City Calm Down on cataloguing the mounting anxieties of our age

Melbourne-based alternative pop band City Calm Down have returned with their second and most recent offering, Echoes in Blue. The album, consisting of 12 tracks, was written and recorded during a period of time where front man Jack Bourke struggled to juggle the process, while simultaneously working and getting married in between.
“It was inspired by being overworked,” Bourke tells of the album. “And that’s not really an inspiring thought – being overworked – so it was more a matter of it being that I was feeling that way at the time and I guess, when I write songs I’m trying to explore the way I’m feeling, so I used that as a starting point for a lot of the narratives that are in the lyrics of the songs.”
While this theme of what might perhaps be viewed as ‘being spread too thin’ is evident throughout the album’s entirety, it is opening track ‘Joan, I’m Disappearing’ in which this underlying message truly manifests itself.
“’Joan, I’m Disappearing’ is probably the most on point example,” says Bourke. “It’s about the breakdown of a relationship due to essentially the narrator – which it’s not autobiographical – but the narrator just fails to prioritize his personal relationships over work.
“And it’s a very sad story to think that someone might feel so obsessed with their work, that they aren’t able to smell the roses.”
City Calm Down have maintained the unique sound palette and raw emotion they have come to be known and loved for following 2015’s In a Restless House, yet Echoes in Blue sees the four-piece move leaps and bounds. With Jack Bourke’s vocal delivery titled as being more grounded and assured than ever before, it would appear a different approach to the recording process has paid dividends.
“When it came to recording Echoes In Blue, we intentionally took quite a different approach,” explains Jack. “In a Restless House was recorded pretty much in two 10 day blocks, which were essentially back to back, whereas Echoes In Blue was split over probably three or four months really.”
“The reason we did this was to allow ourselves time to go back and revisit songs once we’d heard how they were coming up, so we could make changes,” he continues, “And it made it feel like it was taking forever to record, but I think it also greatly enhanced the end result.
“There were a lot of things that we decided we wanted to go and change and we completely re-recorded I think two or three songs, just because we weren’t happy with the initial production of them.”
There is an ever present undercurrent of stress which plays a role within Echoes in Blue – possibly due to Bourke’s own struggles to juggle his outside commitments – but it is this undercurrent which has seemingly consolidated the band’s strengths, as well as stretched their horizons.
As City Calm Down tells and urges listeners to keep in mind, “Echoes in Blue is not concerned with answering questions”, but rather, “It is interested in the reality of being spread too thin, of being unable to shut out the noise…”
Cataloguing the mounting anxieties which are very much a reality of our age, City Calm Down have emerged with what might be their most sweeping and universal material to date.
Release: Echoes in Blue will be available for listening on April 6, 2018 via I Oh You
When & Where: The Forum, Melbourne – Friday 15 June
Tickets available via ticketmaster.com.au/.
Written by Helena Metzke
Image by Mclean Stephenson