The heavy rock band with a prog rock tinge formed in 2010 to fulfil Delaney’s aforementioned need for an outlet for his written material, bringing together ex-members of other bands, including Fourth Floor Collapse, The Go Set, Nitidius and Revolution Street.
“I bring in the skeletons of the songs and we put them together in the rehearsal,” vocalist and guitarist Jesse Delaney says.
“I don’t know if this is normal, but when I’m playing a chord progression or a riff and have an idea for a melody, I can hear the finished product, I can hear what it sounds like as a band. So I’ll suggest my ideas, and a lot of the time the guys come up with something different that works better.
The desire to play live music led Crying Sirens to the Espy Hotel stage, where the sound engineer suggested they record their music.
“I was shocked. I hadn’t really thought about [recording our music], I just wanted to play as many live shows as possible,” Delaney says.
The process progressed naturally, and Atsu was born. Mixed by Haydn Buxton (Twelve Foot Ninja, Trial Kennedy), “Live shows will always be our passion, but it’s a good addition to what we do on stage,” Delaney says.
“[The band and album] came from some songs that I had floating around over the last few years while I was playing and touring with other bands that I didn’t think it suited.”
Delaney drew on his Japanese born wife for the album title’s inspiration.
“Japanese have this knack, all languages do I guess, words that English doesn’t quite cover. Atsu is a word that can be translated to pressure, or what happens when you put things under pressure, put people into situations, and people going through experiences, and what the end result is. And that’s something I really related to at that time. I don’t mean pressure like negative stress. Things that happen where you have to push yourself harder.
“I wanted to capture that idea, and represent that with the crushed light bulb [on the album’s cover],” Delaney says.
The debut single from the album, Descend, encapsulates the sound of the album, with all its gritty, alternative rock.
“Descend captures the mixture of rhythm and power and melody and progression. As we get heavier and more aggressive, but still have the melodies going on.”
The band’s excellent year continues with the very recent nomination as a finalist in the MusicOz Australian Independent Music Awards. Accolades don’t seem to be something that Delaney expected when he began unleashing his music through Crying Sirens.
“Anything that gets the music out there and spreads the word is a good thing,” he says.
Delaney moved from Newcastle, largely because of Melbourne’s music scene, in particular its live scene.
“I don’t think you can go past Melbourne, at least in Australia, for quality and variety,” he says.
“We’re very passionate on stage, we want to put in as much as we can. We’re loud, we’re not the band who plays in the corner, you’ll know we’re on when we’re on. We enjoy it, and that raw energy that tends, I don’t want to say it’s missing, but there are some bands that just snap on when they play live, and I want to be one of those bands.”
BY CLAIRE VARLEY
