Former SURES frontman returns with his catchiest work to date.

After taking a break, doing some travelling, and trying to figure out what was to come following the sudden dissolution of his band SURES, Jonas Nicholls worked an array of jobs. The Sydney-based songwriter bounced between retail, call centres, bar work, sales, and truck driving to sustain himself as he wrote this latest batch of songs.

It ain’t always easy being an independent musician, but thankfully he toughed it out and we can all reap the fruits of his hard labour, with his debut tune under the moniker Offshore Projects, ‘Sham’. The guitar-lead track is a delicious slice of modern indie-rock, with throwbacks the downstroke/upstroke duelling guitars of The Strokes and the laid back vocal hooks The Thrills.

Lyrically the song traces the story of a young man overwhelmed with indecision in a world of limitless opportunities. It makes sense given where Nicholls was at in his life, whilst writing. “These are the first songs I wrote after moving out of my parents’ home,” he says. “That’s when the tone of my songwriting changed dramatically, everything sounded fun and breezy again. A feeling that I hadn’t captured or felt since writing songs as a kid.”

Directed by T Oxford, the clip follows Nicholls through a plastic-covered world lit by bright fluorescents, which works nicely as a metaphor for his disconnection to the sterile, career-driven concrete jungle. Check it out below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSw1-t5MhJY

Offshore Projects’ self-titled EP is due out August 23rd through Viscera Arts, and you can catch him playing a bunch of live shows around town in coming weeks (info here), including a show at Kelly’s in Newtown tomorrow night with Holy Forrest (info here).