Hey, they’re just talking…

Starved for new music? Hungry for some indie rock? Want some tasty tracks delivered right to your door… I don’t know how far we push the food thing in this article, but my god, in honour of Polish Club’s third album Now We’re Cooking, we’re going to give it a red hot (sauce) go. Dropping today, the record is like an XL drank in an L cup, only instead of postmix soft drink you’re getting glorious music oozing out all over the place.

We’ve heard the funkified anthem ‘Stop For A Minute’, the emotional force of ‘No Heaven’, the 60s-flavoured ‘Just Talking’, and the relentless ‘Whack’, but now we have a whole heap of new PC to dig into this weekend. And, by the sounds of things, JH and Novak have put every bit of songwriting sparkle they have into it, with the record feeling like a concisely crafted package. There truly is no filler.

Falsetto-heavy groover ‘New Age’, sarcastically pretty album closer ‘Fuck Off & Die’ and power-pop jam ‘Baby We’re Burning’ will undoubtedly be getting added into playlists around the country in coming days as fans get a chance to sink their teeth into NWC. ‘Baby We’re Burning’ also comes with a shiny new video directed by Tim Nathan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-cLpv9t74k

With the record comes new tour dates; Polish Club will be hitting the road in Oct, Nov and Dec (dates below, tickets here) which should give you plenty of time to learn the words to all the new tracks, capiche? For now, pull up a seat, tuck your napkin in and open wide, because frontman Novak’s words on the record are about to be getting all over your face. Check them out below:

STOP FOR A MINUTE

We were really going for a full-out pop bassline to be the focus of this track. We’re always trying to simplify the chord progressions in songs like these. We limit ourselves to using only two chords for the majority of the song, and in turn it puts a lot of pressure on the vocal melody and lead guitar to be as catchy and interesting as possible. That main lead guitar line was only written and added to the song when we went to the studio to record the album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUkg5ZE5sEY

NEW AGE

Most of our music has established my singing as being bombastic and belted at all times. Most of our singles usually end up with me screaming at the top of my lungs. The challenge we set ourselves with ‘New Age’ was trying to write a song that went in the complete opposite direction that we’re used to. I’m always hesitant to write melodies that mostly rest in my higher range where I have to sing falsetto. It’s the kind of melody that I could only have written and pulled off after years of slowly getting better and more consistent at convincingly singing in that range.

GETAWAY

I reckon we’ve tried to write a song like ‘Getaway’ more times than I can count. The stabbing piano chords are a staple of pop music old and new, and we’ve never quite been able to fit it into a song that still sounds like Polish Club. I think it took us working with someone like Scott Horscroft and surrounding this song with other, more pop-leaning tracks to really make it feel like it fit in with our Polish Club sound.

FIX YOUR HEART

There’s a fucking EBow pretty much throughout this entire song. For those who don’t know an EBow is that often tacky thing you use to make guitar notes last ages. For some reason I instantly thought of U2 when Scott suggested using one. Both JH and I scoffed at the idea, but then Scott was like “David Bowie – Heroes is all EBow” and we were both like oh shit you’re right, that’s awesome. So I guess you could say we’ve grown and our songs are all the better for it.

NO HEAVEN

Look, it’s a pretty saccharine song, I won’t deny that. It is probably the dictionary definition of swinging for the fences. Whether or not it succeeds is up to you to decide. The song came about from us wanting to write a song that all lead to a big crescendo and we kind of went overboard in the studio when tracking it. We threw everything at it, and if you think there’s a lot going on in the climax, you should’ve heard it before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c-Ro1El1aE

WHACK

JH has a tendency to record the most random shit on his phone just in case he can find a way to fit it into a song. We got the Sydney crosswalk buzzer, his footsteps and casual conversation into Iguana, and now we’ve gotten more random foley in this track. In ‘Whack’, it’s a warning bell from an LA metro stop that, as it turns out, sounds pretty nice next to a cowbell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUrbfiRYAwM

JUST TALKING

What started as a kind of Violent Femmes-ish, stripped-back song, ended up having a bunch of people doing gang vocals in the background. It’s always the case when you’re in a big studio with people milling around, you’ll inevitably add stuff like that. It’s just fun to do. The voices are JH, Scott, Izaac, Owen (also from the Grove) and our better halves Kirsty and Maddie. Cute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3IdgTIvCG0

I DIDN’T WANT THAT (FOR YOU)

Speaking of Kirsty Tickle (Party Dozen, Exhibitionist), she also put the finishing touches on this track. A track that JH reckons are my best lyrics ever. Who am I to argue? Anyway, the song is a constant repetition of verse, hook, verse, hook, verse, hook. With the hook being one line, it really benefited something like a vocal harmony to elevate it and bring home the relationship dynamic in the lyrics.

BABY WE’RE BURNING

It’s your quintessential Polish Club song baby! It’s got it all! Belted vocals, tons of reverb, bombastic drums, romance. Somehow in all of this trying to write pop-rock songs, we wrote a Poilsh Club song. Oops.

FUCK OFF & DIE

Rupert Murdoch fucking sucks and his media monopoly is leading to deaths around the world. What a dickhead. Also this song was tracked on a day off by engineer Izaac Wilson and I think I nailed in two takes.