It’s been 5 years since your first album. What have you learned about songwriting, composing, or just being a musician in general in the last five years? What knowledge did you take with you going into the process for Tales Of Suburban Angst?
Luke: I think since the first album, the biggest thing has just been tightening up the screws a lot. Not to say that things were loose on that first album – I’m really proud of it – but going into this one, I wanted to tighten up arrangements and make sure there were a lot of spots where the band really hit together. The first album was a little more diverse – there’s alt-country, punk, and singer-songwriter and power pop songs on it. With this one, I wanted to do it song by song and have that vision for the whole album, taking those elements and combining them into each song altogether to make it a cohesive sound and make it an album where, while each song was distinct, you’d know what record each song has come from. Obviously, with the pandemic and things, I’ve had a little more time to tweak things in the studio.
You’ve said that the album combines power pop and punk – who were the biggest influences for this album in those genres specifically?
Luke: Probably my two biggest songwriting influences of all time are Alkaline Trio – my absolute favorite punk band – and The Lemonheads. I think that Evan Dando is just a genius. There’s a way that he can write a pop hook and a catchy song and make it rock, and many people can do it, but he just does it in a very special way. Those two are probably the biggest influences, but I listen to a lot of stuff, like Against Me!, The Gaslight Anthem… I’m a huge Ramones fan. During the recording of this album, I was listening to a lot of 80s Ramones, where they moved away from the bar chords and fast-paced, downstroke stuff and were playing around with a lot of synthesizers and doing more slow songs, and getting a bit more lyrical, and I really love that sound. So, that’s probably the punk side of things. In terms of the power-pop and singer-songwriter stuff, obviously the Lemonheads, but also I’ve started listening to more Fountains Of Wayne, Phantom Planet, Weezer, you know? There is something about the way those songs were arranged that makes them so memorable. Obviously, a huge influence is Crowded House, Australia’s best songwriting export. You can listen to a Crowded House record and the arrangements are absolutely perfect. I don’t think there’s ever been a more perfect pop rock band than Crowded House.
Seeing as you’re Melbourne-based and the album is supposed to be a trip around the city’s suburbs, were there any particular locations that inspired some of these songs? If so, what locations were they, and which songs did they inspire?
Luke: Great question! There’s a song on the record called St. Kilda. For anyone who’s not from Melbourne, St. Kilda is an inner-city suburb that’s right on the bay, beachside in a city suburb. You know the way they describe Mos Eisley in Star Wars’ Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy? That’s the way I look at St. Kilda. So that song is the depiction of a night out in St. Kilda that just slowly devolves from what should have been a trip to a gig into absolute madness. I love that song and I’m really excited about it. Also, the song Maple Road – which is about the Hume Highway. Now, the Hume Highway is a big long stretch of highway. The way Australia is laid out isn’t like in the states. I know there’s a lot of places where you’ve got three or four cities in each state and it’s not that far to travel. In Australia, there’s a capital city, then nothing for nine hours, and then another capital city. When I was on tour heading up to Sydney, the Hume Highway is somewhere that I got completely lost. I was on that trip with my friend Joe and we didn’t know each other well, and he was convinced I was driving him out of the bush to murder him. So, that’s just another little quick story you’ll get on the album. I could go on and on about all the other Melbourne locales for days, but I think those are the two that are the most amusing.
Going along with that, are there any locations that you would recommend people check out if they ever visit the area?
Luke: Look, I think when people come to visit Melbourne, they see the CBD and those inner suburbs, and that’s it and that’s great. Melbourne’s an absolutely beautiful city. If you want to see the weird stuff, it’s all out in the suburbs. Out near where I grew up, there was a place called Daisy’s. Now, Daisy’s was three things – it was a restaurant, a nightclub, and a garden supply store, and only out in the deep suburbs would you find something that bizarre. Rather than give a specific location to go and check out, all I can say is the best thing to do is trek out into the wild of Melbourne and adventure because it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but it’s also one of the strangest.
I wanted to touch on TikTok because I’ve noticed you’ve grown a bit of a following there. How has that platform impacted your career?
Luke: The whole TikTok thing kind of took off all of a sudden. A lot of the people that I’ve met through Tik Tok have kind of said the same thing. One day, I was just mucking around on there, and all of a sudden, something blew up overnight. I don’t even have a huge following – I’ve got about 5000 followers or something like that. It’s just been really strange and I will say this – it has been more overwhelmingly positive than it has been negative. You get some strange comments, I repeatedly get comments about how people don’t like the way I say “Blink 1-8-2,” and I can’t help it, I’m from Australia! I’ve got an Australian accent. It’s just been really fun. I do use it a little bit to promote my music, but I spend most of my time on there for fun. I’ll play guitar and people will say “Can you do a riff that sounds like this band?” and I’ll say “Sure!” I’ll knock it out in five minutes. Sometimes it’s accurate, and sometimes it’s not, and if it’s not accurate, you better believe people will let me know about it! I’ve met some really cool people through there. Just one example is Shakeout from Yonkers, New York. We’ve spoken a little bit and I really dig his stuff. Without TikTok, I never would have met him. It’s kind of connecting me with the punk scene in other parts of the world.
Speaking of TikTok, you just mentioned this, but there was a series of videos on the app where you teach your viewers how to write guitar parts in the style of certain bands. Do you feel like learning how to play in many different styles has helped you grow as a musician, and has that range of styles influenced the kind of music you write?
Luke: Definitely. I think any time you learn something on guitar or whatever instrument, it’s a tool in a box, right? That’s a way that especially a lot of people in alternative genres, who maybe don’t want to sit down and learn a lot of theory, can learn. I have spent a lot of time learning theory, but I don’t always necessarily use it. I think it’s something that you need to use when necessary. I spent years learning every Alkaline Trio riff, and if you listen to my songs now, you’ll see that influence. There are songs of mine like MulderScully – that could be a Matt Skiba guitar part. You’re going to pick up the style of bands that you like as you learn their songs. You’re going to expand the repertoire of the chord shapes that you know and the way different chords fit together, how chord and key changes work, how time signatures work, and things like that… just from learning songs. I would recommend to anyone who wants to start writing music – spend a lot of time just learning songs, take the ideas you get, put them in a different order, and you’ve got something. All good music is theft, I think.
Circling back to the album – what are some of the lyrical topics on it, particularly on the tracks that weren’t singles?
Luke: I think a big thing that runs through the album is just the idea of growing and finding your place in the world, you know? I think it’s pretty common and it’s a universal experience to grow up and find that maybe life isn’t exactly what you expected. Maybe you imagined you’d spend all your time playing music, but you do have to work a job to pay the bills, and that’s fine, that’s kind of what life is. I guess a lot of the album is processing that and trying to deal with the feelings of motivating yourself to keep going and staying positive and find where you belong in the scheme of things. Also, it’s padded out with a lot of stories of kind of bizarre experiences that I’ve had, fractured friendships as well. Of the songs that haven’t been released… track two is “Buzz Lightyear.” “Buzz Lightyear” is a song that’s kind of been in the live set for a while now and there’s a joke we’ve had with that song because it’s more of a midtempo rocker. When we were writing the rhythm for it, I was saying to the band it was the song that would get us to perform at the Australian Rules Football Grand Final. I don’t actually follow football but I just thought it was a funny joke. That song was a very important song in what the sound was going to be going forward after the first one, and it was one of the first new songs that we did. It was all about laying the ghosts of the past to rest, so to speak – letting go of the mistakes that you’ve made and the friendships that have fallen apart, and finding where you belong and a place that’s comfortable for you. The song uses a metaphor of outer space to do that, and I think it’s very indicative of what the overall feel of the album is.
What can people expect from the album when they first listen?
Luke: Is it too broad just to say a good time? Because that’s the biggest thing we wanted to do with this record. It’s nine tracks. We wanted to keep the album short and punchy. We’ve all had bands that we love that have put out an album that drags. So we recorded more than nine songs for the album, but we wanted to pick the ones that are going to keep that energy level high. While there are dark themes, serious lyrics, and some downbeat stuff on the record… we keep things very upbeat, danceable, and fun. I’d describe our sound on this record in particular as trying to make people feel good about feeling terrible. I think we accomplished that.
Luke Seymoup’s latest album, “Tales Of Suburban Angst,” is available now. Listen to the record here:
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