While the shelves at Woolworths and Coles are emptier than millennial’s bank accounts, Northeast Party House has added an extended Shelf Life to their catalogue. Their highly anticipated third album, Shelf Life, dropped Friday 28 February and is already filling the void.
Known for their infectious beats and club anthems, the six-piece Melbourne outfit wanted to steer clear of the club scene moving into their third instalment, but it seems they just can’t shake their wild dance floor fusions.
“Nightlife and club culture has had a huge influence on this album and we have spoken at length as a band to move away from past things themes that have gone into on past albums which were on partying and being young, and turns out we just can’t escape our own experiences and that’s what we like to write about,” explains guitarist, Jackson Shoe.
“While the whole album has these themes around clubbing and nights out and connecting with people, there are also a few songs about relationships and I guess that’s what has been going on in each of our lives while we’ve been writing this album; commenting on our own personal relationships and the life that we’re living which sometimes involves nightclubs.”
‘Sometimes involves nightclubs’ includes a very major experience which involved a 17-hour bender at the infamous exclusive Berghain in Berlin – the nightclub that turned away Conan O’Brien and is known for its lengthy opening hours, deep techno and EDM non-stop soundtrack, strict rules pertaining to phone use, photography and mirrors, and its ANYTHING goes attitude – which heavily informed the groundwork for Shelf Life.
“Yeah, that was a good time”, Shoe laughs. “We’re all so different in the band – we’re all roughly the same age but we all have different personalities and different lifestyles and I had been there quite a few times and knew what to expect. Then on the other side of the spectrum is Oli, our bass player, who really doesn’t club much and it was a whole new world for him. But for all of us it was a really amazing bonding experience,” he says.
“We were in there for 17 hours and it felt like heaven and it felt like hell. It was just a great thing to share with each other. That’s the thing that I love about music – that escape and having that little time to yourself to forget all of the pressures of the world we live in and Berghain definitely has that and when creating our music, giving people something to be happy about and to forgot those outside troubles is the whole point of it.”
To help them get into that zone and fuel escapism beats with quality production, Northeast Party House sought external assistance for the first time ever, recruiting Kim Moyes from The Presets as their producer.
“On this album, the one idea we had from the start was to make a really concise album,” Shoe explains. “Working with a producer and working outside of Melbourne was something we really wanted to do and then when we were discussing potential producers Kim’s name popped up and made sense to us because The Presets have been a pretty influential band on us growing up and when we started the band. The main benefit that we got [from working with Moyes] was having a voice that we trusted to make those decisions.”
The result is a dance floor explosion that will last on your music shelf for decades to come; no expiry date in sight.
Shelf Life by Northeast Party House is out now!
Written by Tammy Walters
