The Stress Of Leisure's Ian Powne has been paying attention to the discourse around Moo Deng, the baby pygmy hippo from Thailand that's become a viral internet sensation.
"We live in a time when resentment and outrage is constantly amplified," Ian says. "There's this conflict that's going on, and it can be as ridiculous as, 'this hippo is better than this hippo'. We'd probably look at this concept like comparing this baby hippo to this baby hippo and the absurdity of that online, and it could be a Stress Of Leisure song."While the attention has been on hippos, the Brisbane art rockers are taking back the spotlight. The band have released their eighth album, 'It Goes Away With The Heat', chronicling modern life's absurdities over jittery grooves. The band recorded their previous album, 'Faux Wave', with producer John Lee (Mod Con, Laura Jean, Blake Scott) at Phaedra Studios in Melbourne.
However, that recording took place in February 2020, right before COVID shut the world down. Between the recording sessions and that album's release, TSOL had already began working on more material. "During the pandemic, we rehearsed a lot, so we had heaps of ideas – over 50 ideas, easily," Ian says.
"I think it was the end of 2022 we booked [time at Phaedra Studios with John for July 2023], so we knew we had so many months to get an album together from what we'd been doing. The day we booked, we had enough of a document that we knew we could come up with more songs before the date.
"I think bands have to have creative goals and missions to stay alive, essentially. In a band, if you let things slide for too long and you don't have a mission, things can just dissolve. That's why we set a deadline to do the album and get it done."
'It Goes Away With The Heat' sees the band tackling a number of absurd scenarios in a way only they can. For example, the album's title unites the concept of Brisbane's tropical climate with former-President Donald Trump's suggestion for killing the COVID virus (during the same press conference he suggested bleach as a cure).
Another scenario appears in the album's ear worm lead single, 'Man Who Makes A Racist Comment', featuring the chorus: "Man who makes a racist comment objects to being called racist."
"It's uncomfortably real, that title and situation," Ian says. "Our songs on this album, as always, are observational, even in the titles of the songs. These weird titles in the context of social media and describing the state of the world. I started with that title as a newspaper headline, so you read it as something from the fourth estate and you unpack it to the micro of what you live, maybe at Christmas time."
The new album features a first for The Stress Of Leisure: a cover. The band have recorded a disco-fied take on REM's classic song 'The One I Love'. "It's a song we've had in our arsenal the whole time," he says. "It's a sociopathic song; it'S a song about treating someone as a prop.
"We've come to the concept that if we were going to do a cover, we want to totally deconstruct it and remake it in a different form. The bassline is what particularly stands out for me in our cover and how it moves."
Soon, The Stress Of Leisure will be taking their new album on tour. The band are joining Custard and Fauves – both of whom are releasing new albums – on the road at the end of the year, a line-up curated by the three bands' shared manager, Brisbane music impresario Paul Curtis.
"We share a lot of simpatico with Custard and Fauves," Ian says. "Paul tells me that if you take all three albums together there's overlapping themes with each release. I think we share a similar humour.
"Both Custard and Fauves write lyrics that make me laugh. I don't know if we do the same with them, but when I listen to their songs they make me smile or laugh. I think that's what we share: similar sensibilities."
'It Goes Away With The Heat' is out now.
The Stress Of Leisure with Custard 2024 Tour Dates
Sat 9 Nov - Crowbar (Sydney)Fri 15 Nov - Republic Cafe (Hobart)
Sat 16 Nov - The Gov (Adelaide)
Fri 22 Nov - The Prince (Melbourne)
Sat 23 Nov - Live At The Bundy (Gippsland)
Sun 24 Nov - Theatre Royal (Castlemaine)
Fri 20 Dec - Miami Marketta (Gold Coast)
Sat 21 Dec - The Princess Theatre (Brisbane)
