Image by Mclean Stephenson

Sydney/Eora group The Melodrones are yet to disappoint.

And we would know. We’ve been harping on about them since they dropped their debut tune ‘RIP Hollywood’ back in 2019, and have since been delighted when a tasty new slice of their shoegazey, 60s-pop-inspired music has floated across our inbox. There aren’t any bands around that can melodically serenade and lyrically sting you quite like The Melodrones, and ‘Real Life (Stoned Love)’ does exactly that.

Kicked off with frontman Rik Saunders’ vocals, you’re lured into thinking this track is a loved-up ballad. Even when he deflates the optimistic tone with the wry “did you think this would last forever?” line, there’s still hope. By the second verse, you realise that there’s an air of cynicism hovering underneath the melody that’s so sweet you can feel it rotting your teeth.

When the “stoned love / real life” section hits, the song is elevated yet again, with Mel Mirage’s vocals taking the edge off Saunders’ punchy delivery. You could stop the song there, and it would already be an achievement. But it then takes a turn again, reminding us how much this band don’t mind getting a little heavy with a chaotic outro that’s simply a nice little add-on to the tune.

“‘Real Life (Stoned Love)’ was a track that took me a couple of years to write..” Saunders says. “I mean the music came together pretty instantly. At the time I was living with Matt Mason (DMA’s) who had shown me some banjo chord shapes so I was just trying to work out how those worked together, only using the top four strings of my guitar and playing with doo-wop in mind. It was the lyrics that took a while, I needed to live through the second verse to write it.”

“When The Melodrones realised we were working on a full length album I took the song round the Jack Ladder’s place who refined the arrangement. Then the Melodrones tracked it live to tape with Wade Keighran. While we were tracking ‘Real Life (Stoned Love)’ Wade turned all the lights off in the studio and set up a projector which created a certain mood.”

With the track comes the news that The Melodrones will release their debut record on 4th April 2025 through Impressed Records (Vinyl) and Third Eye Stimuli Records (Digital).