Press Club steamed-rolled into the Melbourne punk scene in 2017 with their fierce determination to mould a stagnate scene.
With a hard stance on rejecting the norm, the four-piece have paved a solid DIY pathway for their powerhouse platform.
Having just played at GUTS in South Australia, they’re about to embark on their most extensive national and European tour to date, officially kicking off in Newcastle and making its way to Melbourne’s Brunswick Ballroom on Friday October 21.
Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
“It’s been great to do all of these places that we’ve never done before and may never do again. Regional South Australia is beautiful, weird and wild,” comments drummer Frank Lee. It’s likely that these corners of Australia won’t see the four-piece return as this tour is coupled with their third album release cycle, with Endless Motion set to continue their upward trajectory.
Following their celebrated Wasted Energy in 2019 (#4 on the AIR Album Chart and #15 on the ARIA Australian Chart) and debut Late Teens the year prior, the self-produced Endless Motion has already fly-kicked the sonic forcefield with singles ‘Cancelled’, ‘Eugene’ and ‘I Can Change’. Echoing the album title, album number three saw the band face a rollercoaster ride to get here.
“It’s a combination of a lot of hard work, setbacks and successes; some successes, many setbacks,” explains Lee.
A shared experience within the music industry, the pandemic posed a major disturbance in the Press Club production schedule. Album number three was due for delivery in Berlin with the band having to pivot their plans.
“That was brutal. We were planning on recording an album in Berlin in 2020 and obviously that didn’t happen, but it was kind of a blessing in disguise because we set up our studio in Melbourne after the Berlin thing fell through and it allowed us to really settle in and hone all of the music and write new music and sort of make the album that we wanted to make. I feel like this is the first album where we can really say we’re fully proud of and this is us.”
The surprise decision to divert from their DIY, independent, band-lead process, which was born in their shed, was purely out of prospect, but the fallthrough led to an even greater opportunity for the band to reassess their internal systems and songwriting skills.
“The opportunity came up to work with this label in one of the best studios in the world and we thought ‘we have to do that, for sure’ and it would have been great I’m sure, but the way it’s happened is the way it was meant to be,” Lee says.
“It made us look in, instead of relying on external factors and external experience, we really looked inwards for this third album, into our own songwriting and producing skills, and that’s really what we have been about since day one as a band – to be able to do everything ourselves and to say this album is our own – is really important to us.”
As a result, the product is Press Club’s most ambitious and authentic album to date. An inevitable maturation since their Late Teen’s inception, their message and delivery too has evolved with Endless Motion documenting the political, social and environmental turmoil of the last pandemic and election-affected year. Track ‘Untitled Wildfire’ speaks to the devastating destruction of the East Coast bushfires, whilst ‘Lifeline’ navigates and narrates lockdown.
“The songs are better and more mature. I think our issue with our first two albums, not that we don’t love those two albums and we still play them and get such a great response from them, but I think with this third album the songs are more mature. They reflect a lot more what we are trying to say as songwriters as well, politically, socially and perhaps it’s saying a little more in general, and that was a conscious decision as well. We tried to slow it down a little as well within the songs – we’ll always sound like us but instead of writing a fun trashy straight-out-of-the-bin album, we were trying to say something with this album and these songs and find ourselves,” Lee explains.
This new direction didn’t come without complications within the band: navigating such polarising subjects leads to conflict and criticism. However, the four found a balanced approach to tackling subject matter, ultimately rejoicing in their shared values and ideologies.
“To do that there was a lot of self-criticism we had to go through, criticism of each other and each other’s ideas, and we had to find healthy and efficient ways of asking hard questions of the songs. It was brutal but also what makes good songs. The kind of revisions we were doing of songs early on in the process was completely gutting songs and sometimes when it comes to the writing sessions we would come up with ideas and end up using only one small section of the idea. We just found that approach was what got us over the line.”
Whilst it all worked out in the wash for this tertiary album, the Berlin prospect is not off the Press Club cards.
“I think it’s something we would consider again in the future if the timelines lined up and if we had enough material to take it in and make it our own. I think with every album we try to make something better than the last and I think we’ve achieved that and it was due to that reliance on our own and being by ourselves; relying on our own choices and our own abilities. I think probably more than likely for the next album – we haven’t even released number three and I’m talking about number four – but that next album will build on that same momentum,” Lee says.
The band further have their sights set on the States for touring opportunities in 2023/24. But for now, they’re aiming to hype up Australian crowds with their live show and ten-track collection.
Tickets to the Endless Motion Australian Tour are on sale now, with the album dropping Friday 14 October 2022. For further information head to https://pressclubmusic.com/.
