To celebrate the release of their new album, 'Endless Motion', Aussie legends Press Club take us through the inspiration and creation of each track.
Eugene was one of the few songs on the album we were able to do together in a room. Perhaps because of the fact that we were able to go back to our old way of writing songs after lockdown, Eugene comes across as fairly nostalgic. Lyrically it began as a bit of a throwaway joke, but as we became more invested in the song, the words started taking on a much deeper meaning.
Coward Street began its life as a completely different song. We all felt like the lyrics were really good, but the music wasn’t matching their intensity. It’s one of those situations where we either had to rework the song or scrap it completely. There’s no guarantee when re-doing tracks that they’ll be any better after some massaging. Thankfully we felt like this one came out pretty shiny.
Untitled Wildlife was written during the 2020 bushfires. They were completely devastating to the ecosystem across much of rural Australia. Probably due to that, Untitled Wildlife has a really subdued feel to it compared to songs we’ve done in the past.
We wrote Glasgow all the way back in 2019. When we were still going to places like Scotland regularly. We’d had a couple of incredible gigs around Glasgow, but Nat had woken in the morning with crazy anxiety. A couple hours later, we got a phone call from her folks that her dog had been hit by a car and had had to have his eye out. Needless to say, it was a bad morning.
Sometimes songs get written pretty much completely in one session, Endless Motion was definitely one of those. All the lyrics and music came together at the end of a long and frustrating songwriting session. Nat wrote the guitar part, and it has a really angular but wicked structure.
We consciously tried to explore some different approaches to songwriting on this album, and Cancelled is a result of some heavy experimentation. It’s a lot more aggressive and to the point than our normal sound. While we usually try to stay away from literal or autobiographical lyrics, they seemed to fit well on this track.
With Lifelines, we tried to fit together a lot of disjointed parts. It was written during the height of lockdown, so it’s certainly the case that we couldn’t be in the same room when writing. We had to almost finish the song in retrospect after we were allowed back out.
While we did try to move away from some of our earlier songwriting tropes, sometimes a song is just too good to put down. Afraid Of Everything is probably the most similar to some of our earlier work, but it’s not really a rehash. The song is about someone we know going through a tough time, which is another thing that we’ve probably covered in other songs, but that’s cool.
We had a lot of debate as to whether I Can Change should even be on the album. It was a question as to whether the song was the kind of direction we wanted the band to be moving towards. Ultimately the song is an absolute banger, and I don’t think anyone has any regrets about including it in the album.
Due to a lack of inspiration, and an incredibly rigid self-imposed writing regime, we all were looking for alternative ways of writing songs. Nat wrote Less These Days word for word after a particularly vivid dream. We’ve always had a hard time coming up with good bridges for songs, but this one might be one of our proudest achievements in that department.
14th October - UOW, Wollongong
15th October - Crowbar, Sydney
20th October - The Zoo, Brisbane
21st October - Brunswick Ballroom, Melbourne
22nd October - Singing Bird, Frankston (All Ages)
Tickets can be purchased here