Photo by Nicholas Astanei
Being the band’s first new music since their 2018 debut LP Different Beings Being Different, West Thebarton have just dropped their latest single ‘Tops’, celebrating its release with a national tour.
“We’re just writing and writing and writing,” says lead vocalist and guitarist, Ray Dalfsen. “After we released the last record I thought we were going to stop writing and chill out for a bit, but because there’s seven of us, we end up making new stuff all the time.”
It’s just over a year since Different Beings Being Different came out. You only get one shot at making your first album and it often sets the standard for what’s to follow. West Thebarton had been kicking around for half a decade before making the LP, and it reflects their growth from noisy garage jam band, to serious songwriters.
“A lot of those songs on Different Beings were played for a number of years before we recorded and then released the record,” says Dalfsen. “It was a little bit of a breath of fresh air to be able to release it, and looking back now, I still enjoy listening to that record. There’s no cringeworthy moments, but it’s also nice to know that our writing is going in a little bit of a tangent to that.”
‘Tops’ is an up-tempo belter with a number of shout-along vocal hooks. It revolves around a few basic chord changes and a standout lead guitar hook. It’s keeping with the West Thebarton signature, although Dalfsen says the continuity wasn’t contrived.
“When people come to a West Thebs show, they expect a bit of craziness and guitars going nuts and all that kind of stuff. All of our songs sound that way, but we’ve never really shied away from trying whatever the fuck we want,” he says. “We’ve got a couple of new songs that are pretty slow, almost ballads, without too much craziness going on. It’s really refreshing to be able to do that and also it sounds pretty good.
“The whole point of being in a band for me is a bit of an outlet for everything that’s going on. I’ve never really sat down and said, ‘I’m going to write a song that’s going to be like this and that’.
“It’s nice to have a sound that you know that your fans like, but also know that your fans appreciate everything that you do to the point where you can express yourself and you don’t need to stick to that signature sound.”
The lyrics in ‘Tops’ depict Dalfsen flitting between exhaustion and responding to the external expectation to feel good about life. When someone’s feeling down, the impulse is to say, “Cheer up. Look at all this great stuff going on”. There are times when it’s justified – we’re susceptible to luring ourselves into traps – but at other times, feelings are unrelated to circumstances.
“I guess we all face that real big time when we know deep down we should feel so fucking good about ourselves, we should be on top of the world, but then something brings us down and we don’t feel as good as we should do,” Dalfsen says.
“When I wrote ‘Tops’, it was just before we went to Europe last year. We’d released the album, toured Australia, we were doing all these really good things and I knew that we should feel on top of the world. But there was just a few things that happened that made me feel really down about everything.
“It took my partner to say, ‘Hey Ray, you’re actually doing a lot of cool stuff. You should feel really good about what you’re doing’. And I was like, you know what, fuck it, I do feel really good about what I’m doing.”
West Thebarton launch ‘Tops’ at The Corner Hotel on Sunday June 9. Grab your tickets via the venue website.
