PASH ON PASH EP
PHOTOGRAPHY: ELISE ABOTOMEY
Temper: Can you talk us through the process of writing this EP?
Orlando: We started writing this EP at the start of last year, we were given the opportunity to start doing sessions in Melbourne, Sydney in Brisbane with all sorts of different producers, which is why the sounds are varied. We were going through a lot, we were flying around the place, we were away from home, having fun, making music, with our best mates. It was sort of very on the fly, very spontaneous, whatever we were feeling when we were in the studio with these different people.
T: Is that how you had always written, quite spontaneously?
Jett: That was still quite early in our songwriting journey and we were still sort of figuring it out at the time and we hadn’t had any sort of way of writing before that. We were learning about it as we went.
T: You’ve been sitting on these songs for a little while- how does it feel to have them out?
Daniel: It’s a weight off our shoulders! We obviously love these songs very much and there has been a lot of time since we first started getting these songs together and some of these songs we have been playing before we really started writing. We’re all so happy it’s finally coming out and there’s been a lot of work that has gone into releasing this EP.
Orlando: It’s cool because some songs we started recording about a year ago but some of the other songs existed in some form well before that, like demos at home that Jett and I had done or ones we started writing as a band about two years ago. They’ve been our songs for a very long time and it’s exciting that finally they’re going to be everyone’s songs. So very keen for that.
T: How has the reception been in a live space?
Jett: We’ve been super lucky because at this point in our career we can play songs live for a long time and sort of test things out before they’re out in the world. We’ve had a great reaction to the songs that are on the EP that we’ve been playing live which is a nice feeling.
T: East End Girls is about your hometown of Adelaide, what drew you to this? Was it the shared experience of growing up there?
Nic: We love our hometown and we spent so many years there hanging out and then also writing the songs. So it was great to have a song that kind of took on the form of being an ode to the place where we grew up and is a message to places we spent a lot of time in between writing and when we flew back home and were able to hang out. It's kind of special to have a song that's a representation of where we’re from.
T: Self described as the lovechild of INXS and The 1975- how have these influences shaped your songwriting?
Orlando: We don’t consciously draw on any one source. Whatever feels good in the moment. As four guys we have very varied music taste but we all have a taste for fun music.
Nic: The whole experience of writing this EP was crazy and super fun. We were with producers that we love and we’re good friends having a blast and when you’re having those kind of experiences the music that comes kind of reflects that.
T: Is there a particular song that was more fun to write or record?
Jett: They all had their moments, they all had something unique about them. We got track completely live at Grove Studios which I think we had the most fun doing. In terms of writing the song “Another Day”, it took so much time sort of going back and forth between ideas and knuckling down on parts.
Orlando: I think that’s the most crafted song, we wrote and recorded it over the course of four days with an amazing producer and great friend of ours Taras. He’s amazing and the process with him is so deeply collaborative, we were dedicated to the song for those four days and paid so much attention every part of it. But all the songs had their own reason for being fun to write and record so it’s a bit of a hard question to answer.
T: Is there a particular song that was more challenging to write or record?
Nic: The song “Tracy” was a challenge because we wrote a really amazing but rough demo at our home studio in Adelaide and we just knew that the song was special and that it was a really fun, great tune. Then, we went to record it properly and we struggled to recapture the same magic that we had in the first half an hour of writing the song. So then we recorded extra drums and all of these layers and then we got it all back and sat with it and we thought no it doesn’t have the same energy that you have when you first find that really good idea. So we went back to the drawing board and back to the old demo draft and worked off that instead.
Jett: I had a bit of a crisis when we were recording all the final parts in a nice studio in Adelaide thinking that was the right thing to do for the song. We recorded all of these final vocals, final guitar parts and real drums and then I hated what we had done. That was a first for us and so we went back and forth a lot trying to figure out how we could enjoy the song again. We pretty much went back to the demo!
T: Jumping into the visual world of PASH- the visual world has become instantly recognisable and has quite a nostalgic feel, what was the vision behind this EP?
Nic: It was intentional but at the same time was a learning process. We have an amazing videographer and great friend in Adelaide (Seb Reichelt) that worked with us for the videos and great team from Melbourne that understood the vision. We wanted it to be nostalgic and Australian but also feel new, fresh and in the pop world. We managed to find some really talented people where we told them that sentence and they just got it and then they helped us build it out and put the pieces together and film videos that capture that. We very lucky to have some great collaborators.
