The Preatures return with their sophomore record ‘Girlhood’, an album that’s being hailed as courageous for its exploration of modern femininity in addition to the direction it’s taken the band.
The follow up to their ARIA-nominated 2014 debut album ‘Blue Planet Eyes’, ‘Girlhood’ has been largely crafted around the experiences of vocalist Izzi Manfredi, as guitarist Jack Moffitt explains.
“That’s definitely a large part of the story of this record,” Jack says, “and I think for both Izzi and I it was about exploring harmony in the contrasts that we share daily being a man and a woman in a band together, creating together and trying to tell that story.
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“Ultimately it’s a Preatures record because we are that band and it was a really interesting process to go through as a group to learn what’s at the heart of what we share together, which is a unique thing when you get to face it for yourself.”
While lyrically and thematically driven by Izzi, ‘Girlhood’ sees Jack take a commanding role in the production of the record, working with Burke Reid, among others, to achieve the specific sound he wanted for the record.
“I produced and engineered this record, and I had some help at the very beginning for a couple of weeks from Burke Reid, which was amazing and he really helped get a lot of the songs into shape with us and set us on a path to working out what is the album we’ve made now,” Jack says.
“One of the things that I tried to do was keep a certain consistency across this record that I didn’t feel like we’ve had. I think that is the result of me wanting to elevate myself as a producer and as a guitar player, and as a writer and as a partner.”
With the album released this month, The Preatures are currently preparing for their national tour for ‘Girlhood’, which will have them on the road for most of September.
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Jack says he’s particularly excited about the prospect of having a larger pool of songs to choose from for the setlist. “We have two records worth of stuff to play and it feels really exciting to have a catalogue,” he says, “like, ‘hmm, what are we going to shop for today for this set?’.
“With this tour it will definitely be a focus on the [new] record, but we’ll also play stuff from the other record because I think there’s a very strong through-line; ultimately they’re all our songs and it makes up everything we are, so it would be silly not to play some of them.”
Not concerned with following up the unexpected success of ‘Blue Planet Eyes’, Jack is immensely proud of the new album. “With this record, really honestly I think it’s better than the last record,” he says, “because it’s truer and I’m extremely proud of it and I hope it finds people with that intention. Even if it’s only a handful of people, it’s still a win.”
The Preatures Shows
Fri 1 Sep - The Forum (Melbourne)Sat 2 Sep - Enmore Theatre (Sydney)
Thu 14 Sep - Spiegeltent @ Brisbane Festival
Fri 22 Sep - HQ (Adelaide)
Sat 23 Sep - The Capitol (Perth)
Sat 14 Oct - Red Deer Music & Arts Festival (Brisbane)
