Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Finding Your Muse With JOSHUA O'DONNELL From BANKS ARCADE

Transcript

Finding Your Muse With JOSHUA O'DONNELL From BANKS ARCADE · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Juice. I'm not your site tonight. That's fine. I'm finding the fits
• 0:08
  all right. I might have light a bit beatlas up. You're friends.
• 0:17
  My fucks hayten do way lace up and not like Y's okay. I'm not
• 0:24
  going towards the lights out. None of these motherfuckers could such. My name
• 0:29
  is Joshua from Bank's Arcade and our new EP, Amuse, is coming out
• 0:33
  on the twenty eighth, and we're here today with Heavy Radio The Yearful.
• 0:37
  Josh backs for joining us today, Bray, thanks for having me on here.
• 0:42
  Good to talk to you. Always a pleasure man. Now you've actually
• 0:45
  just made me pick up on something. When you're introducing the EP, they're
• 0:47
  like, we should make it clear that it is a muse, not a
• 0:51
  muse, because what you said it there could have been a double m us.
• 0:55
  Yeah, yeah, two separate words a muse. Correct, that's correct.
• 1:00
  Wait, and that is going to be your second EP of twenty twenty
• 1:03
  four mate, coming out on during the twenty eighth. So you're putting out
• 1:06
  a lot of material, bro, You're putting out pretty often, so do
• 1:08
  you find it hard to get as excited with everything's still coming out so regularly?
• 1:14
  I think the excitement for me, the most excitement is when I'm right
• 1:18
  at the start of writing the songs and it's all happening, And when I
• 1:22
  write a song that I love, I'll pretty much be listening to that song
• 1:23
  every day and I'm like, man, I'm so hyped on this. And
• 1:26
  then by the time it goes through all the process and all the finicky details,
• 1:30
  you kind of get over it a little bit. So I think that
• 1:34
  that, yeah, I am more so of the mindset that you just have
• 1:38
  to keep on going and keep trying to be as prison and put out as
• 1:42
  much content as possible, even if you're even if you've sort of fallen out
• 1:46
  of love with it. So it's always up and down for me. Sometimes
• 1:49
  I am sometimes I'm just like, all right, let's get on with it.
• 1:52
  I actually appreciate your honesty there. Mate. So many people just put
• 1:53
  on their happy face and say, yeah, it's great, but it is
• 1:57
  not an easy process. You know, like you've done your hard work recording
• 2:00
  it and getting it out, getting it done, but then there's another chapter
• 2:04
  starts and it can get a bit tysome yeah, exactly, And that doesn't
• 2:08
  take away from I mean, I think that the other side is that the
• 2:13
  excitement starts once you start hearing the feedback from people, and once you know,
• 2:17
  once it starts to roll, then you're like, oh man, this
• 2:21
  next year is pretty cool. But once you've done it a few times and
• 2:23
  once you've put it out there, I think that it is actually beneficial to
• 2:27
  separate yourself from what you've done so that you don't you know, you don't
• 2:30
  want to you don't want to build it up too much. Just put it
• 2:32
  out there and let let go. You've done your job now. And that's
• 2:36
  how I see it. Oh. Now, theb follows on from Death to
• 2:39
  which came out earlier this year. So is it a continuation of what you
• 2:43
  started there or is it a new chapter? Yeah, so it is a
• 2:46
  continuation, and it's kind of two sides of the same coin. You know,
• 2:51
  you put the two together, Death to Amuse. It's a bit of
• 2:53
  a play on words and kind of they do feed off of each other,
• 3:00
  and stylistically they're very different. I think as a band, on our full
• 3:04
  length, our first full length that we put out, Future Lovers, there
• 3:06
  was just so much different stuff going on and we really wanted to lean into
• 3:10
  some of those different stylings and have a one holistic project over here that has
• 3:15
  one sound and another one over here that has another sound. And I think
• 3:19
  that we've achieved that with the two, but they are still meant to go
• 3:23
  hand in hand. Yeah, the press release actually says that the songs evolved
• 3:29
  from the darker sides explored on Death Too. So what does it mean by
• 3:31
  that? So I think it didn't necessarily evolve from the darker side, but
• 3:38
  more so like it, Yeah, it moved on from that. So Death
• 3:44
  Too was really focused on all the chaotic and and dark and more abstract sides
• 3:50
  of the band, Whereas I think that these songs, even though they're not
• 3:53
  necessarily happy songs, but they approach it from a different light and there's a
• 3:58
  little I think that there's more. There's more singing and catchy hooks and more
• 4:02
  traditional song structures, and there's still a little bit of the quickiness that our
• 4:06
  band always brings. But but yeah, I think that it's a lot more
• 4:10
  palatable in some respects. How does it go now then? Fit those two
• 4:15
  two different sort of styles in live like you've got the contrasting light and shadows,
• 4:17
  you say, so you have to sort of weave the dynamics in to
• 4:20
  play the light. Well, we've been lucky enough to tour with a lot
• 4:25
  of different bands from different styles, and you know, we did a massive
• 4:30
  tour in New Zealand with a band called Highly Suspect, who's a you know,
• 4:32
  they were playing rock shows over here to arenas, and for us,
• 4:38
  we kind of will tailor a set to be like, Okay, these are
• 4:41
  the types of fans that are going to be here, they'll probably like this
• 4:43
  side of the band more Macassett. And then right after that tour we went
• 4:46
  on to it with north Lane, And when we're on a north Lane tour,
• 4:47
  we're kind of going to lean into more of this stuff, and then
• 4:50
  on a headline to it, we bring it all together. So I feel
• 4:54
  like it does put us in a good position to be able to play with
• 4:56
  different bands and kind of create a tailor made yet for whoever we're playing with.
• 5:00
  Very smart bro Now. One of the things I love about EPs is
• 5:04
  that there's not many songs on him, so when I speak to someone like
• 5:06
  yourself, we can run through them all and get a bit more information about
• 5:10
  him. So I just want to run through them one at a time and
• 5:13
  then you tell us, tell us your version of him and what they mean
• 5:15
  to you and what they mean to the album. So we'll start off with
• 5:17
  a live So Alive was written during the lockdown period with me and James.
• 5:24
  We were getting together and writing a lot together for the first time really in
• 5:29
  the band's history, and I was I just recorded a I was like,
• 5:34
  oh, I kind of want to make a song with this riff, and
• 5:36
  I literally was recording. I was, I was playing it and I was
• 5:41
  singing, and I sang like about the whole first minute and a half of
• 5:44
  the song, and he just had his phone out recording and I was like,
• 5:46
  did you get that? And he had it, and then we kind
• 5:48
  of built the whole song around that, and I feel like it really set
• 5:51
  the tone for where we were going with that more rocky sound, still bringing
• 5:56
  in the hip hop elements and stuff like that. But but yeah, that
• 5:59
  it was a moment to be able to make that one, and I'd say
• 6:01
  that's probably my favorite song on the record. I actually like to turn it
• 6:04
  by the way it starts like it's very sort of it's a bit slower and
• 6:09
  a bit more measured, you know, a bit calmer, and then it
• 6:12
  just goes bang and it's a perfect way to start the album. Yeah,
• 6:14
  exactly. So you into it, Well, well you threw me completely off
• 6:18
  because I'm listening, I'm thinking, geez, what are they gonna put me
• 6:20
  into here? Yeah? All right, Yeah, I think that that our
• 6:27
  music probably has that effect that a lot of people, and like you know,
• 6:30
  in certain moments, it's like we do try to to set a tone
• 6:34
  and a rhythm and then switch that rhythm up, and I feel like that's
• 6:38
  always good, creates a bit of diversity in the music. All right,
• 6:42
  We'll move on to heart Stop, which is the second one. It's a
• 6:46
  heart stop. Like some of these songs on this record are kind of break
• 6:49
  up songs. I was going through a bit of a period and I we
• 6:57
  we played our first ever big festive over in New Zealand. This was a
• 7:01
  few years ago now, probably like four years ago, and we had this
• 7:05
  opportunity and it was like this big moment and everyone was really happy about it.
• 7:09
  But I was going through this breakup and I was in a super chatic
• 7:12
  headspace and I just wasn't enjoying being there, even though it was meant to
• 7:15
  be really fun. There was a bit of dissonance, and I kind of
• 7:18
  had a moment where I was just like, forget this, I'm just gonna
• 7:21
  go out there and do what I love, which was playing music, and
• 7:26
  was able to find a little bit of peace in doing that. And I
• 7:28
  think that's what heart Stop is about. Many people experience rough times, and
• 7:33
  you know when you have that moment where you're like, I'm not I'm not
• 7:35
  gonna wallow on this anymore. I'm just gonna do what I love and forget
• 7:39
  about all the noise and just go have a little party. And that's what
• 7:44
  heart Stopper is weet. No, you don't needs faded AF And I spent
• 7:48
  about five minutes trying to figure anything out of AF that I could that wasn't
• 7:53
  as fuck, and I couldn't. Is that what it is? You know?
• 7:56
  So it's as fuck it is. I'm trying out of it, but
• 8:00
  I just couldn't find anything. I actually got that that well because it's a
• 8:05
  it's a palindrome, so you can read it front to front to backwards,
• 8:09
  and there's a little there's a little sample at the start of the song that
• 8:13
  says faded as fuck is faded as fuck backwards. I think that's what it's
• 8:18
  saying, but you don't even hear it, and it's just like a good
• 8:20
  I think I saw it on like a meme or something, and I was
• 8:24
  just like, that's funny. I'm just going to put that in a song.
• 8:28
  That's great. Yeah, And I mean the song is kind of like
• 8:31
  it. It basically, it just talks about the constant struggle that people have
• 8:35
  within themselves. People want to you know, lose weight, work out more,
• 8:41
  drink less, and work on their relationship, but then at the same
• 8:45
  time they want to eat cake and cookies and get on the person, go
• 8:48
  see their X. So it's like it's like that balancing act that everyone's trying
• 8:54
  to do. And there is something romantic about doing the wrong thing a lot
• 8:58
  of time, and that's why people kind of gravitate towards that, but then
• 9:01
  it also causes a lot of pain, so they have to go back.
• 9:05
  And I feel like it's that constant war of trying to be a good person,
• 9:07
  trying to do the right things and feeling like you suck it up a
• 9:11
  lot of the times. And that's that's kind of what that song was about.
• 9:13
  And it's almost like, you know, walking home drunk after a big
• 9:18
  night out talking to yourself about everything. That's kind of what the song is.
• 9:22
  That's so cool. I'm gonna have another listen back to it now after
• 9:24
  you've told me that, because I'm it'll take on a whole different meeting.
• 9:28
  That's awesome. Yeah, exactly, Okay, let me move on to Lost
• 9:31
  cause. Yeah, so Lost Causes A is a really interesting one. It
• 9:37
  was probably like the song that took the longest to write. It went through
• 9:41
  so many different iterations. The song was written around the first version of the
• 9:46
  song was written around the same time as Heartstop, and then we ended up
• 9:52
  revisiting and revisiting it, and then we ended up doing a writing session with
• 9:56
  the vocalists from sleep Token when we were in Whales and kind of reinventing the
• 10:03
  song again. And it still didn't land for me until really like months after
• 10:09
  we had finished the last session ever on it, and then I kind of
• 10:13
  was able to see it from a different perspective. But I mean, i'd
• 10:16
  say now it's probably my second favorite to a live on the record, and
• 10:20
  it Yeah, it went on a big, long journey. So you're trying
• 10:24
  to tell me you did a writing session with sleep Token then at the end
• 10:26
  of it, you told him it wasn't good enough. No, no,
• 10:31
  well, I just like a champion. I just I still wasn't like at
• 10:37
  that point, it was just there was elements of the song. You know.
• 10:41
  What was really good about what he did was he just it would probably
• 10:45
  have never seen the light of day had it been for we were working on
• 10:48
  some things in this writing session and he kind of gravitated towards that song.
• 10:52
  Was like, the way that it sounds now was fully because he kind of
• 10:56
  set it in that different direction, and it kind of at least made me
• 11:00
  be like, Okay, we could do something with this, We could do
• 11:01
  something with this. But it's still you know, sometimes you once you get
• 11:05
  a bit of a bit of a bad relationship with a song, it's very
• 11:09
  hard to bring yourself around. You know. I love the way you describe
• 11:15
  these things, bro, It's awesome. Moving on to Future. So No
• 11:20
  Future was a It was a song that was written during lockdown, and I
• 11:26
  think that it really just summed up the chaos of the world, my frustration
• 11:33
  with the way that people were acting, especially on the Internet. I think
• 11:35
  that it became a place where people couldn't freely speak about their views and you
• 11:43
  know, all of the internet chaos that we've that we've seen that just tries
• 11:46
  to get everybody to think in one way and basically label anyone that doesn't think
• 11:52
  that way is a fucking criminal. And I just don't think that that's the
• 11:54
  right way to go about things. And at the same time, I think
• 11:58
  that no future sure, like there is this element of when all that was
• 12:03
  happening and there was all this chaos in the world, everything was very uncertain,
• 12:09
  and you know that like everyone else was suddenly thrown into this place where
• 12:16
  they don't know what's going to happen. They don't know and and everyone was
• 12:20
  freaking out, and we were kind of like, we've been here for a
• 12:22
  minute, baby, this is what we're used to. We're not afraid of
• 12:28
  uncertainty, and this does not even shake shake us at all. And I
• 12:33
  think that, yeah, it kind of sums up that period and also just
• 12:37
  sums up how we as abandoned as people are always willing to face challenges and
• 12:43
  you know, even if the worst happens, we're all going to die one
• 12:46
  day and there's no point freaking out about things. You just got to press
• 12:50
  on and do what you can to keep following your dreams and keep trying to
• 12:54
  make sure work sure okay, and it finish us off with self help.
• 13:00
  So so the idea behind self help it was basically a conversation with myself in
• 13:05
  the future. You know, as you're as you're pursuing any endeavor that takes
• 13:09
  a lot of work and effort, especially something that requires you to put yourself
• 13:13
  out there and kind of be very vulnerable, you can have a lot of
• 13:20
  doubts and you can feel like, man, I don't know if this is
• 13:22
  going to work. I don't know if I'm wasting my time? Why am
• 13:24
  I doing this? And it was the idea of being like, if I
• 13:28
  could call myself in thirty years and ask a few questions and be like,
• 13:33
  well, what ends up happening? Do we make it out of this situation
• 13:35
  or do we end up homeless and downtrodden? And what ends up happening?
• 13:41
  And that's what that's the idea of the song. I think through writing the
• 13:43
  song that kind of found its own resolve and the fact that you know you're
• 13:46
  not going to get those answers, We're not going to get that an absolute
• 13:52
  you know, safety net about what happens in this life. So we just
• 13:56
  have to press on and we just have to enrich our relationation chips and lean
• 14:00
  into the things that we love and find some some sort of piece in the
• 14:03
  journey and that and that kind of sums up the whole EP. All the
• 14:07
  questions that are being asked on these songs, or the chaos or the angst
• 14:11
  that's there. It kind of resolves at the end of self Help by just
• 14:15
  being like, don't quit. Don't quit, motherfucker, just keep going.
• 14:18
  Yes, that's awesome, bro. So by by reckoning. That's two EPs
• 14:22
  in the first half of this year. So is it going to be a
• 14:26
  third and fourth and the second half or are you done? Worth to wait
• 14:28
  and see? All I can say is we're not going to stop releasing music
• 14:33
  until this ship pops like where. We're just going to keep the pedal to
• 14:37
  the ground. And you know, I feel like in this day and age,
• 14:39
  that's what you've got to do. If you want to make something work,
• 14:43
  you can't just it's not it's not how it used to be. And
• 14:46
  people's attention spans are short, so you've got to make sure that you can
• 14:50
  capture that attention as much as you possibly can. And you know the more
• 14:56
  the more times you roll the dice, the higher chances are of winning.
• 15:00
  And that's what we're trying to pay that to a gambler. Yeah, yeah,
• 15:07
  you just finished over two years NonStop touring with shows in New Zealand Australia.
• 15:11
  Made like that's a lot of time on the road, but good to
• 15:13
  finish it at home. Yeah, it was. It was absolutely beautiful.
• 15:18
  Like I mean, the New Zealand shows were so special to us because we
• 15:24
  had, like you know, New Zealand is a hard market to crack and
• 15:26
  it takes a bit of time to get those fans coming out to shows,
• 15:31
  especially in a smaller scene, and to be able to come here and do
• 15:33
  the size of shows and get that response here, man, it was pretty
• 15:37
  beautiful. And obviously going back around the OS circuit and playing the biggest venues
• 15:41
  we've ever played as a headliner, it was it was definitely it was motivating
• 15:46
  to come into this next riding phase to be like, right, we can
• 15:50
  do this. We just need to just need to keep at it. And
• 15:52
  you're going to put your feet up and rest for a bit, bro,
• 15:54
  take it easier. Are you straight back out there doing something else? No,
• 15:58
  chance, no chance. We will have some more tours to announce this
• 16:03
  this year. But I think this year is going to be a massive focus
• 16:07
  on writing and developing a few areas of the business side of the band.
• 16:11
  And I think that, you know, we want to hit the ground running
• 16:15
  in twenty twenty five and have a massive year and just pretty much play shows
• 16:18
  NonStop. But to do that, we're going to get this music banked.
• 16:22
  So at the moment, I've committed to one hundred days of writing in New
• 16:26
  Zealand, which I'm about two weeks into now. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 16:32
  exactly. So we're going to stay focused and try and write some stuff
• 16:38
  that we're really happy with for the next chapter and then yeah, go out
• 16:41
  and two of these EPs and whatever else we have coming next and station well.
• 16:45
  In the meantime, A Muse is out June twenty eighth, then I'm
• 16:48
  sure there's going to be a lot of people now listening to it with a
• 16:51
  different perspective. Bro, So well done and best of black with it.
• 16:53
  Thanks for talking to us, Thank you so much. You have a good
• 16:56
  one. Yeah,