Sydney crooner Ruben Neeson lifts the lid on the EP that was four years in the making.

Outside of his unmistakable voice, it’s the heart-on-sleeve examination of himself that really lingers after listening to Ruben Neeson’s EP. Released just last month, the four-tracks of Permanent Chills each shed a light on a different aspect of Neeson’s character which oscillates from enigmatic and mystifying artist through to self-loathing slacker in the space of a couple of lines.

The EP was recorded after Neeson returned home to Australia from New York due to the COVID-19 outbreak, having started a new band featuring plenty of familiar faces from the Sydney scene. “It all really came together when I started playing with the current band. The songs were there but I knew this was the incarnation I needed to record them with. Ben (James) introduced me to Lachlan Mitchell and showed me some of his work and I knew pretty quickly he was who I wanted to be working on it with,” he says.

Following the release, Neeson played a run of sold-out shows in Sydney and Tamworth, while Permanent Chills has been spun regularly on Sydney radio station 2SER and Hobart’s Edge Radio as well as receiving plays on FBi, Triple J Unearthed and Triple J. It’s clear that we aren’t the only ones that feel there’s something about his music that resonates deeply with the lonesome cowboy that lives inside us.

Check out the words straight from the horse’s mouth with his track-by-track below and head here to follow Ruben Neeson on Instagram:

1. Brooklyn’s West

I wrote Brooklyn’s West a few years ago after a trip to New York. I wrote it about how the enormity of a city can really engulf you and how that can put things into relative perspective. Cut you down a bit, you know? On that trip I’d been staying with my ex-girlfriend who had recently moved there and things just weren’t really working between us. It was basically written as a straightforward sad heartbreak song but also about those feelings of release and relief that can come with heartbreak.

I ended up just really falling in love with New York and moved there at the beginning of this year, until Covid sent me packing. This song is also what made me learn pedal steel. I knew if I was ever going to record it I wanted to play my own steel parts on it. Doing it in the studio with Lachlan was a lot of fun. He threw in a bunch of great ideas regarding structure. Getting to hear Caitlin sing on all of my songs is such a pleasure but she really nails it on this one.

2. Fill Your Glass

It’s a bit of a tongue in cheek stab at alcohol abuse. Not that there’s anything funny about it, it’s just the way I wrote it. I was working at a pub and when I wasn’t working I was playing shows at pubs and my girlfriend at the time also worked in a bar. Drinking basically seemed unavoidable at the time and obviously it took its toll.

The lyrics are pretty hyperbolised for the sake of a song but in essence it’s about alcohol destroying a relationship. Realistically alcohol was just a scapegoat for shitty behaviour which I didn’t want to take responsibility for. Lesson learnt.

3. Ghost

I don’t really remember writing this song strangely enough. I think I found a voice memo on my phone and some lyrics scribbled in a notebook. The title of the EP comes from a line in this song, “And I’ll walk on sideways without any will, Towards something better than permanent chills”.

I remember reading through what I’d written and really liking it. It’s my favourite song on the EP in fact. I’m still trying to decipher the lyrics and what I was trying to get across when I wrote it but I think it has a lot to do with feeling a loss of identity and lack of direction. Take from it what you’d like.

4. I Just Don’t Know The Truth

I wrote the riff and the structure for this track at my friend Michael Hardy’s old house in Camperdown a couple of years ago. We recorded the riff and looped it and came up with the chords over it. It ended up basically being an attempt at writing a Strokes song. I forgot about it completely for over a year and only found it when I was cleaning out my email inbox. I got the band to run through it with me at a rehearsal and we worked on it a bit. I decided it’d be a nice palate cleanser for people watching us after all the slow country songs they had to sit through.

I made a video for this one with my friend Rik Saunders. He just shot me goofing around in Austinmer where I’ve been living. Hung out at the beach, went bowling, carried my guitar around weird places, drank a lot of Guinness. It was fun. He shot it on his old Nokia burner phone for that real vintage look ha. It turned out pretty cool!