Circa Waves are back and poised to release their sophomore record Different Creatures on March 10th.
Following on from their breakout album Young Chasers, Different Creatures was picked out earlier this year as one of Rolling Stone’s Top 50 Most Anticipated Records of the year.
The latest single from their record ‘Fire That Burns’ was recently added to triple j rotation, with the Liverpool based band set to deliver a change in sound from their debut album. I caught up with frontman Keiran Shuddall to find out a little more.
Hey Kieran. It’s been a while since your last release; why is that?
The way the music world works now is you have to tour for much longer than you used too. As soon as 2016 hit, I spent 4/5 months writing the album – there was 150 songs – and whittled it down to 11. We would have put an album out earlier, but the logistics forced us to do it his way. It’s kind of cool, we released our 1st album exactly two years ago.
I just think there’s just more of a chance for growth and maturity to grow if you’re touring for a couple of years and you just want to change your style a little bit or whatever.
There are a few tracks which definitely have a more emotional feel than some of your other work, was that intentional?
I think with the 1st record, I was always looking back – It was sort of a coming of age thing looking back at my teens. This was is a little more present. I felt like I needed to write about things that was going on. There are songs about depression and the refugee crisis. I felt like I had to write about it and I did.
What was your favourite track from this new album?
I think out on my own, which is number ‘4’ on the album I believe. I feel like that’s an iconic song. I’m always trying to achieve greatness in writing music, something that I think will last forever. With that song being so unique in the way it is, with the subject matter of sort of male anxiety and depression, it’s a universal thing and musically I think it’s more advanced than anything we’ve ever done. I was so proud of it when it came out the way it did, and I think people will point at that song as the best one I’ve ever written.
Was there anything you did differently during the recording process?
Just turned on loads more distortion pedals really, you know, turned the amps up. This record is cinematic and completely unshackled in its nature. We added loads of hip-hop samples underneath the drums and made it as huge as we possibly could really. The songs were big, so we felt like the production deserved to be big as well. That was the main difference.
Are there any really big influences musically that stand out for you?
We created a bit of a heavier, darker sound for this album. I was listening to loads of Foo fighters, the Killers, Queens of Stone age and Arctic Monkeys. They have a harder edge than our first record, so that put me in that kind of mindset really. I always get influenced quite easily and I think sometimes I do show it too much. But I think soon after the fact, you can hear the songs develop in their own sort of right. I always try to pull away from those influences as quick as I can
Any tours in the works soon?
There’s nothing in Australia yet, but we really hope there will be. We’ve got all the festivals around Europe, going to Japan and stuff but hopefully we’ll get to come back to Australia at the end of the year because we loved it there last time.
Where has been your favourite place to play so far?
For the sheer scale a UK festival called WhyNot, where we played for 30,000 people. It felt like a sort of vision into the future of what we could be. It gave me the feeling that we could headline festivals one day.
I think playing live for us is the biggest thing. We want to play to as many people live as we can. I think 4 years ago, I was cleaning student houses, and now I’m playing main stages at reading and Leeds, so I think anything is possible really
Awesome guys, thanks for the chat! Take it easy
Check out this sneaky throwback with Circa Waves from their first appearance on Aussie shores:
