Howling Bells’ Juanita Stein aims to ring loud and clear while waging Radio Wars stateside

By Selena Fragassi
Published: July 23rd, 2009 | 10:00pm

When The Guardian claims your band is “on the verge of unequivocal magnificence,” there’s little stopping your success. And so the story goes for London by-way-of Sydney’s Howling Bells, who garnered near-perfect marks in the European press for their 2006 self-titled debut on Bellaire Records.

When Howling Bells set out to record their debut album, they captured the interest of noted producer Ken Nelson, but there was just one problem: he was tied up with Coldplay’s X&Y (Capitol Records), which meant the band was stuck in a foreign land — just waiting. But finally, America gets its chance to welcome the band with the release of Radio Wars (Nettwerk) and an opening slot on Coldplay’s headlining tour, which itself is an interesting twist of fate.

“I feel like in some way we were meant to be connected to Coldplay,” says smoldering lead singer Juanita Stein in her flirty accent. Together with her brother, guitarist Joel Stein, drummer Glenn Moule, and bassist Brendan Picchio, the acclaimed quartet is formed.

“I believe everything does happen for a reason and even though, at the time, we didn’t appreciate bumming around London with really crappy jobs, bad weather, and no infrastructure: in retrospect, I really appreciate what the process did to us emotionally,” Stein says, reflecting on the band’s early days with a humility and maturity that most singers can’t muster after decades of experience. “By the time we had gone into the studio, we absolutely were bursting with energy and passion.”

After five years, London has now become home for the band — a long way from Sydney, where Moule once drove tractors before answering the band’s advertisement in the local Drum Media Magazine, and where brother-and-sister Stein grew up in a household full of drama and music; brought up by a mother who gave up acting to raise her family with a blues-jamming dad.

“Our house was just perpetually blasting with music from morning to night. Whether we were playing opera or Tom Waits, it didn’t matter as long as there was some kind of melodic force blaring through the walls,” notes Stein of her earliest music memories. “So when we came to them and said, ‘We are going to start a band,’ there wasn’t that expected, ‘Really? Are you sure?’ Overall, they’ve been extraordinarily supportive.”

It’s that same sense of familial kinship that the carries over to the band itself, with Stein referring to all of her bandmates as brothers … even if it didn’t start out that way. “On the first record, we came from a place where Howling Bells was not a unit yet,” says Stein. “We were just starting and all the experiences came from me, because I wrote all the songs. But over the years, we experienced the same things, we became immersed in the same group of people, we moved to London together. There were huge life changes that we experienced together, and I think that inspired us to write similar music and poetry.”

If the new album, Radio Wars, reflects any consistent theme, it would be just that: Change. Part of the change was the sound itself. On the first record, Howling Bells were often mislabeled as more of a gothic outfit, a brand which Stein finds amusing. “I was really unaware of any specific sound we were creating. We come from Sydney — it’s like California with the coastal lines and beaches and the surf. So for [critics] to romanticize this sense of darkness … It’s just the music we like,” she says, noting that one of the tracks was even a cover of a mellow Americana song written by her father.

Whereas Howling Bells’ debut was stark and dreary, Radio Wars is upbeat with lighter pop notes that soften edges and brighten the corners of the band’s moody rhythms. It’s an effect that comes from more experimentation with electronics, even though Stein often struggles with the concept of machines from a humanistic standpoint. “A lot of the record infers the technological struggle that most of the band has: we’re very comfortable with technology since we all grew up in the ‘80s. We’re down with it,” she jokes, before turning serious. “However, we’re starting to feel the effects of a purely technological generation trickle down, and I feel like all of us are just trying to find a midpoint between technology and humanity.”

Ideological struggles aside, there’s one battle Stein finally conquers on Radio Wars: understanding herself as a performer. “I can almost pinpoint a time where I literally felt like I dropped my guard,” she says. “I used to feel very guarded and very protective of my lyrics and myself. I’d literally be looking at people in the audience thinking, ‘I don’t want to give you this much. I don’t want you to understand what I’m saying.’ So a lot of those lyrics were masked in symbolism. But Radio Wars seemed to launch the birth of a very unguarded performer in learning how to really express myself.”

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