artists learn a new skill that they’re particularly intrigued by. First up are New Zealand duo Broods, who recently released their sophomore album, ‘Conscious’.

Being dog-lovers, we took them along to Auckland CBD based dog-groomers, City Dogs (check out all about them here) to learn tips and tricks for grooming some adorable dogs.

The first step in grooming any dog is to remove any excess fur from between their toes - as handily demonstrated below:

When you get to actually clipping their hair, we were informed that the dogs would know if we were nervous - so Caleb and Georgia had to be at peace with the pups they were looking after.

According to City Dogs, going with the flow of the hair is the best way to clip, and you do everything except for the head and the tail - which is done separately.

To clip the belly, requires a little more manoeuvring - in that you need to hold the dog up so you can get to its belly easily with the clippers. It made for some great photos:

The final elements involved in dog-grooming are the tops of the feet - which you comb the fur on the foot up then clip with scissors - as well as the groin areas, and using scissors to get rid of the fluffy stuff underneath the ear.

And check out the final product!

THE #1 THING I LEARNT ABOUT DOG GROOMING IS…

COUP DE MAIN: First of all, your new album 'Conscious' is so rad. It’s a total jam. The album features more co-writes than ‘Evergreen’ - Tove Lo, and Lorde! How does that process work compared to you guys working with no co-writers?
BROODS - CALEB NOTT: Well, the process of it is usually pretty natural, we just ask people, or if we’re in the same town at the same time, or one of us is in the studio, you just ask someone to come along and help out.

I HAVE A FULL BLOWN LOVE FOR…

CDM: Is there a specific type of person who is easy for you guys to write with, or is it just, you’ll try anything?
BROODS - GEORGIA NOTT: I think we’ll try anything, I mean, there is definitely people that we click with more than other people though.
CALEB: They’re usually the ones that make the record, are the easy ones.
GEORGIA: Yeah, the sessions that we have, that we really enjoy, those are the ones when we’re really having an attachment to the song as well, which is such a massive part. It’s such a personal thing, songwriting, so you need to be able to have that connection with somebody in order to create something that you feel is honest to yourself.

CDM: Speaking of co-writes, I’m very obsessed with the fact that Joel’s four-year-old daughter is a co-writer on ‘Worth The Fight’. How did that writing process work?
GEORGIA: She didn’t wanna go to the supermarket so she just came and sat in the studio with us and we were working on ‘Worth The Fight’, we just had like a chord progression and we were playing it on loop and trying to figure out melodies, lyrics, and stuff. I was sitting down writing lyrics on my phone and humming to myself, so she was doing the same next to me on a piece of paper, just scribbling, not really words, just scribbles and then she kept going up to Joel and whispering ideas in his ear. She really didn’t say anything in front us but she kept going up to Joel and whispering stuff in his ear. He just said, “Oh, that’s great Emmie, go and sit down.” <laughs> She went up to him three times with the same idea, so after the third time he was like, “Actually guys, she’s come up with the same idea every time do you wanna hear it?” And she sang it to us. It’s the opening melody the <sings opening melody>, she came up with that!

CDM: Well when she becomes super famous, you guys can be known as the ones who gave her the first break!
GEORGIA: I know, her first break as a four-year-old. <laughs> It’s so funny, she listens to the song and every time she’s like, “I helped on this song, eh Dad?”

CDM: On ‘We Had Everything’, you sing, “We were young, we were proud, we were promising / We were hiding our innocence.” How do you think the way people form relationships when they are young differs to when they grow up and experience loss and heartbreak? Do you think it’s a good or a bad thing?
GEORGIA: I think it’s a bit of both. I think there’s an openness when you’re young and you kind of--
CALEB: I feel like when you’re older you just become super self-conscious and everyone becomes less confident as they get older, which is so funny.
GEORGIA: Yeah, it’s strange, when you’re in high school all your wounds seem to heal so quickly, like you’ll break up with somebody and then you’ll be dating another person the next week. <laughs> Everything is so condensed, the time period that you spend with people seems like a whole lifetime when it could be a few months, and everything feels way bigger than it is. And then all of a sudden you’ll get hit in the face with something that actually is really massive and everything else seems to be-- you think about everything that you’ve ever been through, being so much easier then real life. I guess that’s pretty much what the whole song is about - getting slapped in the face by reality, then realising that those carefree times when you’re a teenager, you literally have everything that you could possibly need without even knowing it.

CDM: It’s crazy cause when teenagers are young they just complain about everything, it’s like, when you look back you actually had it so well!
GEORGIA: Yeah exactly, it’s so bloody easy! <laughs>

CDM: I love that some of the super heartfelt songs on the record are kept quite simple in their production. How does that process work - is it a deliberate decision for songs like ‘All Of Your Glory’ to showcase the lyrics at the forefront?
GEORGIA: Yeah, well some of those songs just start off like that and then we think about producing them up and stuff but there are some songs that you write that you know need to be in their raw form and that was kinda of what ‘All Of Your Glory’ was like, we didn’t even feel the need to try and produce it up or anything, it’s literally just the demo on the record.

HOW WE FEEL ABOUT THE RELEASE OF ‘CONSCIOUS’…

CDM: In ‘Recovery’ you sing, “I can only promise the girl that I am” - do you think it’s important in a relationship to be 100% honest about who you are? Especially in terms of what is expected from women in this day and age.
GEORGIA: Absolutely! I feel like there’s always a few pressures to either be a strong woman when you can’t always be, or people expect you to be weaker than you are. It’s kind of a bit of both, realising that when you are with somebody that’s all you can really be, like, you have to literally just be yourself and if you go promising something more or something less than-- not really setting yourself up for a success.

ONE THING ON OUR BUCKET LIST…

CDM: ‘Are You Home’ was co-written and produced by Captain Cuts, members from Grouplove, who are renowned for making such smart pop songs, and it totally is true of this song. How did your writing come about with them?
CALEB: It was just kind of set up by A&R and we were like, “Okay! Cool!” We had pretty much finished the record when we went into that session as well and we’d never met them before. We just turned up at their studio and we hung out for a good hour before we even got into any kind of writing. We just kind of hit it off, we had the same sense of humour and things like that and it just flowed really easily. They were so much fun to write with and we did it in like four hours— it was the quickest song on the record.

CDM: Georgia, in interviews you’ve said that Caleb found himself as a producer in the making of this record. How did that process work, Caleb, was it just lots of practice and experimentation?
CALEB: I didn’t know anything about it in the first record. It was actually getting artists to do remixes and stuff as Broods, that’s how I forced myself to learn - because I got asked to do a remix for Charli XCX, and I couldn’t actually work any kind of software or anything like that, so it kind of forced me to learn. They had deadlines. That was where it started and after I knew what I was doing I could do it all the time, and it’s really to do on the bus, or wherever you are, on the plane. Just practice, and watching Joel work a lot.

CDM: In an interview with FasterLouder you said you recorded more with live instruments on the album. What informed this decision?
CALEB: I think it was just a livened energy, it was more of an energy thing.
GEORGIA: I think we also found ourselves getting more excited about experimenting with new things like, “Oh should we try using this?” And giving ourselves the freedom to just try whatever we wanted to try!
CALEB: And that’s how we used to make music when we were kids, when we were in high school I never played synths or anything like that, so we thought we’d bring it back, play a bit of live bass and percussion.

CDM: We’ve started a new column on our website which is all about NZ music. So, what other New Zealand music are you guys loving at the moment?
CALEB: I’m obsessed with Marlon Williams.
GEORGIA: Yeah, he’s just a whole other level of awesome.
CALEB: There’s no-one in New Zealand music that has that emotion, I don’t think.