Track by Track: The Ocean Party

‘Soft Focus’ is The Ocean Party’s fourth album in around two years. Songwriter-vocalists LACHLAN DENTON, ZAC DENTON, LIAM HALLIWELL, JORDAN THOMPSON and CURTIS WAKELING take us through it.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

‘Went Out’

Lachlan: I wrote this song about my tendency to internalise how I’m feeling, both for better and for worse. The Ocean Party tours a lot and it might partly be because I for one like being on the road – it suits me to have a mild distraction of things passing by but still being able to process your thoughts. I also wanted to write a driving, highway rock song. Not sure if I achieved that.

‘Wading In’

Zac: Our parents bought a pub when we were in primary school. In doing so, we took on a “groundskeeper” named Max. Max was an alcoholic who had lost his job at a wood mill and now lived for free at the pub in return for doing maintenance. Max’s alcoholism slowly became worse and he became less active. At the same time he became part of our family. This song is about him.

‘Sharps and Taylors’

Jordan: This was always meant to be a very simple song: simple structure and simple chord changes. The focus was on the vocal melody while writing the demo. Once it was brought to the band, each instrument really ornamented that, so there is a very strong mood to this one.

Sharps and Taylors Road is a road that we pass on the way out of Melbourne. It’s a strange name. I don’t know why it inspired this voyeuristic story about a boy sneaking around in the night, but it did. The music really evokes the night time to me and that’s what the words are about. Some nights you feel like you might never need to sleep, like you might have another day’s worth of hours to use in privacy.

‘Head Down’

Lachlan: I grew up in far more of a sporting family than a musical one. As much as my family have been supportive, there have definitely been times of doubt and perhaps disappointment with my decisions to pursue music. ‘Head Down’ is me trying to rationalise my thoughts about that, I guess. Liam rips a great sax solo at the end that makes the song.

‘Bed as a Grave’

Curtis: The lyrics to this song are mostly inspired by mood swings and wanting to be alone, though also about being down due to being lonely. Most of the music was written before we started working on this album but was refined during the writing of this album. Jordan wrote the [synth] string part, which suits the melancholy mood perfectly. Having Ashley [Bundang] do another vocal part helped lift the mood of the song.

‘Floodlights’

Liam: ‘Floodlights’ is sort of the come-down sequel to ‘Deluded’, a track from side B, lyrically, and really different musically and in its mood. It came about really quickly – myself, Lachlan and Jordan jammed out the structure and a demo recording in our lounge room one afternoon. The drums were tracked in one take, with a few happy accidents, and once Curtis put down the lead harmonica part in the instrumental parts, the expansive, lush but sort of lonely vibe of the song was really clear.

I’ve never written a song about unrequited love so I convinced myself that I fell in love-at-first-sight with someone that I met for five minutes at The Tote whose real name I didn’t get but enough clues to find them on Facebook. As well as that (or because of that) it’s a classic who-am-I?/what-have-I-become?/what-am-I-doing-with-my-life? song.

‘Charters Towers’

Jordan: This song began with the string melody; everything stems from there. The original demo had a higher tempo and 12-string providing the accompaniment – it was undeniably “Triffids-y.” The more we developed it as a band, it lost some of that, but I think the influence is still somewhere in there.

Lyrically the song came off the back of our tour up to Queensland. We stopped through a lot of small towns on our way up and back, and each glimpse of a place and a lifestyle was very interesting to me. Charters Towers was one of these towns, but apart from an interesting name I couldn’t tell you anything about the place. In my memory it was a sleepy coastal town, and so it was as I wrote the lyrics. Later I looked it up and realised that it’s totally inland – so all the allusions to the coast are strictly metaphorical, I guess. To me it’s about shedding stigmas and being content.

‘Deluded’

Liam: ‘Deluded’ initially came about from a guitar part Curtis wrote years ago, which became an ill-fated demo for our second album; you can hear it come in at the chorus. I was trying to write a song with a big chorus, complete with “ooohs” and these uplifting chords which was totally inspired by this stupid super-teen-pop Bruno Mars song I was listening to too much at the time. We layered a bunch of overdubs on this one: synths and backups (from honorary Ocean Party member Mark “Crowman” Rogers) in this chorus and most notably the nylon-string guitar in the last chorus, which is a homage to The Go-Betweens’ ‘Streets of Your Town’. The lyrics are confident and self-assured, as opposed to our sometimes self-deprecating songs, but it’s really about being obnoxious, self-destructive and oblivious to it all.

‘Norman Street’

Jordan: ‘Norman Street’ was nearly lost. It was the last one we worked on and everyone’s input really made it work. The original demo was pretty longwinded and featured a lengthy intro that – in my mind – echoed ‘Trick of the Light’, but ultimately was not working at all. Thankfully we sat down and had another look at it, stripped it back and gave it another chance.

The lyrics revolve around leaving the country. Once you’re out you sometimes remember how much fun it was dreaming about getting out – as opposed to living the reality of having left. Traffic lights can be such a foreign novelty in a country town and I guess they were a symbol of the city to me as I was growing up. Something as small as that can be enough to inspire a dream of being somewhere else.

‘Cut Throat’

Zac: ‘Cut Throat’ is lyrically about my move from my parents’ house in Wagga to Melbourne, about becoming a man and about copping criticism for my naïve songwriting. Musically it is stark, revolving around a floor tom and a tambourine for the beat.

‘Still Stuck Out Here’

Lachlan: ‘Still Stuck Out Here’ is inspired by but not about my Pop. He’s been a farmer most of his life, and I wanted to explore the idea of getting old and reflecting on the legacy you have left. In this case for all the back-breaking work done; what is it worth? Musically I guess you would say, like a lot of the rest of the album, it’s quite New Wave. It has a really striking synth line at the outro as well as a sweet touch of clarinet by Lehmann [B Smith].

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‘Soft Focus’ is out now on CD, digital and vinyl through Spunk. Read our 2013 interview with the band. Launch dates below.

Fri, Nov 7 – Front Gallery, Canberra, ACT
Sat, Nov 8 – Croatian Club, Newcastle, NSW
Sun, Nov 9 – Wombarra Bowls Club, Wollongong, NSW
Fri, Nov 21 – The Tote, Melbourne, VIC
Sat, Nov 22 – The Metro, Adelaide, SA [free]
Fri, Nov 28 – The Lansdowne, Sydney, NSW [free]