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

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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