Australian pop-folk act Oh Pep is very accurately named

For the benefit of anyone drawn into the hotel room by the charming music, the band’s name was spelled in wooden letters on the floor. This was the 2015 Folk Alliance International conference, and the musicians who’d made this endearing gesture had come a long way: Oh Pep, of Melbourne, Australia.

Oh Pep is primarily the work Olivia Hally (the Oh) and Pepita Emmerichs (the Pep), who released their debut LP, Stadium Cake, on the Dualtone label this past summer. I spoke with Hally and Emmerichs via Skype about writing and producing the record.

The Pitch: After sharing bills with Nathaniel Ratliff & the Night Sweats and Lord Huron earlier this year, you’re touring with the Mountain Goats. Seems like a good fit.

Olivia Hally: Well, we’re fans of those bands, but especially the Mountain Goats. I’ve been listening to them for years, so when that came through, I was stoked.

Pepita Emmerichs: I remember, like, years ago — because we also supported Lake Street Dive this year — we had a list with dream bands we wanted to tour with, and Lake Street Dive was one of them. Maybe even the Mountain Goats. It all just … happened.

Hally: It was written in 2009, that list, so it’s cool that, in 2016, we’re doing it.

The bands with whom you’ve played kind of play the same way Oh Pep operates, which is playing traditional instruments nontraditionally. I’m especially thinking of the intro to “Bushwick,” which doesn’t sound anything like a mandolin. How did you approach song composition for Stadium Cake?

Emmerichs: We’ve always been writing pop songs, I think — in theory. It just happened to be that the instruments that we’re playing them on are folk instruments, and those are just the instruments that we know best and studied. I think that’s where that folk flavor might come from, but on this album we went really deeply into the pop side of things, because we could and we had the time in the studio. The producer really helped us with getting the sound that we wanted, so we really fleshed out those songs.

I listened to the album and it sounded very live — and then I found out that this is the first thing Oh Pep hasn’t recorded live. What was the recording process like?

Hally: When we were in the studio, we decided what tempo we wanted the song to be at, then we recorded a guide track, and then we’d lay down the rhythm section, then my guitar, then Pep’s stuff. And lastly, we’d do the vocals. We were in the studio for, like, two weeks, so we got into the flow of it. After we got done with all that stuff, then we’d jump into the unapologetic pop sounds, like the synth stuff. It worked well for us, I think, because it was the first time we’d done that. There was this sense of wonder every time we would figure something out. It was a really exciting process.

That sense of wonder really comes through in the recording. The rhythms are really interesting, “Bushwick” really kicking things off with propulsion. Where does that come from?

Hally: I think we had the song down, and then we laid over it this really percussive mandolin part. What I’m playing is quite slow, in my guitar part, and it’s quite a standard way to treat an acoustic. Me and Pep, one of the things we get a kick out of is adding contrasting parts to everything, so if I’m doing that, we’ll lay in another instrument doing the exact opposite, which was where that driving percussion comes from. So, you have this point of contrast that runs through the entire song, and that’s kind of what we’re looking for when we’re writing.

Emmerichs: I think it also gives it this sense of urgency and intention in the verses, where the phrasing is much slower and there’s not much movement in the melody, but you still have this sense of “Oh, what’s happening next?” and that brings it to the next section.

Oh Pep
Opening for the Mountain Goats
Saturday, October 1, at the Madrid Theater