If I’ve learnt one thing from Batman, it’s that Bruce Wayne has a pretty hard time dealing with his double life. But, how would that same dynamic work if you were a high school teacher by day, and the lead vocalist of one of Australia’s hottest punk rock acts by night? What would you do if you saw an under-age student at a gig? How could you handle such a battle of morals?
Luckily, we have Tyler Richardson, Luca Brasi’s lead vocalist and bass player to tell us.
“I haven’t come across them [students] at shows just yet, I have definitely seen their parents at shows before though, which is pretty weird,” Richardson explains. “I hope they don’t see me as some loud mouth, swearing guy who gets on stage and drinks beer…”
It would be a fair assumption to say that none of the parents do feel this way.
With the band releasing their fourth studio album, Stay, last week (June 22), there is truly no denying how hard working this Tasmanian four-piece is.
“I guess a lot of this album is about growing up in a band and having the opportunity to look back at your life told through music as a 30 year old, and to look at how things have changed,” Richardson elaborates of the writing and recording process. “Now all of our mates have careers or are married, and then we also have a lot of mates who tour full time, so it’s weird to see how life changes.
“There is a lot of stuff that I wrote when I was 20 years old and I spoke purely about partying and all that shit and I probably wouldn’t write that again,” he continues. “Not that I regret writing them the first time, but it’s just a big part of that reflection of where you have come from. It’s a device to think about how you were at that point and where your mindset was. When you’re writing songs for 10 years, you do change a lot and you do realise how different your mindset has become.”
When asked to draw comparison between Stay and the bands previous catalogue, Richardson thoughtfully responded: “The first album [Extended Family, 2011] we wrote when we were 20 years old and we didn’t really have a lot to say about much apart from what we were doing which was really just enjoying ourselves.
“The second album [By a Thread, 2014] was us trying to bring in some of the sounds and inspirations that we wanted and it didn’t work out as well as we would have liked – it was a bit of a trial for what we wanted. The last record [If This Is All We’re Going to Be, 2016] was the time that it finally gelled for us, that was the one that gained traction and the one that let us do all this crazy shit,” he explains. “It just seemed like the dynamics we were trying to do actually worked within the songs. It was just a better version of the second record.
“When the last record came out, we had been a band for five years and as much as it was amazing touring and stuff, it still wasn’t hitting the hopes that we wanted. The last record for me was really, ‘is this going to be it? Surely we can push this further’ and that’s how that album title came about. I feel like ‘Stay’ is a summing up of the last three records and how we got to this point.”
When & Where: The Croxton, Melbourne – August 24.
Written by Alex Callan
Photo by Kane Hibberd
