Track By Track: Peer inside Grenadiers' Find Something You Love And Let It Kill You

Adelaide rock'n'rollers Grenadiers unleashed their third LP late last year, and the journey to Find Something You Love And Let It Kill You's release was definitely a difficult one, just ask frontman Jesse Coulter: "At one point I wanted to call the album Dentistry because the whole thing was like pulling teeth. Like passing a kidney stone the size of a fucking basketball. But we got there. It’s done. And now we’re going to put the thing out, and that feels GOOD." And we are definitely all better for it - it's a rip snorting 10 tracks of hard and fast punk-rock, with some fist-pumping anthems to go with plenty of more introspective moments.

Tuck into it below, along with an excellent track by track offering a little more insight into the band's thought processes during the making of Find Something You Love And Let It Kill You, and catch 'em on tour at one of a heap of upcoming album launch tour dates over February/March.

DRUNK AND BROKE

The opening track on the album is called Drunk And Broke. Weirdly, it’s about being drunk and broke, which I think essentially captures the essence of being a musician. I think Henry Rollins once described touring in a DIY band as being an “avant-garde” camping trip - I feel like that sums it up pretty well. There are a lot of interesting sights, smells, people... You don’t get all the creature comforts of home and you often end up tired, drunk, uncomfortable. But you’re out there living life through a different lens, all the while sharing something intensely close to you. That’s a special thing. As the song says: “I’ve lost all my money and most of memory, and no small measure of my pride/And I know by tomorrow that I’ll feel like shit, but if that’s the fare I’ll gladly take the ride.”

SUBURBAN LIFE

Suburban Life tries to capture a kind of nostalgic picture of the Australia people of my age probably experienced growing up - lawnmowers, stubbies, muscle cars, tinnies. It’s not a piss-take or a glorification, just a snapshot of a time and place in one person’s memory (namely mine). It’s based on a riff Phil brought in, this really chuggy up-and-down thing that sounds a bit like an idling engine. So it fit in really nicely with the video we did for it, at a place called Gillman Speedway - that was a lot of fun.

GLASSES UP

To me, this one errs a bit more in the direction of that classic early 80s Australian punk/rock sound, which is something we were trying to lean towards a bit with this album. Straight-up jangly power chords, with a few different shapes and dissonant/minor notes chucked in there to give the thing a bit of pathos. Lyrically it’s about some themes that seem to pop up a lot on this record - death and drinking.

LONG WAY DOWN

This track is the closest thing we’ve ever done to a ballad, which is scary territory for a band like us. It’s not Total Eclipse Of The Heart but it’s definitely slower, cleaner and more based on emotive lyrics than anything else we’ve written. I mean it’s got a bloody cello in it.

SHORT MEMORY

Definitely the angriest song on the record, lyrically. There are just some days where you look around you, you watch the news or talk to someone at the pub, and just wonder what the fuck is going wrong. It’s more or less about how we as a species can’t seem to learn from our mistakes and have this fetish for self-destruction. Along with Long Way Down I guess it comprises the angry, more mid-paced middle section of what is otherwise a fairly upbeat album.

PANIC ATTACK

First track on side B, if you’re a vinyl aficionado. Thus named because to me it sounds like a panic attack - it comes out of nowhere, is frantic and confusing, and then is gone. It’s a bit of a favourite of mine - a lot of fun to play, full of fun little guitar lines and hectic drum fills. Not going to trouble the attention span too much.

MIDNIGHT MAN

I remember when writing the riff for this, I was going for a bit of a Hives kind of feel - I don’t know if that’s really where it ended up, but it was the initial intention. It also contains the obligatory obscene stoner rock riff - every Grenadiers album has to have at least one. That’s the part where you dig out every fuzz pedal you can find and just get silly with it.

HOLDING PATTERN

This song is about a concept which, like all concepts, we are not born with but have beaten into us over time - the idea that you have to adhere to certain societal norms and expectations. Obviously these are different from culture to culture but it typically goes something like car/house/marriage/mortgage/2.6 kids etc etc. All those things are great if they’re what you actually want, but I think a lot of people get trapped by them and end up looking in the mirror and not recognising who they see. People get to a point where “remember when” becomes the framework of all conversation because they’re not creating any new experiences worth remembering. I think that sucks, so I wrote a song about it. So there.

LIVE FAST, DIABETES

In my weird, roundabout way, this is a song about social media. It’s a weird dichotomy - people are more connected than ever, yet somehow it seems to drive a wedge between folks based on petty rubbish. I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said a million times, so I was just trying to say it with a different metaphor - in the same way that too much sugar can hurt your body’s ability to regulate insulin levels, overexposure to social media and instant gratification stunts your ability to maintain healthy social relationships.

RAMONA

Last track on the album, and definitely the one we went the most crazy with. It’s kind of a bizarre song - it jumps from a verse based on kind of breakbeat, to a fuzzed-out filthy pre-chorus, into a sweet 60s pop chorus, and finishing with a big overblown kind of Hawaiian-sounding outro. It’s schizophrenic but it works. We brought in some friends with sweet voices to layer it with harmonies, pedal steel guitar, keys... Just went to town. It wraps up the album on an unexpected note, which I think is appropriate for this record!

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