Progressively building an Australasia-wide reputation for infectious, energetic live performances, Wellington pop rock quartet Wet Denim have just released their third EP since 2022. Made up of brothers Jack and Joe Ledword on bass and drums/percussion respectively, lead singer/guitarist Nick Goodwin and Luca Crampton on guitar/keys, the indie rock band have stepped up to deliver their most detailed and expansive collection yet. Nick and Jack talked through the EP process with Richard Thorne.
Releasing their new EP ‘Water For Dogs’ on a Thursday in mid-September, Wet Denim opted to keep their launch gig powder dry for a three-date main centre tour over two weekends at the end of the month.
Instead the band marked the occasion a few days later with an afternoon acoustic set at Swimsuit, a central Wellington café where one band member works. Tying in with the EP name and visual aesthetic, the gig supported local charity Chance 4 Change that re-homes rescue dogs – and no doubt had some irresistible puppies to further entertain the audience.
‘Water For Dogs’ arrives two years, almost to the day, since the band released their previous EP. The sound and songwriting is familiar, but a production upgrade is evident. As Nick Goodwin explains it, their 2024 EP ‘On The Line’ reflects an era when the band production was home studio-based, making do with digital tools available at the time.
“We would create a demo at home, on a laptop, and be sort of tweaking tones all the time with digital amp modellers and that kind of thing. And we would try and replicate that, I guess, in the rehearsal room, or vice versa.”
Over the period ‘On The Line’ was being completed the band were trialling life in Melbourne, living together in a flat for six months.
“We had sort of decked out the living room as a bit of a makeshift home studio. I remember getting the mixes online from our mixing engineer Neil MacLeod. We could never quite pinpoint why our recordings weren’t matching the energy that we felt our live show had. After that project we kind of realised that we needed to change the style of production and the approach that we took to recording.”
Wet Denim subsequently returned home to Wellington, and for ‘Water For Dogs’ the music curation focus dramatically shifted towards detailed pre-production and studio recording.
“We were fortunate to have five days in a row at Ahumairangi Studio at Massey University, working with a couple of our good friends – Dan Goodwin was engineering with Ben O’Leary from Drax [Project] producing.
“It meant that we had like a whole day pretty much to focus on getting good guitar tones that were going to be consistent for the whole project, and choosing snare sounds, and choosing the way in which we wanted to record vocals. It meant that all of the songs started out with a base track of all of us playing together.
“We were still in separate rooms for isolation, but it was the full band playing the song as we had written it in the rehearsal room, and then from there we were able to do overdubs and things like that.”
A demo pool of 20 tracks was whittled down to the six that made it onto ‘Water For Dogs’, Nick describing it as a very democratic process in terms of the chosen songs and shared songwriting.
“Thinking back to when we first started writing these tracks, we were definitely struggling with what was going to be the sort of one element that actually tied it together and made it feel cohesive.
“In those early demo writing sessions they did feel very separate, almost in a way that we were struggling to identify them with each other. And I think the way that we achieved that was through the production, so through recording them all in the same way, using the same tones, using the same techniques. But it’s in the songwriting that they differ.”
Explaining why they stopped just a few tracks short of delivering an album he says the added financial cost of more days in the studio was a big factor, Wet Denim’s ongoing musical development another.
“Also, you only get to do your debut [album] once… and we just didn’t feel like it was quite the time. It just felt right to do one more EP. I think we all sort of felt like, ‘Yeah, we’re almost there when it comes to knowing our sound and knowing how we work best as a group when we write and record and produce.’
“Each EP we’ve released has felt like it’s really built off the previous one, and I think it would be safe to say that an album is the next thing we all really want to do, off the back of ‘Water for Dogs’.
He describes the new EP as their most equally collaborative and worked-through group of songs. Shared writing and reworking, band rehearsals, road testing them live and then further refining in the recording studio.
“It is definitely the best representation of the four of our individual music influences and writing styles. I think that has to do with the fact that we had a few different… almost like writing camps. Some where we reworked songs ourselves, and then we did a session on a couple of them with Neil MacLeod who mixes our stuff, and is also a great songwriter.
“Living Room and Outdated first came from a weekend of writing with Ben, and then we did another sessions with him to rework them. So I think they’ve just been the most rigorously tested and sort of thought out. A lot of the previous ones we really did just smash out quickly in the home studio – and then practised them a couple times, played them live a couple times, and then they were out.
“These ones feel like they’ve really been like in the slow cooker, and we’ve been writing and rewriting sections, and being a lot more methodical about the whole process. I think that’s why it feels more wholly representative of where we’re at the moment.”
Recording was done in mid-January 2026, the band spending most of the five days in the studio.
“They were seriously big days, starting at 9am and finishing at 3am kind of thing. Especially that last day,” laughs Nick.
“We did all of the instrumental sort of recording in the first four days, which actually included re-recording a few of the songs. We did all the tracks, and then we realised at the end the songs that we’d recorded first just didn’t sound quite as tight as the others. Obviously if you’re in the studio for four days you just get tighter and tighter and better as a band. So Ben the producer made the executive decision that we had to re-record, even though we were running out of time!”
“And we changed the bpm on a couple too,” Jack remembers. “We listened back and like, ‘Oh, this feels slow,’ so we sped Mirror up by like one or two bpm, and it just made the biggest difference – changed the entire feeling of the song. I think we sped up Living Room as well.”
The tracking of Nick’s vocals was left to the very end of the process.
“That was kind of an intentional decision we made – and then on the last day I recorded all the vocals, just back-to-back for every song! From midday to midnight I just tracked all the vocals for the whole project.
“I found doing it that my voice definitely gets better the more it warms up. And the way we structured the songs it just kind of felt like each one was working its way up to the next one, and it actually just worked really well.”
Leading into the album the band released Mirrors and Silence as singles, each with music videos directed and edited by Jack, who also produces the band’s gig posters and album art.
“I did study graphic design at university, but I’ve always just had like a passion for photography and videography on the side. It’s just something I enjoy doing, so I do all the visual stuff for us. Saves a lot of money!”
Strong hooks are a feature of the band’s collective songwriting, in this case making the selection of singles a democratic challenge.
“We do really try and hone in on that pop sensibility when it comes to having a catchy chorus,” says Nick.
“I don’t know if we could really nail down why any one of those songs got chosen as singles. We try not to get too many opinions because then you’re just going to get completely confused. But I think it’s yeah getting the opinions of the people that are involved in the project, and then yeah, I guess you just have to commit to it and really drive it home.”
While the six tracks are all pop rock-centred, the EP reflects a variety of styles and dynamics within that radio-friendly genre. Nick agrees there was definitely intention to reflect variety, balanced with need for songs that sit well next to each other.
“In our previous two EPs there was always sort of a more stripped kind of really heartfelt, like ballady kind of song. In this project I think that’s what Silence fills.
“And then we always have a few really groovy singalong sort of moments where you can dance, like it’s fun and the emotions are all just very clear cut. I think that’s what we get from Living Room, and potentially Outdated on this one.
“Then the sort of more emotional moments as well. Raw emotion from like heavier guitar tones and also lyrically, and vocal emotional as well. The big moment in Frames is probably one of the most heavy, intense pieces of music that we’ve produced in the past few years.
“So I think yeah, it was very intentional covering all of those bases. It helps to represent each of our music influences.”
A third single/video for Outdated, was released along with the EP. This one NZ On Air funded, it stars the ‘Water For Dogs’ EP’s visual staple and apparent inspiration – Stella the very handsome white German Shepherd who belongs to a friend of the band.
Stella’s role grew organically from inclusion in an early press photo shoot to featuring in a making-of video, and subsequently more sessions.
“I think we’ve done three different shoot days with Stella now. She’s definitely getting towards the senior part of her dog life, so we’ve been pretty fortunate to have her so heavily involved.
“When it came to shooting the music video for Outdated we agreed we’d have to ask Mike to come one more time with Stella, just so we could keep it really tight. It really has been like the one thing that has brought this whole visual creative world cohesively together, yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
