by Tamsin Kemp

A whispered question below the surface of the melody haunts I Am Everything, the opening track from Press Club’s forthcoming album. Echoing throughout the song, it’s an instruction to listen. I was privileged to catch up with Press Club vocalist Natalie Foster to discuss the new listening they created for us.

Beginning with the Melbournian lifeforce infused in their music, I ask Natalie if this is deliberate and if it is vital that the music feels so local.

“Definitely”, she doesn’t hesitate. “When we first started getting into this rock thing, many of my influences were American.

“It’s difficult to find your voice, your accent, who you are as an essence. You can hear this American twinge on our first record. I was still trying to find the right amount of Australian.

And what is the right amount of Australian?

“I didn’t particularly like the overly Australian accent,” Natalie says. “I’ve leaned into it more over the last few years. It’s been a conscious effort, not necessarily to sound more Australian but to find my voice”.

Is the personal and the musical evolution intertwined? Particularly when starting at such a young age?

“Well, you’re growing up at the same time, aren’t you? So it’s all happening together.”

Emerging adulthood is a through-line in Press Clubs albums, from Late Teens to Wasted Energy, Endless Motion, and now To All the Ones That I Love, exuding progression.

“It was semi-deliberate,” Natalie says of this. “It was intuitively there. The second album references the one before, and there might be references to the one before in the third. I’m putting little Easter eggs in them all, I think.”

The new album has increasing complexity in melody and harmonics; sonically, a few more layers are falling in and out. Is that something you’ve aimed for and enjoyed doing?

“We decided to start branching out for this and the last album,” Natalie says. “Some ideas we worked on included an electronic sort of thing. We were playing around, and then it hit: ‘Oh shit! How do we turn this into a Press Club song?’

“We soon knew we needed to just let these songs be what they are. Explore different textures, different elements.”

Do these changes lend the songs to different personas? That is the recorded live and then the live experience of it?

“Absolutely”, Natalie pipes in. “Especially this one. We haven’t played these songs together yet… it’s been built very differently from the rest of our albums. Previously, it was us in a room riding, jamming, and figuring it out, whereas this one’s been like piecing a puzzle together.

“It’s exciting!” she continues. “Trying to figure out what stays and what goes. We’re not big fans of backing tracks, so as we wrote the album and recorded, we very specifically decided that the recorded live versions would be these two entirely different things.

“They’re having two lives. We’re relearning and re-experiencing them.”

Passages on the album speak of struggle, with lyrics ‘it’s a long road, it’s a hard climb’, and the lines that bookend the album, imploring ‘Haven’t you heard me?’ in opener Name bookended by the despair of ‘Nobody’s listening…’ in closer Desolation. Disheartening, perhaps, but there are beautiful shining moments.

“There are hard parts, yet there is much more positivity,” Natalie confirms. “That’s how I felt. It’s hard. But if you work hard, many glorious things come back to you. You’ve got to embrace. Looking at those and appreciating them is important.

“The album’s title track is about how we’re constantly away, touring, our lives continually changing and evolving. But for me, that song’s about your people; those who, no matter how far you drift apart, you still come together, and they feel like home.

“To be able to come back to the people you love … it’s something I’ll always be grateful for.”

And we’ll always be grateful to be gifted the music we love.

Press Club play at this year’s Dansonfest on Saturday, 26 April at The Baso. Head to Ozitx for tickets and full line-up.

To All The Ones That I Love is out May 2nd. Pre-save on all your fav streaming places via https://ffm.to/toalltheonesthatilove