The Harpoons’ sophomore album, Amaro, has been a long time coming. With almost three years since the release of their last single ‘Ready For Your Love’ and just shy of four years since their debut album Falling For You, Martin King, who plays the drum machine for the band, says The Harpoons are really happy to finally have their second album out.
Named after an Italian liqueur, King says this is representative of the theme of the album – a bit bitter and a bit sweet. He believes that this bittersweet theme is due to the inclusion of some love songs, some songs of heartbreak and some that are a mix of both.
“Jack [Madin] will tell you that it’s a concept album and that the order of the tracks trace the development of a relationship, but I think that was almost a bit of re-writing history after the fact,” he states. “I think it’s track for track, some songs are straight from the heart, explaining exactly how you’re feeling in the moment, and other songs are more reflective and you can write about experiences that you’ve had in the past.”
The best part of creating the album, for King, was when someone in the band would bring a new song to the table and seeing its rawness, he felt excited because of the possible potential of what could be done with the song. “Bec [Rigby] sings a lot of them and hearing her sing and nut them out can be really amazing because she’s got such a totally amazing voice,” says King. “Probably the best thing, for me, would be hearing the songs pretty fresh.”
Bands can have disagreements, but one thing The Harpoons all agree on is that ‘Pressure’ is their favourite song on the LP. King says that this is because the collaborative effort is unassuming and beautiful. It’s also been a part of their repertoire for a bit longer than some of the other songs.
“It’s one of the older tracks on the album, so it’s sat with us for the longest,” King explains. “We’ve had the chance to love it and hate it and then love it again then hate it then finally come back to being happy with it. I think they’re a few of the reasons why we feel that way about the song.”
Spending a lot of time on the road over the last year, the band has learned a lot about how to adapt. King says that in New York, the venues that the band played cycled through bands quickly, so they found it stressful because they didn’t have a lot of time to sort themselves out. However, they had a fantastic time performing in London and Tokyo which had completely different vibes.
“The cute little places that we played in Tokyo were really nice and we’d have people coming back to three or four shows and just sitting really quietly and attentively. They would chat to us afterwards,” he says. “It’s a fun way to travel because instead of being a weird tourist, you’re engaging in more of a relationship with people.”
After an exciting start to the year, The Harpoons are looking forward to doing a lot of touring around Australia and getting people to hear their new music. King says that they’re super happy about the support they’ve already received towards their new album and are hoping more people can get behind it.
“Our main focus for the last little while has been getting this thing out and making sure people respond to the tracks, and it seems like they are starting to,” he says. “I think ‘Pressure’ has got a lot of local radio stations really behind it, hopefully they’ll get behind the rest of the album as well.”
