If you’ve been following LWA for a while now, you’ll know that Teenage Dads have always held a soft spot in our hearts.

Over the past few years, the Adelaide lads (we’ll forgive them for that) have established themselves as the true leaders of 2000s-esque guitar rock in this country. Uptempo jams that border on euphoric and saccharine, led by frontman Jordan Finlay’s Casablancas-esque drawl, have been their bread and butter… until yesterday.

Yesterday, they dropped a shiny new single called ‘Find A Way’, which sees them morph from those lovely indie rock boys into sleazy electro provocateurs. Their mothers must be rattled. The track feels like it was written after stumbling into the studio halfway through a week-long club bender that no one wanted to end. It’s fast, it’s punchy, it’s addictive and hooky as all hell.

Now it’s got us questioning everything we thought we knew about Teenage Dads, but mostly wondering what the hell they were listening to while cooking this bad boy up. So (as you probably guessed by reading the title of this article), we asked them that very question.

Read their answers below:

Genesis – Justice (Vinnie)

This idea of a song or a sound being ‘heavy but not scary’ came to me early on and I think it’s an idea we’ve returned to a little bit.

Justice have been a big inspiration in executing that with a song like Genesis. The energy and weight that resonates from those subby, crunchy synths and bass is immense. It just hits so hard. So I guess we were curious to apply that to a live band context. It was cool to see that that influence came through organically and rather unintentionally in Find A Way.

Eventually – Tame Impala (Jordy)

I still remember one of my high school teachers showing me Tame Impala before Currents was released, and since then the music has had a lasting impact on my writing and production. Continuing on this “heavy but not scary” idea, there’s something about the way the distorted instruments feel in this song. It’s not aggressive, it feels warm and emotional, echoing the lyrics of the song. This song and this album feel like an evolution as well. It is still very much Tame Impala, but it’s not stuck in the one place, it keeps moving, and that’s what we are trying to accomplish as well.

Digital Love – Daft Punk (Vinnie)

This song truly felt like it encapsulated all of our past and current music creation curiosities. I think we could see ourselves in this song a little; the punchiest rhythm section and crazy synth lines and guitars and thus, inspired us to explore how we could take on an electronic approach to production as a live band and challenge ourselves with new techniques such as sampling. Almost this imagination of what if Daft Punk were a band? I think that the blending of styles is what creates special art.

Camera – Charli XCX (Jordy)

We have been spending a lot of time world building with this next era of music, and I feel like this song and the album encapsulate that perfectly. There’s this rawness to what Charli is singing about that feels so relatable, which is something I always hope to achieve when I am writing lyrics. And from a production standpoint, I am obsessed with all of the little details that are spread across thing song: the stuttering guitar, the messy subs towards the end, the emotional build in the chorus, it feels so random but it is very much deliberate.

Chaeri – Magdalena Bay (Angus)

This song is so charismatic and groovy, but with so much energy, especially in a live setting. After seeing MagBay twice in Aus last year, both times I had been blown away by this song. There is a moment where during an instrumental break- the song becomes so huge and unavoidable. It felt like getting hit in the chest, in a way that makes you crave it again immediately after. It felt like hearing the loudest sound you’ve ever heard, but with no pain or discomfort attached at all.

In the arrangement of find a way, I was hoping to find a middle ground between that energy, and the groove/hooky of Chaeri. I was hoping we could create something everyone could dance/singalong to, but also maintain that wall of sound feeling that was so satisfying.