syrup, go on
Shoegaze dream-pop outfit syrup, go on, are back!! Releasing a lush new single Lavender Sky. It's an energetic, dreamy, infectious bop sending syrup, go on in an exciting new direction. Hazy Days Music would like to thank Tom Briese for taking the time out and having a chat.
I love the dreamy atmospheric music syrup, go on has released over the years. How did syrup, go on begin? Could you run us through a quick history of the band?
It kind of all started with me and my brother. We grew up listening to the classic post-punk bands like Joy Division and New Order. All that great music led us to new bands like DIIV, and I think you can hear they were our biggest influence on the first EP, Joyful Hesitation. That whole experience was figuring out how to write songs, turning our ideas and influences into a new sound that we really liked. It was great learning how the recording process works.
After that EP, we started to refine our songwriting and work towards an album. We had some new additions to the band, growing from a three-piece to eventually six members by the time our debut album Last Light was released. That whole album process was probably the biggest growing stage for us, figuring out what worked in terms of writing and recording. I recorded most of that album with the help of a friend producing.
Following the album's release, we were all pretty happy with it but felt like it was still missing something, and I think that's because we just hadn't figured out how to use everyone's input in every song. On our latest single, Lavender Sky, we finally figured out how to have everyone's input involved.
We have completely changed how we write our music and gone back to the basics, trying to write as simply as possible.
New single Lavender Sky is incredible!! It’s lush and catchy and feels like a new direction from your previous releases. How was writing and recording this song?
Before this single came out, we actually had written and scrapped an album's worth of material. I think Lavender Sky came out of that frustration. We were working on new music and kind of a new direction for the band. We had all these new songs, but because we were all writing separately, there was just a lot of miscommunication within the band, and basically, we couldn't get everyone happy, so we just scrapped them. We took some time off and started to rehearse again, and that's when we stumbled across a hook that we moulded into Lavender Sky.
It all pretty much came together in that one rehearsal and we left with a bit of a demo. I worked on it a bit at home, trying to get an instrumental version that flowed a little better and our singer Liz sent me a bunch of vocals that I ended up chopping up and rearranging.
I'd send the song to everyone, and they'd record/send over ideas of what they wanted to add to the song. I'd try and get everyone's input gelling, and if it didn't work initially, I'd flip it and change it around with different instruments; so a guitar hook could turn into a synth hook, which was kind of cool and something we hadn't really done before.
I think it worked well because we had a solid song from the start, and chopping it up like I did gave the song a new perspective from that first rehearsal.
That's pretty wild! With the song developing so much, how's it going to go playing Lavender Sky live?
We have some shows coming up for the single launch and had to rework the song for these shows. We aren't really playing it like the recording. We just can't do it. We’d need so many extra hands if we were to play it note for note.
I think this has been good for us to not really think of our songs as a set thing and think of them as ideas that we can present in a way that feels right at the time. The goal for us is to become an improvisational live band and have the ability to change up our songs and play them the way that feels right on the night.
It must have been really frustrating scrapping an album's worth of material. Is everyone enjoying this new writing process and being more involved?
I think we are all happier writing the songs this way. It breaks down the writing and production into these bite-size steps. Previously we would come up with a song idea at rehearsal, then I would take it away, smash out all the production work and come back with the finished product, and a lot of the time, it wouldn't really sound like what we started with.
But doing it this way, all of us come up with the bones of the song and take it one step at a time with everyone adding in their ideas, it gives everyone more of a chance to check in on what's going on with the song and allows everyone to be happy each step of the way. I think a lot of it is not being so controlling of the production.
What are your plans for the rest of 2021? Is there a new album/EP on the way? And can we catch syrup, go on playing anywhere soon?
We're playing two single launch shows, one on the Gold Coast (Postponed) and one in Brisbane (26/06/21). We will be playing the new single Lavender Sky as well as a few other new songs, which will be cool and be a bit different from the last time we played.
We are looking to record again in the next few months and release another single soon. We are always writing towards an album or EP.
*Gold Coast show has been postponed* - Find all the latest details here.
Stay up to date with syrup, go on on Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.