Premiere: Children Collide unveil their new single/video Uh Oh, announce new album

Header image by Jordan Drysdale.

With a discography spanning over 15 years and numerous award nominations, Melbourne-based trio Children Collide no longer need an introduction. The three-piece - composed of Johnny Mackay, Ryan Caesar and Chelsea Wheatley - are synonymous with the heights of Big Day Out-era Australian rock, and unlike many others from that period, they've grown and evolved themselves enough to ensure their status remains, with forward-thinking approaches to their distinctive sound maintaining their legacy decades later.

This year, however, there's a strong chance that we're going to see this continued sense of evolution play out on its most potent - and obvious - scale to-date. After seven-odd years of quietness, the group returned in 2019 with a new single titled Aurora, which they've since followed up with two more bursts of that unique, Children Collide charm: Funeral For A Ghost last year, and then Trampoline back in February this year (the latter before their return to the festival circuit, as a part of Yours & Owls Festival).

Today, we're incredibly privileged to announce yet another chapter in the Children Collide story via their latest single Uh Oh, and furthermore, announce that their first album in a near-decade will arrive in the form of Time Itself, scheduled for release on August 27th via Spinning Top Records.

Uh Oh - the new single - is first up, and it welcomes the anthemic alt-rock sound Children Collide have helped pioneer in Australia, centring itself on these cut-throat guitar riffs that dance around commanding vocals and a generally quite dominative presence that - all together - showcase a bit of a heavier side to the Children Collide sound. "Ryan and I were walking around a park in Melbourne early 2019 discussing immediate chord progressions that happen in classic rock songs when he said, ‘I think I have something actually.’ The next day he sent me the main riff of Uh Oh,” says frontman Johnny Mackay.  “Aside from the obvious Blur/White Stripes thing it has going on, there are nods to The Stooges, GOD, Prince and even our mates Pond buried in there.  My favourite part is getting to sing the line ‘Like an emu scratching round in the outback of my mind.’”

The single arrives with an official video clip too, directed by the band's recently-joining bassist Chelsea Wheatley in a testament to their long-winding DIY spirit. "My aim in conceptualising the video was to serve up both the silliness and the seriousness of the song on one (stylish, trippy lookin') plate," she says. "With the help of geniuses Kirsty Barros the stylist, Babi Bertoldi the DP and Sarah Jessica Carpark the art stylist, I was able to bring this fantasy to fruition.

Then, there's the news of what's coming next. As mentioned, Uh Oh is a new taste of the band's forthcoming fourth album Time Itself, which with its arrival this August, will be the first Children Collide record in nine years (!). Recorded by Loren Humphrey at Diamond Mine & Stockholm Syndrome in New York City, the album is bound to further the wide-ranging versatility of Children Collide, and showcase how they're able to adapt and further themselves and their sound to maintain the spirit of Children Collide all this time later.

There'll be more news on the album coming shortly, but in the meantime, take a dive into Uh Oh and its video clip as it premieres on Pilerats below, and while you wait for the release of their new album this August, grab tickets to their forthcoming national tour - more information and tickets here.

Tour Dates: 

Thursday 27 May | Mo’s Clubhouse, Gold Coast QLD
Friday 28 May | Solbar, Maroochydore QLD
Saturday 29 May | Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane QLD 
Sunday 20 June | The Northern, Byron Bay NSW
Wednesday 23 June | Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW
Friday 25 June | La La La’s, Wollongong NSW
Saturday 26 June | The Basement, Canberra ACT

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