Brisbane band Hey Geronimo return with a new single that signals a shift from their traditional rock & roll roots.
“Over the past 18 months or so, Bingers [bassist Bill Bingley] and I have become obsessed with the near-future and how the world is changing,” frontman Pete Kilroy explains. “Not in a bad way, just in the way that technology is changing the way we live our lives every day.
“Now it's dawned on me that I’m living in 'the future': the video phone is a thing, high-speed internet and the 24-hour news cycle is more like a five-hour news cycle, that sort of weird stuff. It just dawned on us that this stuff is happening, so all those [science-fiction] writers in the ‘60s and ‘70s... a lot of that stuff is starting to happen.”
Pete says the new look for the band comes as a result of working with their newest member Pluto Jonze. “Since Pluto Jonze has joined the band, everything has changed,” he says. “His work is a bit kooky and weird and he's influenced everything we've done.”
Hey Geronimo are introducing their new look with a show dubbed ‘Brave New World’; a subtle nod to Aldous Huxley’s genre-defining 1932 dystopian novel of the same name. Pete says ‘Brave New World’ sees the band up their game in terms of live performance and production. “The new show addresses that sort of shit that's going on and creeping in,” he says.
“We figure in ten to fifteen years’ time everything is going to be a lot different to what it is now. That's how our show is a little bit different as opposed to what we used to do which was just get up there, get drunk and have a party.
“For want of a better word, we're trying harder and we’re trying to make our show a bit better. We’ve got visuals and lights, and we make the experience a bit more interesting and a bit more fun for everyone who's going to come along to the show.”
The new look for Hey Geronimo is accompanied by the latest single taken from their forthcoming second album, the follow-up to their 2016 debut, ‘Crashing Into The Sun’. Entitled ‘Mutant’, the song recounts Pete’s two unfortunate encounters with Courtney Barnett, both of which saw him turn into a blabbering mess and making a fool of himself.
“It's getting sweeter by the day just because it’s getting further into my memory,” Pete laughs, “it's getting further away. I was hoping people could relate to it because we've all done it.”
Hey Geronimo will take ‘Brave New World’ on a brief east coast tour this month hitting Melbourne, Sydney and their hometown Brisbane and Pete says fans both new and old have a lot to look forward to. “We've played this show once and we had a ten-song set and it's all brand new songs that we’ve never played before,” he says.
“So in some respect because our first record took so long to come out we did the exact opposite. Now we've gone to the extreme and were playing all new songs. If you like our old stuff you'll like the new music. It's on the same path but just a little more serious is all.”
Hey Geronimo Tour Dates
Fri 23 Jun - Northcote Social Club (Melbourne)Fri 30 Jun - Woolly Mammoth (Brisbane)
Fri 7 Jul - Hudson Ballroom (Sydney)
