Paradise Club will once and for all be releasing their self-titled debut album this coming Friday, 17th July.
Since their inception, the Adelaide dream-emo crooners have made waves felt all over the land. Through drip-fed, stand-alone single releases and hard gigging – sharing bills with Ocean Alley, Trophy Eyes and Endless Heights – the band have worked fans up to this very moment.
Those paying attention will be well aware of Paradise Club first entering the fray some years ago, and they’ve been slowly but surely chipping away at the big debut ever since. “I’ve been writing since I was small, like most artists do,” frontman Gere Fuss says of the path to the eponymous record. “I had so many songs and I’d been working with Jack, our drummer, and then I just never stopped writing.”
Speaking to the three-and-a-half year turn around of the record, Gere recalls a sort of creative samara; a self-created feedback loop that would be interrupt by the introduction of more people to the project, a process that began when Gere and Jack decided Paradise Club needed to be a full band.
“As we kept going through, I had more songs that were better than what I’d written, so obviously getting better at what I was doing. I just kept making new songs, kept changing stuff, and I guess when other people got involved, that’s when it started to be a set date.”
Included in the group of ‘other people’ would be Wollongong indie titans, Farmer & The Owl, who signed the band ahead of the release, something that very much got things into motion.
“They were the ones who said, “Nah, this is when we’re doing [the release].” We were like, “All right, yep. Cool. We do want to do that.” I suppose it’s just been a lot of learning man. When you have this idea or this perception of how you want it to go, it makes it a lot harder. you’re never going to make it exact.”
Pursing through the extensive media coverage already touting the wares of Paradise Club, the concept of ‘shimmering blissful sounds’ is routinely strewn throughout. Listening through the album, it’s clear where this descriptor came from. But as Gere explains, there’s more to the story beneath the polished final product: “Angst is definitely there. It’s still in the project,” Gere says.
“I think every song has its own mood. I think it’s just like we have 20 songs, four of them sound like they would belong to Paradise Club. A couple of them will be more hardcore, three of them will be more track. It kind of happens naturally. I definitely do have an idea that will trigger me to work towards it, but who knows what’s going to happen from there.”
A lot of angst and darkness resonates away from the instrumental side of things, nestled within the lyrical content. “It’s hard to talk about, hey?” Gere admits when opening up about the themes of love, loss and the inability to cope that informed many of the lyrics on the album.
“I’m not the best lyrical writer, but I think I always want to be earnest. Sometimes they don’t fucking make sense, you know? They have to be revised later. But as long as I’m getting the emotion out there and just trying to put my feelings down without being too in your face.”
As an example, Gere points to the unreleased album track ‘Zaz’.
“‘Zaz’ is one of those ones that I don’t think entirely made sense to start with. It’s hard to think about how I was feeling as I was writing it, but I know I probably wasn’t in the best mindset.”
As the Friday, 17th July release date for the self-titled debut approaches, media has begun playing a large role, which isn’t at all a sure thing, given how many similar such releases go under the radar failing to be mentioned in, oh, say, NME’s most anticipated releases of the year.
One person’s anticipation is another person’s pressure. That’s something that resonates with Gere when discussing whether he would have preferred to not have eyes from all over the world now. “That’d be fucking dope,” he jokes. “But at the same time, where the hell would you be without these publications or people that show you support, you know? It makes all the difference. It does wig me out a bit, though.
“When publications and labels get involved, it’s like another aspect to the music game. It’s something you’ve got to learn as you go to deal with, but this is a tiny scale right now, you know?
“Now, it’s fucking chilling. We could do with more.”
Paradise Club is out Friday, 17th June.
