Slowly Slowly frontman Ben Stewart guides us via the creation of their definitive fifth album, ‘Forgiving Spree’, out January 24 through Nettwerk Music Group.
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By the darkest days and the longest nights, hope is usually what retains us going. The data that every second is fleeting regardless of how bleak it might appear, it’s vital to carry onto the concept that ultimately one thing (or somebody) will come alongside to shine a lightweight.
When that point comes although, it may be tough to just accept that you just deserve such happiness, one thing that Slowly Slowly frontman Ben Stewart is aware of all too effectively.
Spending virtually a decade forging their place within the scene, 2022’s ‘Daisy Chain’ marked a turning level. Written in the course of the crippling isolation of world lockdowns and debuting at Quantity 5 on the Australian charts, because the band emerged from their respective properties and ready to tackle the world as soon as extra – rather a lot had modified.
“We ended up enjoying the album in full each evening on that Australian tour… We had been so enthusiastic about it,” the singer-guitarist remembers fondly.
“We stepped exterior the field of what we often do on that report, and it paid off. There have been individuals singing each phrase and getting tattoos of the lyrics. The eye that it garnered from individuals was one thing we hadn’t skilled earlier than.”
Heading residence with a renewed sense of delight and validation, as Ben sat all the way down to work on new music he felt a launch. A reflective, emotional songwriter with a knack for capturing life’s tragedy and tumult in all their complexity, he started to rethink the methods by which his story may very well be advised.
“I’d had an odd couple of years with deaths, marriages, births and miscarriages. It felt like a whole lot of life had occurred,” he explains.
“Quite a lot of my previous work centered round grudges that I held towards myself and others, and I used to be holding on to a lot. I discovered forgiveness for myself and for others, and I began letting go of these grudges. I wanted to work on being softer in my method, and softer on myself.”
9 songs centered on giving your self permission to be completely happy, that’s the place the story of ‘Forgiving Spree’ begins. A daring, all-killer-no-filler rock report overflowing with vulnerability and appreciation for the individuals in our lives who lighten the load, Rock Sound sat down with Ben to discover how the Aussie band’s fifth album got here to be.
THE SOUND
From day one, Ben and his bandmates had one easy objective in thoughts for ‘Forgiving Spree’. Energised after enjoying their greatest headline exhibits up to now, they wished each track on album 5 to have its personal second within the highlight. With ‘Daisy Chain’ increasing their choices and exploring the potential of what their band may change into, it was time to make an announcement.
“I grew up obsessive about albums like ‘Californication’ by the Pink Sizzling Chili Peppers, and I’ve all the time wished to put in writing a report that felt like hit after hit,” Ben nods.
“We’ve completed all of the groundwork, and we’re assured in what we do now, so none of it felt laboured. We had been in a position to train the whole lot we’ve realized in a extremely comfy means, and due to that this album seems like such a pure evolution.”
Cinematic but intimate, darting throughout genres, sounds, and kinds in easy fashion, from the second the title monitor’s anthemic refrain kicks within the intent is unattainable to disregard. Explosive melodies that kick you within the tooth paired with blisteringly heartfelt lyrics, ‘Forgiving Spree’ strikes a joyous steadiness between sensitivity and sheer rock ‘n’ roll bombast.
“I wrote so many songs for the report, however I centered on making an attempt to create anthems out of issues that I felt actually strongly about,” Ben explains.
“After I first began watching bands at 14 years outdated, I bear in mind feeling drunk while watching them locked-in onstage. Fortunately, I’ve by no means misplaced the lust for that. Being a part of that little telepathic pod the place you’re utterly locked-in, searching to the viewers and figuring out that somebody is feeling what you’re feeling… That’s one of the best drug.”
“Due to that, it wasn’t a lot about creating earworms, it was extra about creating issues for the stage. After I get onstage and get into that mindset, I would like the songs to have the ability to communicate to me. I saved writing songs till I had discovered a batch that lived in that overlap. I wanted to really feel an actual resonance with them, however in addition they needed to be actually tight and catchy.”
The writing course of happening between Melbourne and LA, a big a part of the album’s uncooked high quality stems from Ben’s insistence on utilizing his demo vocals within the last combine. Preserving the emotion of the primary take, regardless of how a lot they lean into their love of infectious pop melodies, there’s not a single second on ‘Forgiving Spree’ that isn’t overflowing with feeling.
“I feel it stemmed from self-hatred and laziness firstly, however making an attempt to reconnect and re-track a track’s vocal later down the monitor by no means felt proper for me,” he shrugs.
“It all the time felt like I used to be making an attempt to create a caricature of the emotion that I used to be feeling on the time as a result of as time goes on you bear in mind issues in another way. If there’s a track that gives the look that it had a pained supply, that’s as a result of it truly felt pained. Should you revisit it months later, you may over exaggerate the ache, and it could actually have a contrived high quality to it. I’ve all the time erred in direction of the demo vocal… It’s all the time essentially the most trustworthy.”
THE LYRICS
Written throughout a interval of his life stuffed with each elation and heartbreak, there’s a definite push and pull momentum that defines ‘Forgiving Spree’. From bouncy ode to everlasting love ‘All Time’ to the gut-wrenching memorial of nearer ‘Born Free’, every track is a snapshot of Ben’s recollections, each the joyous and the tragic.
“As a lot as I wished to tug issues right into a light-hearted, dancier area on this album, there was a whole lot of heavy stuff swimming round,” he explains.
That sentiment is expressed most poignantly on the gorgeous ‘Hurricane’, a monitor that remembers Ben’s pleasure at discovering out that he and his spouse had been anticipating their first youngster, solely to endure a miscarriage 4 months into the time period. Pieced along with Australian producer Fortunate West in LA, the duo labored collectively to make sure that the fact of the emotion was captured in its purest type.
“For some time, I didn’t actually wish to write about it. Each time I broached the subject, I felt like I used to be cheapening the expertise by making an attempt to deal with it right into a pop track,” he says.
“Late within the album writing course of although, I had a day with Fortunate. I used to be a great distance from residence, and a hurricane was speculated to hit LA. There was an impending shutdown of the town, everybody was sandbagging their properties, and I used to be caught in my lodging alone. I started to think about grief as standing within the eye of a hurricane. It’s very nonetheless, you’re watching all of this stuff transfer round you, and there’s a numbness.”
“Going via miscarriage is an odd grief, and it’s one thing that usually will get swept underneath the rug. I really feel actually proud that I get to speak about it and assist anybody else that’s coping with grief and people dissociating emotions.”
Even in its most painful moments although, ‘Forgiving Spree’ finally feels hopeful. A celebration of how Ben’s relationship together with his spouse has allowed him to beat issues that after would have felt unattainable, it’s a report centered on the expansion that comes with discovering unconditional love.
“Generally I pay attention again to outdated songs and my thoughts looks like it was another person’s. I hardly recognise myself nowadays, which to be trustworthy, is so good,” Ben smiles.
“I all the time used to gravitate in direction of writing about how a lot I fell brief as a human, or the entire issues I didn’t like about myself. The ripple impact of discovering somebody you can share all of your self with is you can start to like your self. That’s one thing to be celebrated, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that’s the aim of all of it.”
THE COLLABORATORS
After spending months writing, recording and producing at residence in Melbourne, Ben reached a degree the place some new inspiration was wanted. The likes of ‘All Time’, ‘How Are You Mine?’ and ‘Born Free’ already penned, he known as up the band’s supervisor to request a visit to LA.
Spending a while within the metropolis’s aggressive, fast-paced setting, it offered a possibility for the frontman to shake issues up and decide the brains of another creatives. Writing the album’s title monitor with Suzy Shinn (Panic! At The Disco, Weezer, Fall Out Boy) in simply three hours and dealing with Courtney Ballard (5 Seconds of Summer season, Waterparks, State Champs) on ‘Gimme The Wrench’ and ‘Love Letters’, a while away from residence turned the push he wanted to finalise the album’s path.
“I’ve produced data for different artists right here in Melbourne, so I understand how vital it may be to bounce off different individuals and have somebody gently information you,” Ben says.
“On the similar time although, I’m fairly cussed. I must give you the entire concepts for Slowly Slowly, as a result of it’s my child, in order a lot as different individuals may be a tremendous sounding board – all of it must stem from one thing trustworthy in me.”
“For this undertaking, songwriting shouldn’t be an enormous Kumbaya. It wants to return from me, however the best way that everybody helped form these concepts allowed them to be proven of their finest gentle. It helps to have somebody there to maintain me trustworthy and to maintain me true all through the method.”
THE TITLE & THE ARTWORK
Working to a strict deadline, when Ben scrawled out the phrases to the title monitor’s refrain on that journey, he knew that they had been vital. A phrase that poured out of him with little effort, ‘Forgiving Spree’ got here to be the proper summation of the previous couple of years of his life.
“It was late within the course of of making the report, however I bear in mind considering of these two phrases, and all of it clicked into place,” he nods.
“I’d written all of those songs for the report, however I by no means set out with an idea firstly of an album. It’s this mosaic that matches collectively on reflection, and there’s all the time one track that makes all of it make sense. There’s one that offers it steering, and ‘Forgiving Spree’ turned that cornerstone. That’s the phrase that brings all of it collectively.”
Deciding on the report’s visuals got here as extra of a problem although, with Ben obsessing over the subliminal affect paintings has on the best way a listener consumes music. Drawn in direction of a clear, basic design following the busier aesthetics of each ‘Daisy Chain’ and 2020’s ‘Race Automobile Blues’, the four-piece enlisted the assistance of outdated good friend Connor Dewhurst.
“Connor has helped us with a bunch of tour posters and merch up to now, and he simply obtained it,” Ben says.
“He had an outdated e book stuffed with one of the best album covers of all-time, and he used that as inspiration. He despatched via this black-and-white {photograph} of the band with our faces lower out paired with this sprawling pink textual content, and it was good. It was clean-cut, macho, but additionally very delicate. To me, that’s what the report is.”
THE FUTURE
By way of how ‘Forgiving Spree’ units Ben and his bandmates up for no matter comes subsequent, there’s maybe no higher declaration of intent than the defiant ‘Gimme The Wrench’. Freshly signed to a brand new label and extra decided than ever to make their mark on the world, the monitor’s no-nonsense title comes from an iconic scene within the 1997 movie ‘Good Will Searching’.
“After we wrote that track, I used to be spinning a whole lot of plates. We had a whole lot of touring plans, I used to be grieving the lack of my stepmom, we’d had a miscarriage, after which we had been anticipating our daughter, Stella,” Ben remembers.
“I used to be making an attempt to juggle being inventive with being a superb dad, a superb husband, and a superb good friend to the others within the band. I knew it was going to be difficult, and I knew I wanted to have a pump-up track. I had simply watched ‘Good Will Searching’, and at one level the protagonist recounts an occasion the place he had to decide on between three implements that had been going for use to punish him – a belt, a stick, or a wrench. He chooses the wrench, and it’s a metaphor for selecting the trail of least leniency.”
Refusing to take any shortcuts to get to the place they’re, regardless of how private these songs could also be to Ben, there’s little question that ‘Forgiving Spree’ is an album made to convey individuals collectively. A reminder to let go of something that’s dragging you down and embrace all that lets you develop, as Slowly Slowly put together to share their newest chapter with the world, all they hope is that everybody can take no matter they could want from it.
“There are a whole lot of avenues on this report. From a high stage, there are a whole lot of hooks, but it surely’s slightly little bit of a select of your individual journey by way of how deep you wish to take it,” Ben finishes.
“There are songs on right here that commemorate love, some about rising up and letting go, and others that really feel like a whole existential disaster. When that each one comes collectively although, it’s a celebration of shifting ahead, being excited concerning the future, and being slightly bit extra sort to your self. I hope individuals join with it, and I can’t wait to look out from the stage and see individuals singing these lyrics like they really imply it.”
