Join us as we deep dive into Garage Noise’s fresh new EP release “Innocent Scenes.”
Garage Noise has just unleashed their latest EP “Innocent Scenes.” Throughout this sonic gem, the band effortlessly navigates the musical spectrum, seamlessly transitioning from infectious pop-punk anthems to heartfelt acoustic ballads.
Taking a little break from their musical journey, Garage Noise invites us to delve into the details of “Innocent Scenes” through a track-by-track breakdown.
Join us as we peel back the layers of “Innocent Scenes” and get a peek into the birthplaces of each melody and the stories that inspired them. From the upbeat “Edgewood Drive” to the lockdown-born resilience of “Jamie” and the punkish positivity in “Scars,” Garage Noise generously walks us through their creative process.
This EP is really special to all four of us. The songs are really personal and we’ve all attached our own meaning to each of them. It’s the sort of music that we never thought we’d make and we really love it because of that.
Innocent Scenes feels like a whole uniform body of work that shows everything we can do and in the process of writing all the songs on it, we were really able to grow as musicians.
We hope that everyone who listens to it loves it as much as we do and can feel the emotion in every song.
Track by Track Descriptions
Edgewood Drive
‘Edgewood Drive’ is an upbeat, guitar driven song that manifested from a culmination of Zac and Sam’s lyrical and melodic experience.
It is about thinking that you will never be able to get over someone you’re so in love with because they have been everything to you for so long.
The title ‘Edgewood Drive’ is a street in Stanhope Gardens which is somewhere really central to where we all grew up and went to school and is important for our childhoods and the origins of the band.
In the bridge Zac and Flynn sing about ‘South Road’ in Adelaide where Zac often goes to visit his family and reflect on life.
It is probably our most pop-punk song yet, with major influence from Modern Baseball, Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy. It is collectively one of our favourite originals and was a real turning point for us in finding our sound.
Jamie
Jamie actually has a really interesting backstory, as it was written entirely during the 2021 Covid Lockdown.
We tried to call each other each week to do a bit of writing with the unrealistic goal of writing a stack of songs but only actually got Jamie done.
Bella got the opening line from staring at the Green Day ‘American Idiot’ album cover for months and the idea of a heart for a hand grenade fit so well with the resentful vibe of the song.
The melody of the verses are very much inspired by 5 Seconds of Summer’s song ‘Disconnected’.
We’ve played it live a number of times and it is definitely one of those songs that gets the audience jumping and getting into it with us.
One of the crowd favourites is the line “Letters in my drawer, the ink is fading.” Most people sing this over the main melody and Flynn and Bella who aren’t singing always have a little laugh to see that something we just threw in at the end has ended up being so popular.
Scars
Scars was written about some friends who we could see changed each others’ lives as a result of being together.
It has a real sweetness to the lyrics but is a total juxtaposition to the punk, overdriven guitars.
Scars is actually Flynn’s favourite song on the EP. He loves it cause he said he gets to pretend to be Dave Grohl for five minutes.
It definitely has a real 90’s rock, midwest emo, Nirvana mixed with Modern Baseball sound to it. Because it was so different to what we had previously written, some of us thought it wasn’t quite ready for the ep, but with Connor Massey’s recording and production visions he helped make it one of our collective favourites.
The guitars have a heaviness to them that we really experimented with in the studio on this one, and it really comes through in Sam’s guitar solo in the middle.
Bella thought Sam’s solo had a real Red Hot Chilli Peppers vibe as it emphasises melody. It just helped us create this really unique sound that we actually hadn’t achieved before.
Silhouettes
Silhouettes holds a special place in all of our hearts as it was the first song we wrote together as a band.
Silhouettes came from a place of reminiscence of a past relationship and being fed up with being alone.
We got fairly experimental with the re-recording of this one, as we added in a guitar e-bow, an electric violin, piano, a hollow body electric guitar and cymbal rolls.
The song is written in alternative tuning on the acoustic guitar which was inspired by the Goo Goo Dolls, and this as well as the inclusion of a solo violin is what really sets Silhouettes apart from the other tracks on the EP, and sets us apart from other bands in our genre.
The lyrics came really naturally to Zac and Sam; Sam said that he woke up at 11 one night and was thinking about a situation where he could’ve done so much more to fix or change the outcome, and he just wrote it into lyrics.
When we worked with Connor, he had some great ideas that really lifted this song.
The combination of droning on the e-bow and electric violin gave the song a real Cigarettes After Sex, dream pop vibe, and the reverbed vocals, Flynn’s hollow body guitar line, and Bella’s violin work in tandem as a polyrhythmic melody.
We were super happy with how this song turned out and it has really matured over the last few years since we first wrote it.
Make It All Better
Make it all better was the song we wrote the quickest and one that just got so much better with time.
The first verse is written as a love letter to someone that has really changed another person’s life; it’s as if all the problems just dissipate when you’re with this person.
Sam had shown us the chorus he had written and we all finished the rest of the song that night in 45 minutes.
We were all on random instruments and basically came up with the raw ideas for each others’ parts; Bella was on the drums and Flynn, Sam and Zac were on guitars.
Sam tells everyone all the time that it’s his favourite song on the EP; it just means something different and really special to all of us.
Flynn said that this song was “a lot of fun to come up with” as he was keen to be conservative with it.
Bella added a violin quartet to this song as well and having it in there lifted the song heaps.
Having Connor in the studio pushing us to do more and try different things was when we realised we had something really special.
These Days
This song is just the perfect way to round out the ep. It was one of the first songs we wrote and was something we tried to get really creative with.
Sam sent us the opening riff and straight away Bella said “I’m imagining big guitars and lots of reverb” and that’s exactly what we got.
The half time sections were really fun to come up with, it took a lot of practice to get right, but once we played the track right through the first time we knew we had something great.
Zac’s second verse guitar lick is heavily inspired by The Edge from U2 and Tom
DeLonge from Blink-182 as the dotted eighth delay on it is pretty unique and just adds to the reminiscence that the track is about.
The outro was the best part to put together in the studio; we played through all our main parts and Bella said “I’m just worried the end drags a bit”, and Sam suggested to add a guitar harmony to further develop the outro so Massey turned and said “Flynn jump on the guitar and play this” and the harmony at the end just tied everything together perfectly.
It’s one of our favourite parts of the song.
