If living in the modern world makes you feel like you've got rocks in your head, you're in good company with Regurgitator and their brand new album 'Headroxx'.
It's the first record for the legendary Brisbane band since their 2013 release 'Dirty Pop Fantasy' and bassist Ben Ely says when he and Quan Yeomans started to write new music, a prevailing theme began to emerge.
“It was funny because when we showed each other our songs they seemed to have this common thread of being a little bit psychologically messed up in the modern world and dealing with the pressures of where the world's at now,” Ben explains.
“Whether it's how do we feel in this political state or how we feel having to keep up paying bills or paying rent, all of this kind of stuff.
"All of the songs seemed to have this common thread about them and that's why we called the album 'Headroxx'; it's kind of like rock songs about your psychological state. It sounded like that was the theme for the record, so that's the direction we took for the album.”
Though Ben says the band tend to be taking things a little more seriously as they surpass a quarter-century of making surreal and exploratory art rock, their age and experience at this point means they no longer have to conform to writing for anyone else's benefit but their own.
“Because we're older now, we don't get played on Triple J or commercial radio so when we went in to make this new record we went 'we don't have to make anything that's pop or commercially viable, let's just try and make something as weird and as crazy and as experimental as we can'.
“So we went in with that attitude and then we got Ben Adams, who is [the artist] Freak Street, to do the artwork and he made this crazy record cover, which made us want to make [the music] even more crazy and that's never happened before.
"So we saw the record cover and went 'ok, that's pretty crazy', so there are parts of the album that are a little bit out there but it was really fun to take the music that far.”
Regurgitator possess a proud heritage in the annals of Australian music and remain one of the country's best-loved acts, not to mention real living legends in their home town of Brisbane.
So ubiquitous is Regurgitator's standing that their music is now being passed on to the children of fans, as records by The Rolling Stones, Beach Boys or The Beatles were once passed on to those of the previous generation.
“As our band progressed our crowds got older, but now we're getting all these young people coming to our concerts and I met a few after the gig and I was like... 'how do you know about our band?' and all these kids coming up to us are saying 'our mum and dad used to play your records to us when we were little and now we're old enough to come and see you play',” Ben says.
“It's lovely to have this cross-section of people at out shows. I have this real sense of appreciation for that and it's nice to have this young energy in the crowd when we play.
"It's cute that they're enthusiastic... and it gives this kind of enthusiasm to the band ourselves and at our age it's nice.”
'Headroxx' will be released 1 August 2018.
Regurgitator Tour Dates
Thu 2 Aug - The Cambridge Hotel (Newcastle)Fri 3 Aug - Metro Theatre (Sydney)
Sat 4 Aug - Servo Food Truck (Wollongong) afternoon
Sat 4 Aug - The Basement (Canberra)
Sun 5 Aug - SS&A Club (Albury)
Thu 9 Aug - Wool Exchange (Geelong)
Fri 10 Aug - 170 Russell (Melbourne)
11-12 Aug - Republic Bar (Hobart)
Fri 17 Aug - The Gov (Adelaide)
18-19 Aug - Badlands Bar (Perth)
Fri 24 Aug - Kingscliff Beach Hotel
Sat 25 Aug - The Tivoli Theatre (Brisbane)
Sun 26 Aug - Solbar (Sunshine Coast)
