When Perth-based trio Emberville dropped their new video for whatsthepointanymore earlier this month, we weren’t quite sure how to feel. Scared? Excited? Both?
The track and its accompanying video are unlike anything you’ve seen or heard before. So, we caught up with the band to chat about how the song came together, blending genres, and what the future holds.
Fresh off the release of their new single whatsthepointanymore, we caught up with Perth-based outfit Emberville for a chat.
HAPPY: Hey, how’s it going? What are you up to at the moment?
STEVIE: Things are going alright looking forward to spending my Saturday night in drinking coffee, working on some new music and putting some more hours into Fallout 76 on my PS4.
HAPPY: We’re loving whatsthepointanymore! How does it feel having the track out there in the world?
STEVIE: We spend about 10 million years working on every song and video we release so it feels amazing, it’s a super weird feeling spending so much time on a track to then put it out there having other people listen to it and for them to message us and actually completely understand exactly the message that we’re trying to get across.
HAPPY: Could you tell us a bit about the track?
DANIEL: Basically WTPA is a message we wrote to ourselves, about the past, present and future of Emberville, balancing a musical lifestyle with “real life” and yeah at times it’s really fucking difficult. We’ve been doing this a while and have gone through a lot of shit collectively as a band. To be completely honest, the lyrics of whatsthepointanymore are mostly super negative, they were written at a dark time and a time where we were extremely unsure what we were actually going to do but if you listen closely in the second verse you’ll find the track is really about keeping your head up and persevering through all the bullshit, yeah times are tough, yeah it’s hard. But keep doing you.
HAPPY: The video is nuts too! Could you walk us through how this all came together?
STEVIE: We filmed the video on a Wednesday night around numerous locations in Fremantle with our friend James. I felt it was important to pick out eerie locations that matched the vibe of the song. The scene in the carpark was fun. We borrowed my step dad’s valiant, then we snuck into this creepy tunnel near the beach and filmed the performance scenes and the gun scenes. Regularly joined by some random Fremantle locals who enjoyed making sure we filmed into the early hours of the morning. Luckily nobody called the police and reported four guys loitering in a tunnel at midnight with a toy handgun.
HAPPY: You guys have changed your genre quite significantly from past releases. Why go down this new route?
DANIEL: Our bass player and drummer bailed so that changed the entire dynamic of the band. We just really wanted to change it up, keep it interesting, for ourselves. None of us really listen to the same music we listened to 3 years ago, when we were doing the rounds. And yeah… the whole, “name change” thing was put on the table a number of times, 2/3 of us made the deciding factor to keep the name, but we all agreed that at the end of the day, yeah… we’re a lot different to the band we were in 2011, but why should that mean we change our name? like I’m not the same person I was in 2011, but my names still Daniel. we’re constantly growing, maturing, and changing but we’re still Emberville. We want you to remember where we were and what we’ve become. We aren’t a post-hardcore band anymore, that was fun but we’ve put that to bed. We still have that same eerie, minor scale vibe we’ve always had but we’ve just taken it somewhere new.
HAPPY: Do you find there are any significant differences in writing between the two genres?
DANIEL: Massively. A 2013 Emberville writing session consisted of us sitting in a group, guitars in hand, jamming out a riff, then building on that, with drums, bass, vocals until it formed into a full song we were happy to demo, then hopefully take into the studio. 2019, now we mainly produce our own beats. Stevie and Aaron work on FL studios and I work on Ableton, we basically just create stuff in our own labs, then when we get together, show each other our beats, and whatever sticks out. We work on together and turn into a full song, also lyrics previously were 100% written by myself. Now we write lyrics as a group.
HAPPY: There are obviously a lot of sounds being thrown around in your music. Are there any particular artists you’re currently getting inspiration from?
STEVIE: There are artists such as Scarxlrd, Nothing Nowhere and Token that mash genres together and make me excited to play music in general. From a production standpoint, anything Pharrell Williams, Mike Shinoda or Kanye is always cutting edge. I also really enjoyed XXX Tentacion’s 17 album when that came out. I thought it was great to see an artist of that genre take mental health that seriously. Dan’s also been putting a lot of Rezz and 1788-L style bass music in his production so mixing that with the hip hop vibe we’ve taken on is going to be super interesting.
HAPPY: What’s next for Emberville? Any other exciting plans in the works?
DANIEL: A lot more songs and a further evolution of our sound, we’re just going to keep pushing ourselves to create something nobody has really ever heard before. That’s really the end goal here. We’ve got about 10 tracks we’re constantly mothering to become some sort of mutant genre you didn’t know even existed. Shit’s going to get weird man, real weird.
whatsthepointanymore is available now. Watch the new video above.
