Finding light in the darkness.
For Sydney-based rock outfit July Morning, music is a vehicle for introspection and a conduit for confronting life’s most difficult questions.
Drawing from a rich tapestry of psychedelia, prog, and folk, the band is preparing to unveil their deeply personal debut album, The Colours of Darkness, this April.
Following the release of its haunting title track, a raw and unfiltered account of battling major depressive disorder, the band sits down with us to discuss the stories behind the songs.
In this exclusive interview, lead vocalist Jesse delves into the profound purpose behind their music, the invaluable guidance of producer Phan Sjarif, and why their upcoming album feels like both a cathartic culmination and the beginning of an ambitious new chapter.
As they prepare for a string of live dates across NSW, July Morning proves they possess something truly rare in today’s musical landscape: undeniable purpose.
HAPPY: What’d you get up to today?
JULY MORNING: Pretending to do some work while I tell the world about our brand new single!
HAPPY: Tell us a little about where you’re from, and what you love about it!
JULY MORNING: I was born and bred in Sydney, and have lived all over it through my life. I think Sydney is the most naturally beautiful city I’ve ever visited, to the extent where I don’t think any of us Sydneysiders are worthy of it.
HAPPY: As the title track, how does ‘The Colours of Darkness’ serve as an entry point for what people can expect from the rest of the debut album?
JULY MORNING: The album is about isolation, desperation, and striving for peace in a modern world that is hostile in so many ways. It’s a difficult time to exist in that world that we share, and that can make us question our existence.
The title track is about that questioning: Why am I here? What is the intention of struggling over and over again in all the ways that we made to? And do we have to be here? What compels us to continue struggling? Do we owe anyone our continued existence?
The song brings up these confronting ideas, and those ideas form one of the many threads weaving the album together.
HAPPY: What did producer Phan Sjarif bring to the project that helped you capture the sound you were after?
JULY MORNING: Phan is excellent at providing a framework within which to indulge our creative whims and excursions: a sizeable place for us to play in but with sensible boundaries to make sure we focus on an end point, and actually produce something.
The creative process is in itself fulfilling, but we want to share our music with the world, so that means calling an end to the process at some point.
Time and time again he also brought ideas that enriched a song at the right point in just the right way, like the filtered vocal effect in the second verse of “Colours”, which was subtle but important in carrying a long and ambitious song through to its ending.
HAPPY: After building up to it with singles, does releasing your debut album feel like a culmination or the start of a new chapter?
JULY MORNING: Right now it feels like a culmination of all the work we’ve done in writing, rehearsing, recording and mixing the album, and I think it will continue to feel that way for a little while even after the album comes out.
It’s a culmination of a lot of personal experiences, relationships, and events our band has had, so there will be a collective cathartic and metaphoric ‘breath’ when the album is out.
But I expect that will change soon enough after the release, and it will then begin to feel like a new chapter: the process of creating it was born from desires to share a message with anyone who’ll listen, but it awakened vast ambitions within us, and those won’t be contained or fulfilled by this album alone.
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HAPPY: One review said you have “something rarer than hype: purpose.” What would you say is the core purpose of July Morning?
JULY MORNING: It’s to simultaneously welcome and challenge our audience. We want to create music that balances the visceral with the cerebral.
If we write, record and play a song that grips someone emotionally and yet through its lyrics, its structure, its experimentation can make them question or reflect on themselves, others and the world around them, well… then we’ve achieved our purpose.
HAPPY: If ‘The Colours of Darkness’ had a smell, what would it be? Rain on concrete? Old vinyl? Something else entirely?
JULY MORNING: It could be any smell to anyone, pleasant or unpleasant, but in a forever diminishing amount. It could be a hint–and nothing more–of any smell that one cherishes or finds comfort in; it could be a smell you hate, fading away.
The song is about the absence of sense, brought on by dissociation and desperation.
HAPPY: What are your hopes for how this album connects with people, especially those facing similar battles?
JULY MORNING: The process of making this album, from writing lyrics and putting chords together through to listening to the final masters, was for me synonymous with working through various bouts of grief, confusion, isolation and despair, striving to find answers to my life.
I hope that anyone listening to this album can hear that, can recognise it, and in some way to relate to it.
JULY MORNING: I think the old hippie dream that music could save the world has proven to be just that, a dream, and so it would be catastrophically egotistical of me to presume listening to this album will remove anyone’s woes–but I do hope that those who have struggled or are struggling with their own darkness, that they find some source of light, however brief, in listening.
HAPPY: What’s next on the horizon for July Morning after the album launch and these live dates?
JULY MORNING: We have a whole wealth of material to work on–demos of various bits and pieces of songs, chords progressions, piano parts, and lyrical ideas are floating around and pine for our attention, so I think we’ll keep working for this content-hungry world.
We’d also like to keep playing live, as broadly as we can find our audience, and support the live music scene however we are able to do so.
HAPPY: Lastly, what makes you happy?
JULY MORNING: If people pre-order our album and come to our shows!
