FEATURE:
Spotlight
Stand Atlantic
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I am doing a few Spotlight features…
but this one is with a band who have been around for a decade. They formed in Sydney, so I am not sure how many people in the U.K. know about them. The band consists of vocalist/guitarist Bonnie. The mighty Stand Atlantic signed with Rude Records in 2017. They released an E.P., Sidewinder, in September 2017. Their debut album, Skinny Dipping, was released in October 2018. Their second album, Pink Elephant, was released on 7th August 2020. There are not that many interviews online with the band from the past couple of years. I am going to concentrate on a couple of great interviews to promote Pink Elephant. This is timely, as Stand Atlantic are preparing to release their new album, F.E.A.R. (Fuck Everything and Run) on 6th May via Hopeless Records. They are a terrific band that are gaining popularity and press in the U.K. and U.S. Dubbing them one of the most interest Pop-Punk bands around, Upset chatted with them in 2020. At a time when the pandemic was in full flight, they were putting out music of the highest order:
“Along with a handful of fellow Australians, Sydney pop-punkers Stand Atlantic are ripping up the rulebook, throwing the codes and conventions in the proverbial bin, and bringing a whole new flavour to the genre with their strikingly vibrant second album, 'Pink Elephant'. From its pop-sensible arena-ready sing-alongs to its explosion-of-colour cover, vocalist and guitarist Bonnie Fraser, guitarist David Potter, drummer Jonno Panichi and bassist Miki Rich are done with being down as 'just another pop-punk band'.
"We wanted to show that it's so easy to just stick a label on a band from a certain scene. We wanted to prove that we're more than that. Genres don't exist anymore, and people just do what they want," says Bonnie defiantly, not letting the confines of her hotel room during self-isolation following her return to Australia stop her from taking a stand against the old guard. "We wanted to prove to ourselves that we're not one-trick ponies, and we like writing songs no matter what style that is."
One trick ponies and one-hit wonders, they are not. While 2018's 'Skinny Dipping' was a dazzling debut of pumped-up pop-punk, 'Pink Elephant' rearranges and reinvents their sound. They've spent some time slipping, sliding, and shapeshifting through genres, resulting in experiments in early-era PVRIS electro-rock ('Shh!'), synth-pop ('Blurry'), singer-songwriter acoustics ('Drink to Drown') and late-night laid-back R'n'B-meets-pop-punk vibes ('Silk & Satin'). Like a sponge, they've soaked up the suds of the washing bowl of popular music.
"Music is always changing in terms of trends, and that's not to say that we set out to follow any trend, but there's so much music coming in that it's hard not to get inspired by new sounds and new things.
"I wouldn't say there was any 'we want to sound like this band', it was kind of like, 'yo, this song by this band is really cool'. That song itself might not even sound like the rest of that band; it was just the process of taking little factors of different sounds we've heard. It's just a big conglomeration of everything."
While Stand Atlantic were working on their sound, they were also writing a record in realtime, drawing off of the day-to-day experiences and emotions they were working through. As a result, Pink Elephant is at once a collection of perfectionate, polished pop-punk and a riveting, raw expose of their struggles.
"The whole album is about having tough conversations, whether that's with yourself or somebody else. It's fucking scary to think about needing to talk to someone about something or have someone confront you about something you're doing wrong”.
'Pink Elephant' addresses the elements (and elephants) of Bonnie and her bandmates' lives that they've been brushing under the rug and running away from, bringing them into focus as part of a cathartic process.
"For me, writing lyrics is the only way I can truly express my feelings. I've said this a million times, I'm not very good at talking about my feelings, and I feel like I lose confidence as soon as I start opening my mouth and try talking about something. I don't know why the fuck that is, but when I start writing songs, like, it's kind of the way I wish I would talk about things, but I don't know how so I just sing about them. That's a cathartic experience for sure. It helps me get over things. For example, if I'm angry at my mum or something, I write a song about it, and it's like me putting it to bed and getting over it".
I am going to wrap up in a minute. Before then, it is worth highlighting an interview from Depth Magazine. Their incredible lead, Bonnie Fraser, spoke about the mighty Pink Elephant:
“Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Pink Elephant (except maybe just how good it is), is how much personality is contained within the album’s eleven songs. Fraser commented that the intention was to just get weird with it, saying “It’s hard to avoid when you’re writing about your life, the lyrics are coming from my head so they’re going to be a bit weird every now and then because that’s just who I am.”
Along with the weirdness that characterises the band so well, Fraser expressed that it was integral that Pink Elephant also felt like a Stand Atlantic album at heart, despite how much the band changed. “As much as I say we wanted to change and we wanted to try these new things, we were still very aware of our roots and I think we wanted to make sure that we still had that foundation and starting point to bounce off.” Summing it up quaintly, she simply stated “I think that’s good and I think it’s part of the reason we were able to still have it so far away from home and still have it somehow hit home.”
Every song on Pink Elephant defines Fraser’s confrontation with her own ‘pink elephants’ – with just some examples on the album being those in the form of mental illness, personal relationships or the pressure of being in a band. The song “Jurassic Park” talks about the impact of mental illness on family and partners, while the effervescent “DWYW” talks about the claustrophobic pressure of the band having to follow up their first album.
It’s this cathartic release that Fraser says remains her only really way of dealing with these issues outside of her own head. “It’s literally the only way,” she says, continuing by saying, “90% of the time after I write a song about how I’m feeling, I then understand how I was feeling which is super weird because music is such a permanent outlet for your feelings.” Whether or not she believes it’s a good release remains unknown, explaining “At the time of writing I’m still trying to figure out what I’m saying and how I’m feeling, but then once I’m done I realise I have this summation of how I’m feeling and I understand why. Maybe that’s immature emotionally but fuck it, I just know that’s the way I process my feelings.”
With her it comes with the medium, while others confide in those around them she doesn’t find the same comfort in discussing these issues with others. Describing what music means to her she continued, “At this point it’s kind of like a crutch. Having said that, I’ve definitely opened up a lot more in terms of sharing my feelings and all that kind of shit in real life. Songwriting, even since I was a little kid, has just always been the only way that I’ve properly had an outlet.”
While the formation of the lyrics of Pink Elephant followed a similar process to the releases before it, certain aspects of the songwriting process changed drastically. “Things didn’t really change in terms of the core of how we were writing songs, but in terms of location, who was involved and the time it took us to write it all – that was all very different,” she explained.
Recalling the differences between the writing process of Pink Elephant and Skinny Dipping she fleshed out the biggest changes. “With Skinny Dipping we were kinda just in and out of the studio, in three weeks we wrote a whole album and recorded it in four more, but with Pink Elephant it happened over the course of 18 months,” she says. It wasn’t just the time the album took that changed, with Fraser continuing “Some of them I did in LA. Some of them were written on a cliff at Bondi. It was just really random and all over the place, which kinda sums up the album stylistically as well which is weird!”.
Stand Atlantic are a band that everyone should know about. With a new album coming next month, I know the band are going to be busy touring and getting the new music out there. With such a terrific archive already under their belt, the Australian band are destined for huge things. Even if you do not like Pop-Punk or similar sounds, I promise they will captivate you. Here is a band that are…
ONES to watch.
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