Listen to Home

They met. They fell in love. They wrote songs.
They fought. They made up. They broke up. They wrote songs.

At a time when for most it would be the end of a relationship, for Australian band The Falls this feels like just the beginning…

Almost subconsciously The Falls have documented their whole relationship in their songs. The love, the betrayal, the heartbreak. While at times it is hard for them to wear their hearts so openly on their sleeve, for The Falls, it has been a huge part of their songwriting. As Stevie Nicks said “devastation leads to writing good things”.

In the fallout from Valentines Day, The Falls decided that rather than wallowing in self-pity they would put their heartbreak to tape. So they pulled out their little tascam 4-track portastudio, which, with all its tape wobbles and noise, aptly captured the fragility of their hearts. These fledgling recordings were just the beginning of what has become their debut EP ‘HOLLYWOOD’.

In late 2011, The Falls hit the studio with producer Tony Buchen (Old Man River, Andy Bull, WIM, Washington) to record ‘Hollywood’. The Hotel Hollywood in Sydney, has featured so strongly in their lives that it was inevitable that it would manifest itself in this way. For most of 2010 and 2011, it was where they could be found playing each week at a little, somewhat undiscovered, night of free music that emerged from the back streets of Surry Hills called Folk Club. It is also where they met, where they found their sound and where they wrote these songs.

In this intimate setting, the connection between these two onstage was palpable. Their emotionally fueled live performances are compelling to watch, sometimes heartbreakingly so, garnering reviews such as "intoxicating melodies and gorgeous harmonies" and "(their) strength lies in their ability to convey raw emotion and wisdom in their lyrics".

Buchen managed to imprint some of this Hollywood magic on each track, recording the re-verbs for the EP down in the bowels of the hotel, in the downstairs men's toilets. So, each song has on it a little Hollywood porcelain re-verb or 'pee-verb' as they’ve been calling it.

Having toured nationally in 2012 with Of Monsters And Men (Iceland), Passenger (UK) and Avalanche City (NZ), The Falls are fast developing an impressive live resume which also includes performances at the Surry Hills Festival, Peat’s Ridge Art and Music Festival, Gulgong Folk Festival and Nunnup Music Festival, Communion and Sofar Sounds in Melbourne, as well as shows with Lior, Husky and Matt Corby. Having also shared the stage with one of their idles Graham Nash, when he was in Australia on tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Falls have had an incredible year.

They have also recently been invited to showcase at SXSW and Canadian Music Week 2013 and are excited to be heading to Canada and the USA this year. In late March the The Falls will be returning home to join The Lumineers on their Australian Tour.

With an unmistakable sound, barefoot collaborators and best friends The Falls are gently making a name for themselves in 2013.

With an unmistakable sound, barefoot collaborators and best friends The Falls are gently making a name for themselves in 2013.

“the voices sit next to each other like they’ve been pouring from the same pot of tea for years and some judiciously deployed extras like strings and tuned percussion alongside the voices and the Falls – the duo of Simon Rudston-Brown and Melinda Kirwin –could earn a place on the same stage as the Civil Wars.”
- Bernard Zuel, The Sydney Morning Herald