Lucky for us earthlings, Barefoot Spacemen have sent a rocket ship containing their newest single Runaway straight from their home planet and right down to us.
The release comes days ahead of a Summer tour that starts at Bar Open in Melbourne on December 3.
Barefoot Spacemen’s new single Runaway arcs beyond all expectations from a band whose genre combines the diverse sounds of surf and garage rock.
Although they’ve only been navigating their sound waves together for a few years, the paramount characteristic of Barefoot Spacemen is that they maintain the refreshing aspects of surf music while adding their own exotic twist.
Their newest single Runaway will get your head bopping and your arms doing that weird, snorkelling dance move – it’s fun and funky. It harmoniously assembles the reverb of electric guitars with classic surf-rock plucking to embellish the sound of rolling waves.
The sandy vocals of Aaron Cutter over the quick percussive tempo by Harry Rimmer brings the vibes of garage-rock while a cracking guitar solo cuts in at the exact moment you need it to. According to guitarist Scott Renton, recording their EP with producer and “all round hero” Chris Bellman was akin to “every band’s dream.”
“Runaway is cool because we all contributed to it. James and I came up with a riff and some chords, Jono and Harry did their thing on bass and drums, and Aaron wrote some lyrics about driving, even though he hasn’t got his license, which is sorta funny,” Renton says.
Although Runaway is marvellously coastal, before you assume Barefoot Spacemen are all about beachy tunes dip yours ears into another epic single named Seasonal Blues to experience another aspect of their unique sound. Here, a bluesy tone is held together by the interplay of guitar jams and a musky harmonica by Renton.
“When we started out, we didn’t want to lock ourselves into one genre, we just wrote what felt cool and over time people started saying, ‘you guys are really surfy,’ and our style started heading naturally in that direction. We tend to be quite riff-heavy with a lot of the stuff we write so that contributed to it,” Renton says.
Although Renton facetiously says “None of us live near the beach, and I’m pretty sure none of us can surf, so we’re kinda posers in a way,” they are far from faking it. Alongside Cutter, Renton and Rimmer are Jono Tsatas slapping bass and James Newman killing it on rhythm guitar. Together, Barefoot Spacemen are a band you must tune in to.
You can expect gigs to be rolling on into the New Year. On projects for 2017, Renton says:
“We’re launching our EP early next year, and we’ve been working on some new stuff that plays around with a few different styles, but we’re staying true to the surfy niche we seem to have worked ourselves into. Hopefully by the end of next year we’re cool enough to get onto a few festival spots and we’re ready to record an album, which we’ve been dying to get done.”
Get the good vibes flowing by catching them live right on their first gig at Open Bar in Brunswick, Melbourne. The super line-up is one you won’t want to miss, with Birdhouse, Dozeys and Hurlin’ Up Limbs jumping on support.
