Not long now kids! Adelaide rock band Bad//Dreems will release their new album HOO HA! on 19 May 2023. Yesterday they revealed the fourth cut from the album, New Breeze. The song captures the frustration, malaise and confusion of the post-pandemic world.
“We looked forward to a utopia at the end of the pandemic, but life is never that simple. You end up just pissing in a different breeze” says Alex Cameron (guitar) in relation to the song’s creation.
In a similar vein to the spontaneous pub prose of previous single See You Tomorrow (most playlisted song on streaming services in Australia on release) front man Ben Marwe leads the listener in a vaudevillian romp, replete with a Canned Heat-esque flute hook. Going up the country indeed.
The song is chock full of the bands characteristically wry observational lyrics, in which high and low culture, Australian slang and historical and contemporary references combine in catharsis.
Visuals of these motifs are apparent in the charming low budget clip, as Marwe plays dress ups in the form of a local football yob, a sinister speed-dealer-chainsaw-thrusting wrongdoer, a holy man, and a dishevelled looter that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Two Hands. Footage of political leaders, shamed servicemen and religious figureheads accompany the ‘wackadoo’ collection of Marwe’s alter-egos – pieced together nicely by long-time filmic collaborator of the band, Tom Stevens.
HOO HA! album #4 for Bad//Dreems, began its life post pandemic in a small studio in Adelaide, located in a disused neo-gothic incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin and containing Billy Thorpe’s old Neve recording desk. “We had a new found appreciation and zest for being able to play together that created the energy of the album,” Marwe said of the experience.
The songs were taken to Melbourne and recorded with Dan Luscombe (Amyl and the Sniffers, Courtney Barnett, the Drones) at Soundpark Studio in early 2022. The result epitomises the power of Bad//Dreems, where pub rock meets art-rock and where high a low culture collide to paint a vivid picture of our times.
First single Mansfield 6.0 describes the surreal events of September 2021 when inner city construction workers rioted on the streets of Melbourne protesting mandatory vaccination, at the same time an earthquake shook the city (6.0 on the Richter scale at Mansfield). Second single Jack, a passionate track which spoke to Australia’s deliberate erasure of Indigenous history and identity.
“If the truth is going to be told, then white Australia will have to listen,” Cameron said upon its release.
And the recently released See You Tomorrow which is like a history lesson on speed as vocalist Ben Marwe spews out irrational one liners that spar with each other, ducking and diving between references of childhood memories, Eastern Russia, and Channel 7’s ‘Kochie’.
Bad//Dreems yesterday announced a run of metro city dates including Sydney to launch HOO HA! live. Hailed as one of the most vital guitar acts in the country, the songs from HOO HA! are set to take on another life live on stage. Tickets are on sale 8am AEST Wednesday 19 April.
“There was a significant possibility that we may never have been able to record or play together again. If we were to do so I made a pledge to say exactly what I wanted to and make music true to only ourselves. Bugger the consequences,” Cameron declared.
BAD//DREEMS – THE ‘HOO HA! TOUR
Presented by Double J and Love Police
Saturday 1 July Factory Theatre, Sydney
BAD//DREEMS ‘HOO HA!’ OUT 19 MAY 2023 VIA FARMER & THE OWL / BMG
SINGLE ‘NEW BREEZE’ OUT NOW
