Dishy
Dishy is our answer to the great Aussie rock anthem. It was written during one of the long nights I (Eliot) spent working as a glassy, at The Irish, a classic Toowoomba pub, which is actually the pub you see on the album cover.
The track captures the dissonance between youthful dreams and the sobering weight of the late nights where everyone is having a good time but you.
It’s about chasing ambition while feeling stuck at the bottom of the barrel, something I think many people from small towns would relate to.
As the opener, it sets the tone for the record and is a soundtrack to the mental battles that linger under everyday life.
My Best Friend
Our first single of the project, and still one of the most emotionally heavy (don’t let the music video fool you). It’s about love and loss.
Not the romantic kind, but the pain of watching someone you care about slowly slip away.
You’re close enough to see it happening, but no matter how much you try, you can’t stop it.
It speaks of that helpless feeling when someone you love is spiralling out of control and the glimpse of hope that somehow, they’ll come back.
It’s a grief you carry while they’re still there, but things are not not the same.
Steer
A recurring theme in our music is longing for change.
Steer is all about dreaming of a better life. Escaping old habits, picking up the pace, and steering yourself into a future where you feel proud of who you are and what you’ve achieved.
The four of us grew up in Toowoomba, so there’s always been this urge to keep moving forward and to chase something further than the Garden City.
For me, this song lives in a space between restlessness and reinvention.
For those that have seen us live, this is also the track that we find out who’s from Toowoomba and joke about leaving it.
The Flame In Us
The Flame In Us is one of our most exposed tracks. It’s about the sudden, overwhelming grip of anxiety.
The feeling of being hit with a wave of panic that disconnects you from yourself and everything around you.
It explores the feeling of being trapped in your own mind, unsure of how to ask for space.
At its core, it’s about holding your breath in the middle of the chaos,
and desperately needing a moment to feel human again.
A Story of Bottles, Numbers & Anxiety
This song was jokingly called Mathrock throughout production, even though it contains none of the usual math rock tropes.
The final title comes from the heart of what it’s really about: perfectionism, anxiety and the slow, numbing pressure of never feeling good enough.
It’s a song for anyone stuck inside their own head, measuring their worth by impossible standards.
A Very Cardboard Interlude
We think this track should be the new Centrelink hold music.
Carry On
This one’s the oldest song on the album, written back in 2018. It’s about the quiet strength of friendship and having people stick with you through the mess.
It was written after a particularly rough breakup on a very cold Toowoomba night.
Just as there was a parting of ways, Australia’s most beloved Angel Flight ad came on the tele, and the bittersweet nostalgia of that moment shaped the whole mood of the song.
Obviously this is an incredible niche thing, but those niche things can become key moments that shape you as a person.
It’s a reminder that even when you’re falling apart, the people close to you are there to help carry you when you can’t carry yourself.
Ask Around
Easily the heaviest song on the record and the one we’ve ended shows with for years. It’s about the aftermath of a breakup, not just between two people, but the way it spreads.
Suddenly everyone has questions. Friends, strangers, people who were never involved now feel entitled to your pain, which lends to the name of the song.
The track is raw and aggressive because that frustration piles up. Losing someone is hard enough, having to explain it over and over is a different kind of grief.
Clear My Head
Clear My Head, despite it being such a singalong moment, is a song about being caught in nostalgia but needing to move on.
You can’t stay there forever, but you find comfort and the thought of moving on is paralysing.
The track itself tries to capture how moments like that can feel like they last a lifetime but are over in an instant in the grand scheme of things.
Better Voice
The final track of the album, this one’s about the helplessness of trying to support someone who doesn’t want, or can’t accept help.
That ache of wanting to fix things with a single sentence but knowing no words you say will ever be enough, you start to quietly wish for a better voice, one that knows the right thing to say.
A voice that could cut through the noise and reach them.
It’s one of the most vulnerable moments on the album and maybe the most relatable.
We feel it rounds out the track list well and speaks to the overall ethos of the album, as having that better voice always seems it can fix any situation.
