“In terms of an overall theme for the album, I guess it would be suffering. I know that sounds very bleak, but in every good song for me, there has to be an element of suffering. In terms of the songs, they are all pretty versatile so I think we covered a lot of ground” reflects Josh Humphries on the upcoming Restless Natives album.
Being the groups first full-length LP (after multiple single releases), it is a super exciting time for the Geelong four-piece, so I was slightly stumped. What kind of suffering has birthed a ten-song album?
“Every song, I just try to capture how I’m feeling at the time.
“I’ve had a pretty normal life so I guess it’s mainly about girls… They are the number one songwriting material,” laughs Josh before getting a bit more serious. “As well as that, everyone’s life is changing pretty rapidly at this age and not everyone copes with that the same so it also ties in a lot to that.”
A notion which I couldn’t agree with more, the ol’ quarter-life crisis which is rarely brought to light. But before Restless Natives learned the hardships of life and love, they learnt and honed their craft.
“The guitarist Will and I started out in a high school band The Ampersads and we ended up doing pretty well for a high school band.
“We got to support Joe Camilleri and a few of the old school rockers, but that sort of crumbled away creatively and Will and I wanted to push more into more of an alternative direction. We wanted to get Cam onboard as well as Will and Cam went to primary school together, but at the time, Cam was in the band Sorrow Nation… So we basically poached him from that.”
Embracing a DIY ethic, Restless Natives are slogging out the hard yards and recording the upcoming release in Will’s home studio in Leopold.
“Two of our guitarists are sound engineers so we’ve just been doing it as we go,” he explains. “We are all fairly close together with all of us living in or around the Bellarine area so we have just been recording at his home studio.”
With the album being in the works at the moment, unfortunately, Josh couldn’t give away any juicy secrets of what the album may sound like, but he did let slip, “there’s a massive alternative market at the moment so I think we want to hammer on that a bit.
“In terms of releasing the album, we really hope we can get it out by December and after that, it’s straight into gigging and writing material for the next album.”
Follow the Restless Natives on Facebook via www.facebook.com/restlessnativesband4/
Written by Alex Callan
Photo by Patrick Callow