Powered by adored lead single ‘I Miss You’ and stunning early reviews, arguably Australia’s most positive hip-hop trio Thundamentals are set to release their fifth studio album I Love Songs tomorrow (Friday September 21), flawlessly capping off their ‘Decade of the Thundakat’.
Recorded at their own studio in Sydney’s inner suburbs, the 12-track release is an intensely personal listen. Fans of the group will be familiar with their frequent political commentary, but amongst an increasingly turbulent society, they have decided to focus their album on what’s been lost amongst the chaos: Love. As a result, I Love Songs focuses on love in its varying forms, and showing Thundamentals’ undeniable writing ability in a more intimate light.
“We’ve been pretty vocal about some of our opinions, our political beliefs, in the past and although it is nice to get stuff off your chest, we wanted to do a project that didn’t actually shine a light on any of the bullshit,” explains Tuka (aka Brendan Tuckerman). “Everyone knows what the world is like; do I need to preach to the converted or can I give you something that is actually going to, potentially, bring you closer to someone? It feels like everyone’s isolated, it feels like everyone’s disconnected, so we’re trying to stimulate connection between people using the glue or theme of love.
“Within that is a lot of grey, murky space; what the concept of love and supporting someone is, or the dynamic of that. Our last record was about interpersonal relationships as well, called Everyone We Know [2017], and each song is about a different person. This record is actually about one other person, or your very extremely tight-knit crew.”
The concept of I Love Songs was conceived and executed while the group were touring their 2017 album (an album which spawned hits ‘Sally’, ‘Think About ‘’it’ and ’21 Grams’ , written in candid moments of on-road reflection, exploring the isolation and broken romances that happen behind the scenes, away from the sold-out crowds and star-studded festivals.
“It’s a love story,” Tuka continues. “Both me and Jeswon [aka Jesse Ferris], we’re talking about our partners, and even the songs that aren’t about our partners, they’re about people that are directly related in our lives.
“And so that’s what I Love Songs means; it’s a record about love songs, about love,” he continues. “But it’s also just the irony of us touring and making music for 10 years and when it comes down to it, it’s individual songs that really have allowed us to do what we do. So that was the rationale behind it. We love songs that allow us to express our love to this other person.”
In terms of production, the album reflects the vast array of emotions explored by the band, while pushing further into the sonic territories of electronica, gospel and R&B. There’s the silky modern hum of album opener ‘All I See Is Music’, ‘Eyes On Me’ transports you to sunnier times with its warm island embrace, and ‘Everybody But You’ builds slowly into a mesmerising sing-a-long at its conclusion.
Mostly self-produced alongside acclaimed Sydney multi-instrumentalist Carl Dimataga (Khalid) and featuring guest appearances from Australian upstarts Eves Karydas and Adrian Eagle, each song sees the guys take on a contemporary and adventurous approach, while still retaining Thundamentals’ traditional roots in rap.
“There’s hip hop in there, but we’ve always genre hopped a little bit. Again, it relates to the title, I Love Songs; I love music. It’s not I love hip hop,” he laughs. “We just went out and went ‘okay, let’s just be totally loyal to the song. What does the song want’, and we don’t think about anything outside of it. Eventually, the love story narrative came through it, but if you kind of flip through all the songs, there’s a lot of different genres on there and that falls under the idea ‘I Love Songs’.”
While lead single ‘I Miss You’ has garnered over 2.5 million streams, peaked #24 on the Spotify Viral Chart, been added to Apple Music’s Today’s Hits playlist and received widespread critical acclaim, the album also includes a number of fun, divergent tracks which takes on the idea of love in a whole new way.
“‘Payroll’ is a funny one,” Tuka laughs. “It’s still about love in a really weird way. Me, Jess, and Morgs have been writing music out of Morgan’s bedroom for longer than 10 years, and so the track ‘Payroll’ was basically a celebration in saying that we never really did it for money.
“The dream was always to be able to make a living off of it so you could continue doing it, not so you can have material possessions; just so you don’t have to work for a boss or a system that you don’t like. We put in so much work, it’s almost looks like looking at one another and going holy shit, we’re the masters of our destiny now and we’re not sacrificing our integrity for money.”
While the trio celebrated their tenth anniversary with an epic twenty-four date regional tour earlier this year, this release sees them moving with more momentum than ever as they gear up to embark on their album tour in November. Armed with 12 new tracks promoting love and connectivity, fans can expect a candid insight into the lives of Tuka, Jeswon, and Morgs.
Release: I Love Songs is out tomorrow (Friday 21 September 2018)
