Still Up To Their Necks In It With AYA LARKIN From SKUNKHOUR

HEAVY Music Interviews

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No matter what genre of music you listen to, if you had an ear to the radio in 1995, then you would have heard a track by Skunkhour called Up To Our Necks In It. A raw, jazzy and ultimately uplifting tune, Up To Our Necks In It opens with melancholic instrumentation before swelling into a swooning and soulful affair, embracing rapped spoken-word vocal verses balanced alongside soaring melodies and rousing arrangements.
While such genre mashes might be considered the norm in the modern age of music, back then, it was a concept still very much in the experimental stage. Sometimes it worked, more often than not it didn't.
But when Skunkhour released Up To Our Necks In It, the musical landscape shifted forever. Before then, it was seemingly impossible to blend sounds and instrumentalisation together and still achieve commercial success. Not that the idea of combining musical ideas was entirely new to Skunkhour, whose career to that point had been laced with songs of varying experimentation. But this time it had struck a chord with the masses and catapulted Skunkhour from the local scene into international infamy.
Now, thirty years later and still rocking out, Skunkhour plan to celebrate that groundbreaking single by honouring it on a national tour through October and November. HEAVY sat down with vocalist Aya Larkin to take a trip down memory lane. We start with Up To Our Necks In It and ask if the band had any inkling that there was something special about the song when they initially wrote it.
"It's a good question," he measured. "It came together pretty quickly, and we did, we enjoyed it a lot as it was forming. The guitarists came into the rehearsal studio one day and said, 'oh, I dreamt this part' - and I think that was the intro section. Then he got a couple of the other riffs, because it's like a whole series of riffs that kind of just work, you know, rolling over each other. But my brother Del had had this idea in his back pocket - he's the MC. He had this idea in his back pocket of a spoken word thing that didn't rhyme, and those parts came together. They kind of grafted onto each other seamlessly. And yeah, it felt good. But it didn't…we didn't know that it would be our biggest song…"
In the full interview, Aya announced the band's upcoming tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Up To Our Necks In It, which will take place along the east coast of Australia in October and November. He shared insights into the song's creation, emphasising its themes related to urban life and its pivotal role in the band's evolution, contrasting it with their heavier subsequent album.
We talked about how that one hit song forever changed the career of Skunkhour, the title of the song and its broader meaning, what to expect from the live shows, the band's progressing sonic direction during the period Up To Our Necks In It came out, the musical climate that gave birth to Skunkhour, new music and more.
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