Look up the word 'stoked' in the dictionary and it's likely you'll come across the goofy grins of LOSER's Craig Selak and Tim Maxwell.
The bassist and singer, respectively, of the Melbourne group are "super stoked" to have the opportunity to discuss their second studio album, 'All The Rage', more so because on the day of the interview it's Tim's birthday."I'm stoked I get to spend an hour and a half of it doing interviews about an album we've created over the last two years. It's f...ing awesome!" he gushes.
It's hard not to feel like you're about to bring the boys down from their Jameson-induced high, given the powerfully honest and emotionally course thematic content of 'All The Rage'.
Using metaphoric narrative, the release sees LOSER bare all and explore the turbulent inner workings that come when one's mind isn't in a healthy space.
This applies predominantly to the band's lyricist, Tim, who in his own words, suffered a breakdown in the studio as the band were laying down tracks. "I've been suffering from anxiety pretty badly for the last five years," begins Tim.
"I came to this point where I was just like crazed, and I literally couldn't contain it. I'm not the sort of person to cry in front of his mates, but I was just like, 'Dude, I've got all of the stuff like, pent up in my head!'"
Tim asks Craig to remind him of details of the event.
"Yeah, I remember I had my back turned to Tim in the studio – which was pretty small – I've got my eyes closed listening to his vocal take, and just kind of starts sobbing and I'm like, 'Okay, do you want to roll another one?' and I sort of didn't really pick up on what was happening," Craig says.
"I turned around and [Tim] was like 'I can't do it', and we just had a bit of a cuddle and a chat, and yeah, we needed to regroup."
"It's kind of a depressing thing," Tim adds, "but now that we're through it, it's actually really awesome, it was a really good growth period for all of us and it's kind of nice to look back on and see that we're not there anymore and look at what we made out of it."
Tim describes the album as being like a photo album, the content of which he can look back at and remember how he was feeling through certain songs.
Where last year's 'Mindless Joy' album is a guy hiding and metaphorically trying to get his head around everything, 'All The Rage', Tim says, is raw and straight to the point.
"The fact I can listen to ['All The Rage'] now makes me happy because I'm not that person anymore. It's a growing period. All the lyrical themes relate to my life, it's crazy."
LOSER's new album is certainly a self-prescribed medication – they've poured it all out and it's become a tonic for recovery, one that Craig says he and the rest of the band were onboard with and benefited from.
"It was a gradual process," he says. "Had I stepped into the studio that day and Tim was fully breaking down, I think it would have been a bit more full on.
"We talk to each other every day, we're best friends, so I feel like we're emotionally connected anyway. You pick up on the signs, you chat through things. Sometimes people have just got to go through that, and this was one of those occasions."
In terms of that driving the album, Craig adds: "We've been working on these songs as a group for a couple of years some of them, so by the time it was time to lay them down and everything, the hard part was negotiating lockdown restrictions, so we could get into the studio together."
Craig and Tim produced 'All The Rage' together, marking a new feather in their common cap and adding just another notch to the bedpost of experience this release has offered. "It was so enjoyable," Tim says.
"We were holed up and did a lot of stuff over Facetime, but the hardest part was having those restrictions in place and [producing it] alone most of the time.
"Like, 'cool, we've discussed this and sent over a computer recording'; it was hard to say the least. I just craved working as a band – I could not wait to be working in the same room again."
LOSER are without question in a better place after overcoming some pretty tumultuous hurdles.
"I hope that people can relate to it when they hear it," Tim says, "that they can see in a lot of the lyrics that it's real raw and that they sing the words back.
"Even when we played our previous album launch, people were singing the words back and it was like, 'Oh, they get it'. It was amazing, there's no better feeling in the world than that.
"So to get back on stage and play that album and to have all that pent up rage that's inside and to finally get to unleash it, there's not going to be anything that feels as good."
'All The Rage' is available now.
